Almost Out of the MTC

Hola!

So update on my leg because I'm sure everyone is wondering. I had my follow up appointment on Tuesday and the doctor said that I have one of the best MRI's he's ever seen. Which means they have no idea what the problem is. I was having a lot of mixed feelings because even though I'm glad it's nothing serious and I don't need surgery or anything, I really wanted a real answer so that I could have a real solution. But he is sending me to a physical therapist and he thinks that if I can strengthen the muscles, everything should eventually get better. I went to the therapist on Wednesday and it was actually pretty fun and he gave me a bunch of stretches that I need to do everyday. Being at a physical therapist made me sort of want to change my major again and go back to my original plans of occupational therapy. But too bad I don't actually want to study that, I just want to magically be able to do that. Also, in case you were wondering about the pelivis abnormalites, I have a benign bone lesion. He said it won't affect anything and that I was born with it. So thanks, Mom and Dad. =]

Before I got in to see the doctor on Tuesday, Hermana Duchene and I had a conversation with this lady who only speak Spanish. It was so cool! I could understand most of everything she said and I was able to talk back to her. It was really interesting because we had only been talking to her for 2 minutes before she starts telling us her whole life story. In the 20 minutes we were talking to her, I just loved her and I loved talking to her and it made me that much more excited to get to New York.

Hermano Johnson got an intership in D.C. so we lost him as a teacher yesterday. We're pretty sad because he is the only teacher that has been with us from the very beginning. This also means that we don't get to teach Juan anymore and I'm super sad about that because I really felt like we were finally starting to go somewhere. I think I'm pretty much the only one that really cares though because I'm one of the only people in my district that tries to treat our investigators as real investigators and not just our teachers pretending to be investigators.

I've been thinking a lot about life and how compared to a lot of the other sisters here, I have had a really awesome life. I haven't struggled with anything life changing, like deaths or abuse or an unsuportive family. My life has been pretty easy and I'm so grateful for that. I've been wondering if maybe I am having weird health problems and what not on my mission because I need to have that struggle. I don't know, this is all probably sounding crazy. But I'm really grateful for the awesome family and friends that I have and the awesome life I've had so far. I'm not going to let the small things get me down or cause problems on my mission because that's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to work hard even if it's really difficult sometimes.

I hope you all are doing well!

Love,

Hermana Parkin


This was included in the email Hernana Parkin sent to us. I thought it might be of interest to some family memebers and friends....Thanks Janae

So first of all, because I don't know if the MTC called you, but you should probably know that I went to the hospital at 1:30 Tuesday night. Before you freak out, everything is fine. I was having some chest pain when I went to bed but I just ignored it becasue I didn't want something else to be wrong with me. But then I woke up at 1 and it was hurting really bad and my arm was all tingly. So I woke up H. Seely and we went to the front desk and called the on-call doctor and he sent me to the ER. We went and woke up H. Duchene and the MTC van drove us to the hospital (which was super weird to be at because the last time I was there was freshman year and Liz and Chalene were there with me) and they did a bunch of tests to rule out the big problems. I don't have a blood clot or anything seriously wrong. They think it is swelling around the lining of my lung which is then pushing against my ribs causing pain. They can't actually test for that but they gave me some motrin for the anti-inflamitory and it's been feeling a lot better. So I'm not worried. Just really embarrassed because I don't want to be the missionary that is always have dumb problems. Anyways, I thought you should probably know what was going on, but I'm fine.

 

I should have gotten my travel plans yesterday but we didn't. We think they will come today and we heard rumor that if you get them after you send your p-day email that you get to call home for 5 minutes. I don't know if that's true but I guess we'll see what happens. I hope they at least let us send a quick email or something so you know exactly when I'm leaving the MTC.