Feeling Better

Sorry, I had a real nice message typed and then it wouldn’t go through when I sent it, and then it got lost. Now, I don’t have much time, so this might seem rushed. Mom, I’ll try to answer your questions:

(Editor’s note: The following has been put into a Q/A format to make it easier to read. After last week’s email where Eric mentioned he and his companion had had intestinal problems for over a week, Mom was worried, and grilled Eric about his health.)

Mom: How are you and Barnes feeling?

Eric: We are both fine now, it took a little over a week, but we are both feeling much better now. It is nice to not have to run back to our apartment after every teaching appointment! Now, some of the Elders are having a hard time with the dry season; it is causing their skin to dry up.

Mom: Did you ever figure out what was making you and Barnes have the intestinal problems?

Eric: We are not sure exactly what it was, because weren’t too many things that we ate differently than the rest of the guys in our apartment.

Mom: Are you following all of the health rules?

Eric: We watch out for all that health stuff. We take our doxy, use filtered water, yadda, yadda. However, the conditions here are terrible. We found a ton of maggots while cleaning the kitchen today, and there is nowhere to buy food that feels completely safe—but we do our best.

Mom: Do you guys ever get any warnings about terrorism? Recently here in the news, there have been a lot of reports of terrorism in different countries.

Eric: I haven’t heard anything, however, the missionaries here didn’t even know about the whole Ebola thing until the Mission President said something. The last I heard about terrorism was in the airport traveling here—something related to ISIS and a beheading.

Mom: I hope you are OK with me using your emails to update your blog. By the way, I have to do major editing, your grammar is going downhill!

Eric: That’s fine. Sorry about my grammar. The keyboards here are quite different and I get so tired when I use them. Also, they aren’t high quality keyboards (for example, today the space bar is sticking).

Mom: Any requests for future packages? You mentioned you are wearing your sandals all the time, would another pair be helpful?

Eric: Protein bars are good—the first ones you sent I didn’t care for as much (I think they were the Quest brand). The others (Think Thin?) were fine. As for another pair of sandals, they aren’t really necessary now—maybe later another pair would be useful. The ones I have are fine, they are holding up well except the sole is a little ripped from all of the rough terrain.

Final words from Eric:

We’ve got 4 baptisms coming up on Saturday—they are two 14-year old friends, and their 2 little siblings. They are all very excited.  We’ve also got this huge family that we’re teaching that just starting coming to church—the grandmother, her two daughters, their neighbor, and all their kids are coming so far. But there are still more to teach, maybe we can convert the whole neighborhood!

Hit the 5 month mark, seems to have come pretty fast, but at the same

time, America feels like its a million years in my past.

Thanks for all the love and support,

Elder Walls