Don't drink the water!

We are hoping that Jess only has a bug from drinking the water over there but we will see when the test results come back.  It is a mothers worst nightmare to have her child so sick and so far away.  I have put my trust in the Lord, as I'm sure Jess has, and I know he will be fine soon.  This is a test of our Faith right now not to mention his patience.  Moms of foreign missionaries tell me this is pretty common so I am trusting them also right now.  Even with the struggle, he would not want to be doing anything else right now and I wouldn't want him to either.  Hopefully next week there will be a more upbeat letter, for his sake and mine:}

Hey everyone,

As usual, it sounds like you are all doing great and having a lot of fun. The pictures of the kids at Nauvoo were pretty funny, I wish I could have been there. We'll have to do something like that when I get back. 

I don't really have the greatest week to write about. After P-day last week, I just started to get sicker and sicker and I ended up spending the better part of 3 or 4 days in the apartment. I had a really high fever for a few days peaking at 102.7. The diarrhea was also pretty bad and I even threw up once for some reason. I kept in close contact with Sister Woolley and our doctor here. The doctor had me go get an anti-biotic that helped me get over the fever. I don't think I've ever had a real fever before this. I would wake up at night unbelievabley sweaty! It was pretty gross and eventually we had to wash my blanket in the bathtub. I can almost fill up our washer with my socks alone so you can imagine my blanket wouldn't fit in there. Being sick is the worst thing ever I decided on the mission. If it gets bad enough, you don't have the work to keep your mind busy and you just lay around and think about what you would be doing at home if you felt like this, namely, the kinds of soups and foods mom would be fixing me. Also, it began to wear on my patience so that when we did get to go work, it made me feel like I haven't learned a thing about the Russian language and that I wasn't understanding at all. I had to take a big step back and tell myself that I was just sick so my patience was low and that I was still as far in Russian as I was before I got sick. All in all I was able to keep pretty positive and in high spirits. I would go out and work when I felt like I could, which wasn't always the best idea...(let's just say I had to do an emergency batch of laundry) but I felt like I was wasting the Lord's time and the time I have here in Tula. 

We had a mission conference scheduled for yesterday, Wednesday, in Moscow. Sister Woolley set up an appointment for me with a place called SOS. I'm not sure if you've heard of it but I hadn't ever. It is a place where you can go and get real, western style health care and medicine. The doctors speak English, among a variety of other languages, and the place is just a nice clean place to go. So Wednesday came and we had to get up really early to catch our train to Moscow. Our train had the bed things that come out from the wall so we got to sleep most of the way. I thought that was pretty fun, although the train smelled a bit funky from all the other passengers who had been sleeping the whole night. The train left at around 5:30 so I had no trouble falling asleep. Then we got to the conference right around when it was going to start. The mission conference was so cool! I left feeling so motivated and excited to become a better missionary. President Woolley and his wife spoke to us, then we had Elder Pearson and his wife speak to us. They are in the area presidency over all of Russia. He gave a talk in conference in April as well. He spent most of the day training us and teaching us lots of awesome stuff. It was so cool and the spirit was very strong bearing testimony of the truthfulness of what he was saying. It was also really fun to see my district from the MTC, including Elder Johanson who got here last week finally. It was really fun to catch up with them and hear some of their stories. We got to eat Pizza Hut for lunch and Sister Woolley once again gave us all a jar of peanut butter. She's awesome. 

After the conference ended, Elder Hiatt and I went to the SOS clinic. It was so weird in there at first, they had a tv playing CNN news in English, all these nurses were asking questions in English, it felt weird but it felt really good. The doctor took a blood sample and also made me collect a stool sample ha. They do it a little different here in Russia. He simply handed me a tube with an opening about the size of a quarter and said go give me a sample. It wasn't easy, I'll tell you that much but I managed to give the man a sample. He said some results would be here in about 5 days. I have lost about 10 pounds, hopefully I'll be able to gain them right back. I wasn't eating a whole lot for a few days. Then he gave me a bunch of medicine to help with the diarrhea now. He gave me some probiotics, some chalk powder stuff that I mix with water and then choke down, and also some salt stuff to help me get 100% hydrated again. I guess I was pretty dehydrated as well. After we left there, we went to mcdonalds and got some dinner since it was after 8 o'clock and we hadn't eaten. Then we headed home, not quite as comfortably as we got there but we still made it. We got home at around 12, planned and went to sleep. I'm looking forward to a much better week this week.

One thing about the Russian people that is interesting is that they love to talk! Most people picture them as people who never smile, are never happy and never talk but if you get one talking, you had better have a few minutes to sit and listen. It makes it kind of hard to practice my Russian since you can't seem to get a word in edgewise. They are generally really really nice people. People are always willing to help you out when you need directions or have a question, they love to tell you about their town and buildings in it. The cars here are funny. Most of them are pretty typical cars, Toyota, BMW, cars you recognize, but the funny ones are these small square cars called Latas. They are all over and some of the cop cars are Latas. I think they are funny. There is actually a lot of unemployment and poverty here. There are lots of people begging for change and stuff but most of them just want to buy beer or cigarettes. We use Rubles here and stuff is pretty cheap for an American. It is currently somewhere around 31 Rubles to the dollar. I'm going to go buy a coat I can where when it begins getting a bit chilly and it is about 1200 rubles and it is a really nice jacket that I will get for I think under 50 dollars. 

Well, that is about all I have to say for this week. Thanks again for your love and support. I love all of you and hope you continue to do great and have fun. Next week I will have a much better letter to write I'm sure.

Elder Geddes