The President alluded to the fact that these visas should
not be taking years to get and if they were, we needed to go to Home
Affairs to see what the problem is, so Dad and I decided to go there and
find out what the problem is. We were ushered into an open area where
we were asked what we needed, but the woman helping us had no answers
and did not want to take us to someone who could help us. It was a
really fruitless time. We came out of the meeting with no better
understanding of what to do than we had when we went in.
Another problem which Dad has developed is with his
right hand. He has a tendon that seems to be developing scar tissue
around it that is hard and tight. We visited with a fellow missionary
who is a retired physical therapist about it. He said with no doubt
that it was Dupuytren's Retraction or Disease. It is a hereditary
disease of the hands where this tissue grows around the tendons and
eventually causes the fingers to tighten so that they cannot open up
properly. His suggestion was to massage it regularly to keep the tissue
soft. Aneesa, maybe you could talk to your dad about it and find out
what he knows. The therapist thinks that massaging is much better that
surgery at this point, because the hand is not very bad, yet.
The rest of the week has been business as usual. We
pay the bills and take care of the missionaries. One of our elders has
a temp for a companion right now. A temp is a young man who is not yet
ready to serve a mission, so he comes and serves for a few weeks when
we send a missionary home before transfer time. Most of the temporary
missionaries end up serving eventually on full-time missions. Well, the
temp here complained about having a bad toothache so Elder Beutler took
him to the dentist. The dentist said that he had 5 cavities and needed
two root canals done. He said that the root canals would cost 60000
GYD each, which is about 300 US dollars a piece. We thought that was
reasonable, but the mission won't pay for that since he is just a temp.
Today, one of the members who works in the medical area told us that
the dentist was asking too much. She said that a root canal in Guyana
is only 25000 dollars, not 60000 dollars like he said. He saw the
American and over charged. 25000 dollars is only about 125 dollars US.
That is an unbelieveably cheap price for a root canal.
The other thing that was annoying was that the
dentist refused to show Elder Beutler the x-ray, so we don't know if he
was really telling the truth about the problem. Anyway, the temp goes
home on Wednesday, transfer day, so we will have to let his parents
decide what to do about his teeth problem. Unfortunately, the dentists
more often than not, just pull the teeth rather than fixing them, so we
see a lot of people with missing teeth here.
Well, I think that right now you are having a party
without me. I was so happy to hear that so many of you were going to
support Joelyn as she gave her mission report in Dayton. I know that
her parents were probably dying to be there themselves. I remember when
Josh Lowery gave his report in his ward, that Uncle Dave set up skype
so that Sherry and Larry could listen to the report. After that, Sherry
was pretty anxious to come home and so the rest of the mission was a
little hard for her.
Please write and tell us about the day. I know that
Amy will want to hear about Joelyn's experiences too. Love to all of
you, Mom and Dad
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