Email sent June 16, 2014: Baptisms and Blood

A quick update on Elder Rodabough's cyst:

Bryce had a biopsy of the cyst in his jaw on Thursday.  We are waiting the results of the biopsy.  The oral surgeon feels strongly that it is an OKC cyst (long name that is abbreviated to OKC).  It is not generally a cancerous cyst, but it is a very aggressive cyst.  Because the cyst has now returned for the third time it is highly likely it is this type of cyst, but we won't know for sure until the biopsy results are in.  The mission  president and the missionary medical committee have however decided that Bryce will be coming home to have surgery.  The oral surgeon believes surgery can wait for a few weeks, therefore Bryce will remain in his mission until after the next transfer before coming home for surgery.  We spoke to the mission president's wife on Friday night.  She said that Bryce will be coming home on August 7th. He will need to remain home until he is fully cleared to work for 16 hours a day by his oral surgeon here.  I have spoken to the oral surgeon here.  Bryce will have an appointment with him on August 8th and we have a tentative surgery date of August 12th or 13th.  We anticipate he will have a 2-3 week recovery.  As you will read Bryce isn't thrilled about coming home.  We learned from the mission president's wife that Bryce is resolved to coming home, but wants to get back to Georgia as quickly as possible.
 

Dear Family and Friends,

Quite a week it has been. Not one that I wish I had to have dealt with, but none the less it's been an eventful week.

 

On Tuesday I did my first ever zone meeting as a Zone Leader. We had missionary leadership council the Friday before and from that Elder Hamer and I knew exactly what it was that our zone needed to be trained on so that they could increase their effectiveness. We decided that would be baptismal invitations. Our entire meeting was dedicated to the baptismal invite. Whether it is inviting in the first interaction, setting expectations at lessons of what our purpose really is as missionaries or how we can consecrate ourselves and purify our hearts so that the spirit can reside in us, all of it was about baptismal invites. I gave a training on how we as missionaries can consecrate ourselves and what consecration really means. I felt like it was a good training! I felt the spirit testify through me of how the missionaries in the zone can uproot that last root which keeps us from submitting ourselves fully unto the Lord. It was a really good meeting and we set some high expectations for the zone. Our zone focus is 5 baptismal invites a week. We challenged the zone every day to invite someone and we've been going through the District Leaders to get a running total of how many invites are extended.

 

Then came Thursday... Which I am pretty sure all of you have already heard enough about. The biopsy really felt weird though!! He numbed my jaw clear up to Cloud 9! The best reference I can give to it is in the scriptures when it describes Laman and Lemuel as "beyond feeling," but the worst part was is that I could still "feel" everything!! Not the pain, but I could totally feel him grinding on my jaw bone... haha.  It only took 30 minutes and then he sent me back out into the world. I even went tracting that day! I was filled with gauze and spitting out tons of blood but hey Elder Hamer and I went out and even invited someone to be baptized that very day. He said yes to a soft commitment but we haven't been able to get back in with him. I only spit up blood for about 2 days and then it all closed up. I'm still a little swollen, but I'm doing great.

 

Basically everything else you all know about after talking to Sister Wolfert, so I won't fill you in with the details all over again. This isn't even in the same universe as to what I want to happen, but I'm going to do it so that I can get back into the field all over again.  Looks like I'll be seeing y'all in a month or two!

 

Love you so much!

Elder Rodabough the second