Sofrimento- From Hero to Zero

The beginning of the week when Elder Hunt was healthy 

I will not lie, this week I have suffered like I never have before.

  Monday-I made my moms famous stuffed peppers for everyone in my house, it was perfect and it was a huge success! :)

The final product

   

Dirces and her whole family.  She is so good to us.

She made me a donut with my name on it.  "Hunt"

Some protein pancakes from early in the week.  Protein powder and eggs only.  So good.

Christmas package from his Nana and Papa

      Tuesday-I don’t know exactly why, but on Tuesday I was sad and "trunky,' a term used in the mission to describe when you miss home. I think I felt this way because of how close we are to the holidays. My crazy Brazilian comps in our house took advantage of my sadness and convinced me to open my packages. In hopes of becoming happier, I did. Really, they wanted to see what was inside more than me. The packages were awesome! 

Quest bars

I received more Quest protein bars, an awesome Clay Matthews Packers Jersey and a ton more! The gifts were great, but after I opened it, I still felt sad because I had a "things don’t make you happy, the people you love do" moment. Also, if I were transferred, I would not have space in my bags for the packages.

      Wednesday-I woke up Wednesday morning sick as a dog. I was super congested, very, very weak, a sore throat, and a wicked cough.

  I was so sick that I wasn’t able to go out and work, so Elder Lima Neto, stayed home with me. One present I received from my Nana and Papa was a little book called "The True Gifts of Christmas" written by my grandfather James E Faust. I was planning on saving reading it until Christmas, but something told me to read it. I read it and it literally changed my life. I read it and cried and cried and cried because of how touched I was. Every single person needs to read this book and realize how important our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice was and is for us.

      Thursday-Once again, I remained sick but my comps bought me some medicine to help me out. But I had to stay in again because I wasn’t getting any better. 

Elder Hunt's empty refrigerator

And oh yeah, remember last week with our full refrigerator and we were eating like kings? Yeah well that ended pretty quick. 4 growing hungry missionaries run out of money real quick. 
We went from hero to zero in like 2 days. At this point I had to start eating strange things. For example, in the house I only had quest bars and sour patch kids, so that was i all had... Not the best diet for someone who’s sick.

       Friday-Once again, I stayed home and got worse. I went out to buy more medicine, but my debit card doesn’t work and I’m all out of money. I got more and more sick. We got 50 Reais for lunch, so we bought steak, but then that ran out too.

       Saturday-I felt a little bit better, but was still bad enough to stay inside. But I wrote 5 letters, which was good. We are eating strange things because we are out of money. Elder Lima bought a cheap ice cream key lime pie, and it was good. 

We also found a couple of boxes of muffin mix so I made those for all of us to share.  Its literally the only we had to eat in the whole house and no money to buy anything.

But, we are living in filth, with no soap to clean our dishes and barely any food.  There are maggots in our house and I have no way to get rid of them because I don't have any soap or money to buy it because my debit card isn't working.

Sunday

       Sunday-I woke up feeling horrible, horrible. But I had to go to church. After sacrament we had a big fight with our Ward leadership, it didn’t end well. And I continually got more and more sick until a guy in our Ward said he was taking me to the hospital right then.  I called the mission and they said I could and so we went, thank goodness. 

We went about an hour away to a hospital called Albert Einstein; it is the best hospital in Latin América. It was quick and I was diagnosed with a bad throat and sinus infection, which figures since I spend my days coughing up blood and mucus.

I am supposed to use this crazy contraption

       I bought an antibiotic and also was instructed that I have to clean my nasal cavity with salt water every 2 hours...hmm all right.

       With our fight with our leadership they said we could not have baptisms on Sundays anymore, but Sunday is our main day for baptisms and is what we are instructed to do from President Farnes. Later that night our Bishop stopped by to "see how I was doing" but really, a counselor in the stake presidency told him that the missionaries can baptize on Sundays, so he came to sort of apologize.

Brasilandia

       I have baptized for 12 consecutive weeks without stopping and this news came from the Bishop saying we were good to go. So at 8pm at night, super sick, I put on my clothes, and prayed one of the most sincere prayers I’ve ever said, and I prayed for a miracle. 

We went to an investigators house who had already been to church a bunch of times and we tried as hard as we possibly could to have a baptism that night. I gave it my all, coughing, sweating, I even cried during the lesson because I tried so hard and I wanted a baptism. But it didn’t happen.

       That night, I got worse and worse to the point where I couldn’t sleep because my coughing was so bad. I wasn’t able to get to sleep until 545am. Now I’m here today, I’m still super, super sick, and I’m suffering. I hope the antibiotics work. I’m out of food, money, and I’m very, very sick. I’m not in the best conditions right now. Happy December.

A note from Elder Hunt's mother- We have called the bank and got his debit card to work again.  There as a 'restriction' on it because he is in Brasil and Brasil is a country with lots of corruption and danger.  The bank's security had put a restriction on the card.  We explained the situation and were told that the card would be active again immediately.  I told Marcus to buy some food and cleaning supplies and to disinfect his whole house and wash his linens.  Hopefully he will be doing better soon.  But if you could include him in your prayers, we would appreciate it a lot.