WHAT A START TO OUR MISSION!

 July 15, 2022

It has been 3 weeks since we arrived in Cancun, and it has been quite an interesting and challenging start. We spent the first week traveling to 4 out of 6 zones meeting our missionaries, and visiting the dentist. The morning we left Utah President mentioned that he had a tooth that started to hurt that morning. During the week the pain kept getting worse. Karen had had the same issue about 1 year ago, went to the Dentist and Endodontist, was put on an antibiotic and found nothing wrong with her tooth. 1 year later and she’s still had no issue. Fast forward to Presidents tooth. I had luckily had some antibiotics that I had taken to Egypt just in case my tooth started to give me issues so Karen got that out and President started to take them. He goes to the dentist and they can’t find anything wrong with his tooth and the pain is gone. Week 2 we were to finish traveling the mission but unfortunately President Anderson gets Covid! He must have picked it up from a missionary as we had a couple dozen of them with symptoms. So now quarantine it is! We immediately separated President at one end of the house and Karen at another. Unfortunately the day President comes out of quarantine is the day Karen tests positive.  Luckily it’s just cold like symptoms. We can’t believe that after staying clear of this virus for 2 ½ years we come on our mission and get it!! So we met our Chetumal Zone by zoom and President traveled to our Playa Zone. We are anxious to meet these missionaries in person.

We are now starting week 3 and our 3^rd challenge. (3 weeks and 1 challenge a week) We hope it stops here, 3^rd times the charm right? On Tuesday, June 12^th, we had our appointment with immigration to get our green card. Right before we left President got very dizzy, unstable to walk alone, very tired, blurred and double vision. Karen was very scared as President definitely was not normal. Karen decided it would be best for her to drive to immigration. She kept looking at President and he did not look good. She kept asking if she needed to take him to the ER and he would answer I don’t know. We got to the immigration office and met 2 of our office elders there (who handle our immigration) they agreed President didn’t look good and they ran across the street to get some water and electrolyte drink. It had dawned on Karen that President was most likely dehydrated. We had President drink the 2 drinks and about 4 hours later he was able to walk in the immigration office by himself to get his picture and fingerprints. We left to go home and he seemed to be doing ok. By the time we got home he looked bad again. We had stopped at the store on the way home and got 2 more electrolyte drinks and a Gatorade and Karen made him drink 1 of them and the Gatorade. Karen had spoken to 4 out of the 5 kids (was about to call the 5^th) when we finally got a hold of our Area Medical and they said to take President to the ER to get checked. Of course Karen panicked a little, being in a new country, not able to speak the language yet and now it was dark and she needed to drive to the hospital (that she didn’t know how to get to and President was out of it) She was scared! She quickly did a family Face time to let our kids know what was happening and to please pray for their dad, they all said Mom call the Assistants and have them meet you at the hospital. Karen did and they came and can we just say they are the best!!! We would be lost without them! The diagnosis was that President was dehydrated, Karen was doing the right things and he was starting to hydrate so to keep it up and they let us go home.

As we have been trying to adjust to this new life, we have felt many emotions. So far it has at times been stressful (driving), joyful, very tiring, with lots of hard work, and overwhelming as we are trying to learn how to lead this mission, a new language and much more. President has the language down pretty good. We can truly say this has been a very humbling experience.  

When people learned of our call they would tease us about going on a 3 year vacation. This is NO vacation and we have yet to see such a place.  We would definitely say culture shock is real!