The Lords Hand Was in All of This....

Disclaimer......remember when Hayden said he was "severely protected"  well, I am a believer!!!   Since reading this like 10 times my mind has gone a bit crazy, BUT....sweet peace in my heart tells me he is ok and I am so thankful for his awesome sense of humor and the love he has for life and laughter and a Heavenly Father who loves and protects us all....especially his missionaries. 

hey there family,
                          so ive decided that this email is for all of whoever it may concern. this week was way cool. every morning we have gone over to an investigadors house and we have been helping them add on to their mud house. first we knocked down a small wall by karate kicks. my comp had a hammer and we called him thor for a bit. then after shoveling and sifting a bunch of dirt and rocks we layed a foundation to the walls we were going to put up. they used bricks made out of mud, held together by more mud. then a couple days into adding on this part of their house we had the opportunity to take out a bigger stronger wall. me and my comp took a video of us demolishing and destroying the concrete and brick mud that it was holding it together. with a combination of our man strength, my pick-ax, and his sledge hammer, we brang the wall down. after chuck norrising the wall to the the ground a willow of dust arrose and filled out nostrils and lungs. i caughed and im sure a brick came flying out of my nose. then moving on. we had to complete their roof. i gladly removed their small brick chimney. we layed down bambo sticks on top of the mud walls to be the roof. a black tarp on top of the bamboo, then we dumped a mountain of mud on top. the next day i had to do a division (where i go with a different missionary for a day) so my comp and another missionary finished the job with cement. we carved our names into their roof, of course. okay now the good part. on this division that i had with another missionary, we were late to lunch. we were absorbed into some conversation that at this point in my memory i cant recall. i dont think that you know what a kiosco is... but try to imagine that you live on a block, with no work, so you convert your window facing the street into a small store that contains chocolates, drinks, bread, all sorts of candies, and sometimes meat and cheese. okay. these kioscos have to be heavily guarded from the thieving 9 year olds running around. so they have a set of bars on the window facing the road. in the night, they cover the bars and the window with a metal awning. in the mornings and when they are open they prop up this awning to protect their window from the sun and the once or twice a year rain that comes through. argentines are midgets. so this awning was precariously placed, just like all other ones here, at about six foot and one inches. i have always been a bit of a matrix pro, but this one came out of nowhere. i was looking straight at the ground as we were walking very fast. the next thing that happens is that there is a loud noise, my head had stopped moving forward immediately while my body kept going, and the corner of this metal awning had just made best friends with my forehead. i blacked out. as i was falling to the ground, the awning slipped off of its holder and smacked me on the top of the head as well. this second hit brought me back from my blackout so i caught myself while the awning swung and slammed shut with a ferocious noise. incredible pain surged through my head. i waited to see if i would bleed, and like old faithful, it began. i crouched down, seeing stars obviously as the blood began to pour out of my face. i looked straight at the ground as the straight line of red life giving liquid escaped my head. the lady who lived there ran out of her house at this point to see my blood everywhere, my comp shocked and not saying audible words, and me laughing because of the enormous pain i was in. really when something happens you either cry or laugh. i took the summers path and laughed. she made a small squeel and ran back indoors. my comp at the time finally told me to stop the bleeding so i touched my forehead with two fingers. i didnt know where exactly i was cut. the blood didnt stop. so i took my whole palm and covered my whole forehead. it slowed down but didnt stop. i then felt the giant goose egg where i was takin out. the people invited me in, they gave me a gauze thing and we eventually slowed down the bleeding enough to wash things out. i got to a mirror and saw where i was destroyed. a lock of hair was underneath my scalp so i dug my fingers in, grabbed the hair, and pulled it out from underneath my skin. when i did this the flap of my scalp opened up and started bleeding again. we stopped the bleeding and i pulled back my scalp and saw my skull!! i almost touched it but i couldnt think straight. i showed my comp my skull and also the people who lived there. we left that house and got to where we were supposed to eat lunch. on the way we called the mission nurse. she gave me two choices. i could go and get stitches at the hospital... or use alcohol to clean the wound myself, super glue my scalp to my skull, then tie the hairs on each side of the laceration together to hold it in place. i was in favor of the second option, more manly of course, but we decided stiches was cheaper to do. so the sister who we were to eat with was a nurse for 32 years. she saw my blood and pain and snapped into nurse mode. she called this ex-police guy who is the mission leader for a different ward and they took me to the hospital. now an argentine hospital is 0 percent like an American hospital. you see bugs crawling on the floor, dogs sleeping in the hallway, the lights are hanging off of the cieling, water damage, floor damage, and it basically is a place for hurt people to come and die. we got there and the sister who was a nurse got me in the emergency room right away. all the while the bleeding hasnt stopped leaving my gapeing hole in my face. they layed me down, a nurse who worked there came and looked at me and told me she was going to do the stiches right then and there. as she said this, a real doctor walked by, saw that we were white and he recognized the missionaries. he looked at my head and said ´no worries, ill take care of this.´ after he stitched me up, they took an x-ray of my skull to see if i had any cracks up there. then they sent me away, and i kept my x-ray :) so now they have me on some medication and they seemed to have stitched a tampon looking object over my laceration. so yeah that was my adventures for the week. they wont let me leave and work more than about half an hour in the sun for a week. this happened on saturday. so yeah. but a note for this whole story of how the Lords hand was in all of this. 1. the awning hitting me for the second time and awakening me from my blackout. 2. the family that was nice and let me bleed all over their sidewalk, kitchen sinks, and bathroom. 3. the sister who was a nurse for 32 years and got us into the emergency room asap. 4. the ex-police guy who drove and illegally parked his car right at the entrance. 5. a real doctor spotted us missionaries and said he would stitch me up and not a random girl nurse. 6. the fact that there were about ten other patients in the room that they put me in who had crazy injuries to their legs and arms and all of the nurses and doctors huddled around the hurt gringo. and finally number 7. i have a tampon on my forehead so everyone sees how rediculous i look. im pretty sure that i have a concussion but they didnt check for that at the hospital. when i went to bed that night i was half expecting not to wake up haha. oh boy it was a fun day. but that was my story, im fine now, no worries. i have some medication, its like an argentine ibeprofin but a little better and some antibiotics so i dont get an infection. my skull looks way cool, in x-ray form or just me seeing it in the mirror under my scalp flap. so yeah. what an adventure no? :) love you all!