Holly's Letter 1/11

Sister Picard is much better, I was able to take her home from the hospital last Monday evening. She looked and sounded much better, and even though the doctors hadn't figured out what was wrong, they did eliminate stroke, seizures, and bleeding in the brain, so that was good news. They diagnosed her with "severe migraines and acute dilirium" (we had a good laugh at that) and told her to take Tylenol. That night we stopped at a library so she could email her family and let them know she was alive--apparently they'd been notified of the situation, but all they knew was that she'd been hospitalized, eek. Sister Picard had told her mom about the symptoms the week before, and in the meantime her mom had done a TON of research. After talking to a nurse on a follow-up call and analyzing the symptoms more, we are almost 100% sure Sister Picard has hypoglycemia. SO- she has been following a hypoglycemic diet for the last week, and the symptoms improve every day. HAPPY.

Since then we have been trying really hard to get back on track. Our numbers last week were pretty poopy despite my efforts to keep things going. I probably could have done a much better job, but after this experience I will be much better prepared if something like this ever happens again, and I think I understand better now than before all of my responsiblities as a missionary. We had a really good Zone Conference on Thursday (President announced that baptisms for 2009 TRIPLED from the year before!), we had a lot of good speakers and some great training on planning and accountability. We talked a lot about how important it is to plan and set goals, to be continually stretching ourselves and increasing the boundaries of what we can do and the standards we can reach. It was tough to hear sometimes, especially because Sister Picard and I often feel like we are doing everything we know how, and yet we continue to fall short of our goals. So we have repented a lot this week and have been working really hard to make our planning more detailed and more effective. It's hard, but we already feel a difference.