***BEWARE**** Photos may cause you to cringe!!!
Turns out this week she was diagnosed with MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus)..which of course is very contagious and needs some very powerful antibiotics to fight. So strong that they warn that she could get kidney stones.. ummm..just my luck.
Then move to Analise:
After a few days we watched her get progressively worse and finally decided that we should take her in and confirm that she does not have MRSA in her lungs or something else. Remember when I said "just our luck"..seriously I was not kidding... She was diagnosed with Pneumonia, and an ear infection and the cherry on top was that she was having trouble breathing because of an asthma flare up. Yipee!!! Two down and I was still in the recovering stages myself and poor Mr. D was on mandatory overtime.
That is plenty for a family to take on you say? Oh no it just keeps on coming.
Chelsea King a 17 year old Poway highschool youth went running through the canyons near our home and was abducted. The fear and helplessness I felt was more depressing then ever. The city came together and there was a massive search to rescue/recover her. Details are still pending. Our family is handicapped by our illness and so far have been unable to help with the searches. The community aid I have seen has been overwhelming and brings me great joy. Our prayers go out to all members of the King family but I can't help but to feel a little down from the whole experience.
***UPDATE*** Chelsea King has been found in a shallow grave on the shoreline of Lake Hodges just 1/2 mile into her 12 mile run. Hold your kids and cherish them because tomorrow is not promised. My heart aches for her and her family and will continue to pray for the family that they may feel the love and comfort of our heavenly Father.
So would you say that is a lot to take in....nope not done yet... as I was up at 3am Sunday administering to Analise I turned on the news to see if they had found Chelsea over the night and I was surprised to see what the headlines were:
MASSIVE 8.8 EARTHQUAKE HITS CHILE..death toll rising and buildings have fallen.. Argh!!! I immediately went into a panic as you all know our sweet Nani is serving an 18 month mission for our Church in Rancagua which sits 40 minutes south of Santiago and just North of Concepcion where the epicenter is closest. This quake also launched a tsunami that headed straight for Hawaii and also had some waves wipe out towns on the coast of Chile.
The upside is that after exhausting my means I finally heard from Xandi and she is doing just fine. My prayers have been answered and she is safe. :0)... here are her words:
"Our mission email can't open and this is the only other password I could remember (sent vi facebook private message.) In case you`re all worried about the huge earthquakes that happened here yesterday, I`m OK. We were without water and electricity all day yesterday and we have received instructions from our area presidency to not go out and work. I`m at a members house right now to write and say that we are all ok. Have you heard from Christian Harmer? The epicenter was in Concepcion so I have been hoping he is OK. This is the first big earthquake in 25 years, is what they are saying. We are still awaiting more news and I`ll probably be writing tomorrow to let you know how everything is going. I love you all and I hope you are all right."
Today we got to email back and forth for an hour and I got a true confirmation on how she was doing:
"So here is how our little adventure went down…..
We went to sleep a little late Friday night because we were talking and just hanging out in the bedroom. We finally went to sleep only to be woken up a few hours later, 3:30 am, to a violent shaking of our house. We live in a 2 story house so it was really strong up on the second floor. The earthquake lasted about 3 minutes. I will have you know that we have a set of bunk beds but the flat metal part for the top bed doesn`t fit into the slots in the polls that holds the both pieces. So that huge, heavy, metal thing was leaning against the wall so when the earthquake started my companion jumped out of bed to keep it from falling over. I woke up shortly after she did and stood on my mattress holding the bed. Haha maybe not the proper thing to do in an earthquake but hey...
So when it ended we grabbed blankets and went outside. Our neighbors are awesome and immediately gave us hugs and asked if we were alright. We stayed outside with them for about an hour and a half then around 5 am we went upstairs and read the instructions we have for earthquakes and it said to go to the church. So we did. From around 5am to 8am we stayed in the church but as no one showed up, we went home again. We stayed in the house until about 2:30 or 3pm before we decided to go to a members house to see how they were doing and to also get out of the house. During all this time there was no water, electricity, and no service in between phones. Therefore little to no communication was being made. As a branch we had planned an activity for that Saturday so my companion and I went to the church to see if the elders had shown up. We hung out there until around 7:30 and then went home. We changed and then joined the neighbors sitting around a gas powered camping lantern. We ate and listened to the radio and waited for power to come back. We did get a call from the other sister missionaries in our zone who told us that they had packed small suitcases and had them by the door, just in case. The said we should do that too and come and stay at their house. So we packed up and went to tell our elders to do the same. On the way over their we got a call from the same sisters saying “don`t come!” So we went to talk to the elders (whom we hadn`t seen all day) and decided to come back home. We came home and hung out with our neighbors again until around 2am. Today has been shopping for food, water, everything else we will need for the week, and writing to you guys. Now it`s off to the house to sit some more and await further instructions. Hopefully we will be put to work in service projects. Well that`s a quick update. I`ll keep you posted as best I can on what is going on here."
So this has been an exhausting week to say the least but none the less I have grown in my testimony for my heavenly father. I have realized that prayers can be answered and blessings truly can heal the sick. Please join in the next few days to pray for the King family for a safe recovery of Chelsea, for the Chileans who are in need of relief, for the families who have lost loved ones, and of course for all the missionaries in the field who are exactly where they need to be... being led by the spirit to serve those in need physically and spiritually. What a week to go down in the books as one that does NOT need to repeated.