The day I almost died.

Today I was on MSN messenger and someone contacted me from my mission that I haven't heard from in over 5 years. It was a boy who we baptized in my first area. His family wasn't active, but he had an aunt that would stop by on Sundays to bring him to church.

He's still active and now goes to church by himself. I was EXSTATIC to hear this good news from him. :) There's a lot of people that I taught in Brazil that I no longer have contact with....many letters that I send just get returned to my apartment with "Endereço não existe" (address doesn't exist) written on it. So, its always encouraging when I hear from someone and know that they're still active in the LDS church.

So, I busted out my journal and starting reading some of my entries from my mission (the entries unfortunately decreased in frequency towards the end of my mission). I read a particularly lengthy entry that goes into immense detail of a growing mission experience.

I'll spare you the mushy details and get to the good stuff:

So, Brazil has pretty crappy storm drains, so when it rains, it usually floods the roads. One day it rained so hard and so long that the road was almost 2 feet deep in just water. Well, when the storm drains overflow, they flow into the sewer...and then the sewer flows into the road. Long story short, we were trudging around in 2 feet of sewage and rain water one day.

So, something (by "something" I'm suggesting an object most likely very disgusting and probably something you don't want to think about) got into my foot and the next day my ankle was all swollen. It just kept getting worse. I walked on it that day. The next, I could barely even make it to the shower. I went to the "doctor" (in Brazil, healthcare is free...but it also ROYALLY sucks) and he said I just had a skin infection and that I'd be fine in a few days. 3 days on my bed and it just got worse. The next day it was transfers and my companion was going home so I got a member to take us to the mission office so that I could drop him off.

When the mission president saw my foot he said, "Elder George (for those of you who don't know...missionaries are given the title of "Elder" during their 2 year service) why didn't you tell me it was this bad?!?" I responded, "I DID!"

He stuck me in his car and rushed me to the Albert Einstein Hospital (the best hospital in South America) and that's where I stayed for the next 18 days.

A lot of stuff happened, I threw up almost half of my body's blood (about 4 pints..I think), had a cardiogram, MRI, multiple endoscopies, a few x-rays, over 100 pages of bloodwork, and was stuck with an IV so many times that I literally couldn't extend my arm all the way.

I remember being really scared when I wrote this journal entry. Being alone and dying in a foreign country is no fun. I called my parents a few times to tell them what was going on...but I'm sure that just made them worry more. My mom later told me that she went a few days without sleeping because she was so worried. Being in intensive care for so many days didn't give me too much reassurance either.

Well, I'll stop boring you with my story and get on to the pictures!

This is what my foot looked like when I started to notice that something was wrong:

This is day 1 in the hospital. The deep red is an allergic reaction. My left foot you can see is pretty swollen:

This is me in intensive care...all those machines are pretty intimidating:

Here's a fun one of me running around in my hospital gown :)



And finally, a nice closeup of the allergic reaction on my feet. Also note that this reaction spread all over my entire body....even you know where:

It was a really tough experience but I really learned a lot from it. One of the hardest things that I had to do was to put my trust completely in the Lord and know that whatever happened, it would be for my benefit. I ended up getting better and finally returned to my area. I finished the last year of my mission and lived to tell the tale.

I'm so grateful for my LDS mission experience. It was the most difficult years of my life but I look back with gratitude for all the people I met and the chance I had to share my beliefs with others. Missionaries leave their homes for 2 years because they have a message that they feel is so important, that dating, college, cars, everything can wait. That message is that God has called a prophet in our days just as He did in biblical times and that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is on the earth once again. Joseph Smith is a prophet of God and we can all know it by reading and asking Heavenly Father for ourselves, if the book he translated, The Book of Mormon, is true. I know it is true and I invite you to learn more about it.

Please visit: http://www.mormon.org/
Or if you're already a member, please watch a few of the video testimonies and then share this link with someone you know.