This month was
difficult for Elder May as well as on our family to watch him struggle. He does not do well with being told no or to
slow down to take care of himself.
Missing the opportunity to speak at zone conference was very difficult
for him. But like he mentions below,
learning to love himself and be patient with himself is what this teaching opportunity
was about. Love him so much and am so
proud of him. Enjoy!!
Hello!
This month was probably the most difficult month
of my mission so far. Because of beautiful blessings that I have been given
with my missionary power, I haven’t really gotten crazy sick on my mission at
all so far. That all changed with this month. It started out with just a cough
and a weird tickle in my throat but then the next day, I was coughing nonstop
and I’m still not exactly sure what had caused it. I would cough and, the
amount of my coughing would make me out of breath, and the force of me coughing
forward would cause me a headache. I wasn’t able to sleep at night without
waking myself up by coughing for 5 minutes nonstop and then try again to fall
back to sleep without coughing myself awake.
The worst part of the problem was that I was unable to
serve. By day 3 or so, I had gotten so bored of being at home. All of my
service missionary friends were out serving so I was unable to keep up a
conversation, I didn’t want to work at Save the Family and represent myself as
a missionary and only do like 10% of the work that I normally could do and I
couldn’t go to the temple with Elder Hayward because I was still coughing too
much and I would panic in fear that I would make him sick because of me. It was
truly a tough month for me. I was unable to spend time with Elder Ferrell due
to this because of the same reason. I was unable to go to the zone mission
conference and I had to cancel assignments and meetings due to my illness.
I have learned a valuable lesson however. There is a difference
between being selfish and caring for yourself. Something that I have been
working on recently is trying to learn the difference between the two. During
this time, I was unable to help others which just made me feel awful but it is
not selfish when you need to care for yourself. I’ve been practicing a lot
lately on making decisions based on how I truly feel rather than just trying to
make others happy. You are only selfish when you have cared for yourself and
you still don’t care for others. It is not selfish when you are looking out for
yourself and you are trying to help yourself grow. This is still a difficult
thing for me to learn but I am grateful with the experience that I have been
able to gain so far. I’m looking forward to the next month and whatever
experiences lie ahead of me.
Sincerely,
Elder May
