Because I sure can after this past week. We had transfers, and I was sick, on the same days as transfers.
Transfers = missionaries move the areas that they work in and I, as office elder, have a major role in orchestrating this all.
My dear companion, Elder Ashcroft, left me for KC to be companions with another old dear companion of mine Elder Cox, and I was in charge with my new soon to be dear companion Elder Nelson to get everyone safely and soundly to their new area.
Here is what I wrote in my journal for those days:
4 Sept 2017 Mon Week 64
Didn’t really have plans for this p-day. Went grocery shopping. I bought a liter of chocolate milk as a splurge buy. We ended up emailing in the morning with the APs in the office. I drank the whole thing of chocolate milk and we had some brownies that I ate too. Went to lunch with the APs. We were going to go to Luigi’s, but turns out they’re closed on Monday. We remembered a place called Luna’s and we went to try it out. It has a very cool style to the restaurant, with both an inside and outside eating area. We ate outside and bought pizza. After that we went up to the house and started playing a round of Pokemon Monopoly. We had to stop before we finished because we had a meeting with President Christensen about MLC at 3, cutting our p-day off a bit early. Elder Otto was sick yesterday and residual sick today. Over the course of the day I’ve been feeling worse and worse too. Dizziness started in the meeting at 3 and I started getting a fever after that. I laid down on the couch from 5-7 and took some medicine. The Christensens had left to go to KC. Sister Benson and Chin were still at the mission home and acted as a kind of mother figure. Helped me get medicine and they had a snack in their bag they gave me to eat with the medicine. Sister Benson reminded me to put a cold towel on my head and go to bed early. Around 7 went back to the house. Laid in bed with the lights off for a half hour or so until Sears and Otto got home; then we finished our Monopoly game and I won. Then I went to bed. Through the night I was constantly shifting and I would wake up every time I rolled over. I decided to get out of bed at 3:30am. The jug on the water dispenser was out, so I had to go outside and I rolled a new one inside since I was feeling pretty light headed. Got it loaded and had some water to drink. Nibbled a little bit of bread. Once I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to vomit I took some more medicine. I grabbed my bath towel and folded it up so that I could use it as a pillow and drape it over the back of my head down onto my forehead/face. Then I soaked the part that would be on my face in cold water, laid down on the kitchen tile, had a bowl by me just in case, and napped on and off for the next 2 hours ish until everyone else got up too. I kept a prayer in my heart asking God to help me heal so that I could have strength to do transfers, because really this was the worst timing for being sick. I can’t just call in a sick day; the whole mission needs me to do my job. At its height, my measured temperature was 101 and dropped down to about 99. I successfully kept myself from throwing up and by the time everyone else was up I was feeling much better.
5 Sept 2017 Tue
Once everyone else was up I finished a slice of bread that I’d started on at 3:30am and had some more water. Sat on the couch for an hour ish and sipped water. Took a cool shower, got dressed, and came down to the office. As of right now (8:01am) I don’t have a fever and hopefully it will stay that way. (It’s Friday now, been a couple very busy, exhausting days) In the morning we swung by Giant and dropped Elder Ashcroft’s bike off there to be serviced. Then we went and bought bus tickets. Elder Ashcroft got the tickets for people as normal and I went to figure out bikes and baggage. It’s a good thing I know a couple people there by now to work with me. They said they couldn’t fit all of our bikes on the bus with the missionaries. We had 4 going to BB, 3 to SR, and 3 to KC. He asked me if instead I could bring them all over today, well some were still coming in from the Khites. He said that I needed to bring them to the bus station tomorrow morning than so that they could load them onto buses and send them ahead of the missionaries. Also, for baggage he said he wanted to wait until everyone came tomorrow to pay for it since in the past we’ve paid for less than we’ve brought (missionaries travelling with large amounts of stuff. A bike costs $7.50 to send and an extra suit case costs $2.50). Basically, it’s going to make for one of the busiest transfers ever tomorrow. After tickets, we went and picked up Dilly Bars from Dairy Queen as a celebration treat for MLC. Had some time to eat lunch and then we were on our way up to North Stake center to pick up Elder Nelson. Traffic wasn’t bad at all and we showed up about 30 minutes early. Elder Nelson and Phouen showed up just a couple minutes after us. We waited a few more minutes for Elders TukThlaa to be there to take Elder Phouen. After that we were back to the office. Elder Ashcroft trained Elder Nelson on some basic stuff he would do in his role as the new Mission Clerk. I called the Ghils and set up President’s dinner appointment. Set up President’s office for MLC. MLC started at 3. I took minutes until near the end Elder Nelson offered to take a turn taking notes because I guess I looked fairly rough. After MLC we all had dinner together on the upstairs patio. Lasagna, bread, fruit, veggies, and salad. A scrumptious dinner. Transfers are tomorrow, so we had an army of elders staying at our house tonight (around 11 extras?) Several from my MTC group, so we all had a blast seeing each other again.
6 Sept 2017 Wed
I woke up a few times, but not as bad as the previous night. I got up about 5:10 and showered. Elder Ashcroft and a group of people had gotten up at 5 and left to go play basketball for exercise. I would have liked to go, but I felt miserable still. Still taking drugs every 6 hours. That’s been the cycle: feel bad, take drugs, wait an hour… feel good, wait 4 hours… start to feel worse again, after 6 hours total take more drugs, repeat. Today was a very long day. We got ready and went down to eat meat rice with all the elders who stayed at our house. Then we were in the office. At this point Elder Ashcroft is not an office elder and I’m working through everything with Elder Nelson. It’s about 7:30 and transfers happen at 8. Training meeting starts at 8:30. The bus station asked me to have all 10 bikes to the bus station around 8. I can fit only about 3 bikes easily in my van, 6 if I take time to squish them. I’m thinking that I will have 7 people not in the training meeting ride 7 bikes to the bus station and put 3 in my van and then drive everyone back to the mission home. (Spoiler alert, it all works out, but there were a lot of distractions) The mission home is full of missionaries, I’m feeling like garbage and wouldn’t even be out of bed if I didn’t have to do transfers, and side tasks keep popping up as I’m trying to figure out the bikes. People need new phones, people need phone charges to borrow because they didn’t think to bring one with them when they came down for transfers, people need name tags, people come into my office just to talk and generally annoy me (JK they didn’t mean to annoy me, but it really is annoying), and on and on. Elder Nelson and I assemble a list of who all has a bike going to the provinces (khites), and then we have to figure out which bike is theirs so that we can get it to the bus station. Problem is a couple bikes/owners didn’t get to the mission home on time. Then we also had to figure out who was not in the leadership meeting and could help up ride bikes to the bus station. We made it there around 9. Put all the bikes in the loading spot. Waited in line. Talked to the bike guy and he printed out labels and asked me to put them on the correct bikes for which bike is going to which province. We’d forgotten to write that down so made a few quick calls to get that information. Labeled all the bikes (stapled a plastic sleeve with a receipt in it around the handle bars or brake cables). And we were on our way back to the mission home. (It sounds so much simpler when I type it, when it felt like pure chaos when I was living it) I give all of the helpers a big thank you and go back to solving small problems. The next big hurdle is planning how to get all of the missionaries to the bus station now. I could make 6 or 7 runs and ferry them all over, but that would take a long time and we’d have to start early, or, I could make 2 runs and use tuk-tuks. Long story short with go with option two. The first run was easy. Had extra room in the car, not too much baggage, and only used 1 tuk-tuk and fit the rest comfortably in the van. Dropped them off, gave them their tickets, back to the mission home. Round 2 there were a lot of bags. We made it work, but I could feel the van going slower from the amount of weight. Still only used 1 tuk-tuk, but it was squished in the car. We had Elder Woolf (the tallest person at transfers) sitting in the middle seat between the driver and shotgun. Then 5 more missionaries squeezed in the back. Got them to the bus station and unloaded. Everyone got there with plenty of time. The bus station didn’t have us pay more for baggage. I didn’t realize why at first but then it hit me that everyone gets one free suitcase. Only about half of our missionaries had luggage so it came down to about a bag a person. We were a little over, but they said not to worry about it. Back to the mission home. That was the main hurdle, but the day wasn’t over yet. I was putting a map together for president to get to the Pakistani’s house for his dinner appointment, when he called me and asked me to drive his daughter’s family there since they wouldn’t be back from the airport in time. So now we are going to dinner. We drive there and are having a good dinner. President has me call the APs to see if they can come down to where we are and we can switch out so they can go with President to pick up the 4 new missionaries from the airport. They say it’s too far to make it in time and now I’m roped into driving to the airport. (which I’m kind of excited for because I’ve wanted to go to the airport since I’ve been in the office; I’m just sick today and the enthusiasm isn’t quite there) President’s daughter and co go back to the mission home with Sister C and I drive President and Elder Nelson to the airport. We have a nice chat about Cambodian politics on the ride there. Have a 30 minute or so wait for the new missionaries. I drive all the elders back in the van and the sisters and President drive back with Elder Scott. Start walking up the stairs to our apartment at 9:29. Get to bed ASAP.
7 Sept 2017 Thur
Woke up in the morning when the alarm went off and felt well enough that I didn’t have to take drugs to get me feeling well enough to do things. Went down to the office early. Training meeting started at 9. More craziness with bus tickets and bikes and blah blah blah. It all worked out in the end again. Random fun thing, Elder Nelson and I both weighed ourselves on the scale at the mission home and we both weighed 72.4 Kilos. Companionship unity! Haha. Went back to the apartment about 6ish and I went to sleep.
Life is busy; Life is good.
Wishing y'all the best!
- Elder Taylor
Letters will be joyously received at:
Elder Taylor
Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission
House 2B, st. 222 off Norodom
P.O. Box 165
Phnom Penh Cambodia
Loading the van to get to the bus station
On the way to the station
At the station waiting to leave on the bus
Picking up the new missionaries from the airport
