2/2/13

Dear Family,

It's been an interesting week. A good week, but an interesting one. So something was up with my stomach and we spent about 20+ hours in the hospital trying to figure out what it was. Most of the time was waiting. And after being told to go home and take a hot shower several times, we finally found a hospital that was able to do something. It turns out that there was something wrong with some muscles in my stomach area. The hot showers were nice but after throwing up a few times and almost passing out a few times due to pain, we figured we still needed to keep investigating what it was. They injected some gnarly pain killers into my side and now they have me taking some medicine. The needle that they jabbed into my gut was huge!!! I didn't know that needles were that big, holy smokes. I still have some pain but I don't feel dizzy anymore so I can still work. All is well now, haha. One lesson that I have learned is that socialized medicine is NOT the answer. The system is a lot slower, it turns out that they are even more picky about who they take, and the system is abused tremendously. America is headed downhill for sure on that. 

I appreciated the e-mails that you sent from this past week. It's incredible how fast time goes by. My companion and I worked with the elders in Arnhem this week and that will be the last time I see Elder Hendrickson before he heads home in 3 weeks. Scary thing is... He's from my MTC group :X. I'm glad that I could stay an extra month. I'm working very hard. I realize that I'm only 21 and on a full time mission once, so I'm going 150%.  I love it too much out here. I love you guys but I really do not want to go back, sorry.

I really don't have a whole lot to say about the week. Half the week was in the hospital, and the few other days we were working in another city. One of our investigators is still struggling with koffie... How do you spell that in English? Will you please pray for M that she will find that motivation to quit? I love you guys. Thanks for everything! 

Ieper is about an hour from Gent. It's worth it though. My mission president said that you are not American if you are in Belgium and you don't go and visit it at least once. They still have trenches and everything down there.

Love you guys,

Elder Schulte