Hobbling around!!!

Email sent 31 January 2011

She (the YW President) read my letter in church?! Ah. Oh well. That's good I guess. Hope people learned something. :)

So this week has been a roller coaster. An interesting one. And you know me, I don't really like roller coasters, but I seem to get on them anyway sometimes. So a little background...my companion is very accident prone. In her past she has broken like every bone in her body. About 4 years ago she broke her knee. While she was in the MTC she hurt her same knee again playing volleyball. They took an MRI, and gave her crutches and a brace and painkillers. And she didn't put any weight on it while there. But right before she came out here, they said she was fine to walk. So then she came to me here in Laredo to be a missionary. And what do missionaries do? We walk. A lot. Yes we do have a car. But we drive it and park. And walk and walk and walk. So she came here and we walked, for the past 3 weeks. And the pain got worse and worse in her knee. So anyway they sent us to a doctor. Basically, it was the worst ever, because we were there for FIVE hours. Waiting. and waiting. And then he assessed her completely wrong. Scheduled her to get an MRI of her back and said she can't walk or work for a week and a half and put her on three meds one of which was steroids. So after 5 hours we left. The next day while she was on the meds she couldn't work at all so I did splits with the other sisters adn we were just running here and there back and forth trying to get to all of our appointments in both of our areas while one person stayed home with sister salan. It was a crazy day. I even got to go out with Sister Nelson for a couple hours at night. (the one that you talked to and sent my one package to) It was fun. But then, after further investigation we all realized that there is nothing wrong with Sister Salan's back and that she will not be getting an MRI and the big area medical doctor for the missions took her off two of the crazy medications that the doctor had given her and re-diagnosed her and stuff over the phone. So then we were calling everyone we know so that we could find crutches. Because the doctor said she could work as long as she doesn't put any weight on it. But no one on earth had crutches. So church was crazy yesterday, cuz I went with sister Platt, and then after sacrament we came home and the elders gave sis salan the sacrament and then sister ruano and I went back to church. Where Ralph recieved the priesthood and I had to play the piano again in the other branch, where apparently NO ONE plays and last week they sang the opening hymn accapella and it sounded horrible, so I played for them again and finally we found someone who had crutches.

So now, we have crutches and it is hard to get around, so I don't know how we are going to contact this week, but we'll figure it out. I just hope it gets better.

So other than that, let's see, this week we found a bunch of new people to teach. That's really what we need right now. Tell Jimmer good job for me :) and keep cheering on my cougars.

Oh I am starting to teach group piano lessons here so that this branch can have their own people play the hymns, so mom I really really need you to send me something ASAP. You know all of the scales with the finger numbers that Leslie would always right in our notebooks. Can you make a page with all of them, and what key they are and the fingers and send it to me in the mail. Also maybe send me the lists of books people could use to start learning. I don't really know how I am going to do this because I can only spend like an hour or hour an a half a week doing it, so if you have any ideas that would be great. There are I think four pianos in the church I am thinking about having people in different rooms and rotating doing different things or me rotating teaching them, or I don't know. Basically I just want them to be able to play the hymns. So I'll see tomorrow how many people will show up and I'll figure out how I'm going to do this. But if you could send me those scales and reminders of how else you help people start learnign to read music and stuff that would be great.

Well I hope you're all doing great. Have fun cleaning mom. Tell dad not to do too much manual labor. He's kinda getting old. :) How old are you going to turn next month dad? If quinton still exists, tell him hi too.

Love,

Sister Petersen