Hey EveryoneJ Well by now I expect that almost everyone has heard about my “little accident” last week. Okay, well it wasn’t exactly little because well, they sent me home… So now here I am still writing the weekly letter for everyone who 1. Doesn’t have Facebook or 2. My mom hasn’t already called haha. So let me tell you a brief summary of the incident and this last week. Last Wednesday my companion and I were walking home at about 8:30 at night. It was getting real dark (and the neighborhood we were in isn’t really into streetlights…) and it had been raining all day long. We started down a street but decided to turn around and find a way with more light and less mud. We were just walking along when, like the clumsy Hermana I am, I stepped right into an uncovered sewer drain… filled with water from the rains it was level with the road. My right foot plunged in so far I couldn’t touch the bottom, unfortunately my left foot stayed on the outside (just imagine like a hurdler, one leg straight and the other all bent up). Luckily my arms and backpack saved me from going further in, but I still got totally covered in agua sucia up to my waist. My companion heard my scream, turned around and like a true friend, began to laugh, until she heard me sobbing…. I don’t know how, but she managed to pull me up and out of that horrid hole. I was crying more then a little because well I was covered in sewage, I was soaked and freezing and I saw my foot all sorts of misshapen. I remember that through my shivers and through the pain I could only think “please don’t send me home, please please don’t let this send me home”…
The rest of the night was a blur in the hospital and back home again. The next 2 days we spent in the house waiting for the swelling to go down so we could get a more accurate diagnosis. Friday we went back to see the doctor and he explained what had happened to my foot. It turns out I had not only broken my foot but also snapped the ligament that held all my toes together and in place. When he told me that the recovery time would be at lease 6 weeks it felt like a dagger to my heart…. The church has a policy that if an injury takes more then 2 weeks to heal up then they just send the missionary home until they are well enough to come back. So I knew my future. The next morning Sister Wilkinson (my mission president’s wife) called to tell me that they had gotten me a flight home and that I wouldn’t even have to wait till the next week, but that I would be flying home THAT NIGHT!!! And so by 11 pm I was in the airport on my way back to Rexburg. 13 hours, 4 airports and 1 looooong fast I finally got to Idaho Falls walked down the escalators and into the arms of my very favorite 17 people in all the world. There were tears people. Giant alligator tears.
After getting home, eating a beautiful Italian dinner, and spending a little time with the fam, the moment that Id been dreading came…. My stake president came over and asked me to remove my plaque... That was hard; I mean talk about an identity crisis! I’d put that badge on every morning for the last 8 months and now they wanted me to take it off? I didn’t cooperate easily, but finally I was able to do it with the promise that one day I’d get to put it back on. The rest of this week has been a string of doctors, nurses, surgery, medication, pain, etc. I got my foot operated on Monday afternoon (they put in 1 long screw and 2 staples to hold my bones in place and restitched all of the ligaments together) and I spent that night and the next morning in the hospital. When I got home I thought the pain battle was over, but over the next 4 days I struggled with extreme nausea and fatigue due to the medication. I couldn’t keep any food down at all and suffered through what I see as the most painfully long day of my life.
So, for now I’m on house arrest for the next 6 weeks, at least while I don’t put ANY weight on it. Then it will take me another 4 to 6 weeks of rehab before I can get back out to the field and work like a missionary. Physically I’ve had worse, but spiritually this has been one of the greatest trials I’ve ever had to face. Getting out on my mission was so much time waiting and preparing and so to be home doing it again will definitely be a grand trial. But if there’s one thing I learned from being a missionary its that No Matter What, I can place all my confidence and trust in my Heavenly Father and in his perfect and divine plan for my life. I didn’t have a miracle healing in Costa Rica, I wanted one, I didn’t want to leave. BUT the fact that I didn’t, that my foot wasn’t made whole, is just a testament that there IS a purpose for me to be home here and now. I know that God does all things with the well being and happiness of his children in mind so I can’t help but think that here my purpose is even greater then it would have been had I stayed in Costa Rica. There’s a hymn that comes to my mind when I think about being at home after only 8 months of service it says, “I’ll go where you want me to go Dear Lord, over mountain or plane or sea, I’ll say what you want me to say Dear Lord, I’ll be what you want me to be”… I will go where he wants me to go, even though that means Going home. I will say what he wants me to say. And I Will BE what he wants me to be, although maybe he doesn’t want me to be a missionary right now, even though he just wants me to be little normal Aleena again.
Well I hope yall enjoyed this novel of my mission tragedy. I am forever grateful for all of your consistent love, support and prayers while I have been serving a mission. I would appreciate if you could keep me in them a little while longer, through this temporary mission interruption. I have been so richly blessed by the people I know and love, I hardly have room to complain about my foot! Prayers from my beloved RexburgJ
All my Love-
Aleena
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