Hola Elder

So, today is our p-day. It's kind of redundant to email you folks, since I'll be returning home tomorrow morning, but my companion wants to have some email time, so it's not like I have much to do right now.

I'm sure that all of you know why I need to return home (broken jaw) and why it happened and what I did at the hospital, so I'll spare you of all the gory details. It sufficeth me to say that the Presbyterian Intercommunal Hosiptal that I went to is probably one of the best things the Presbyterians have ever done.

I have to congratulate you, mom and dad, for taking this all so calmly and coolheadedly that the mission president and my companion have expressed surprise.

I have to congratulate President Bubert for being such a big support in more ways than I can express.

I also have to congratulate my companion for putting up with me, and having the patience to do basically all the medical paperwork yesterday. If you haven't heard yet, yesterday was an exercise in pure frustration. We had an appointment at 9 o'clock at this one place nearby, but it turned out that they didn't take our insurance, so we spent like two hours there trying to sort everything out, so they just referred us to another place for a 2 o'clock appointment.

That place was pretty good, but we had to redo all the paperwork and sort out a couple headaches and whatnot, so the actual surgery ending up starting around 5 o'clock IIRC. It only took about ~20 minutes, but
was rather excruciating since I was awake and only had local anesthetic. The procedure is pretty simple conceptually, just drill some screws into the patient's gums and wrap some wires around them, but even with the numbing it was still a very unpleasant sensation afterwards. The fact that it wasn't until like 8 o'clock that I got the (liquid) pain medication didn't exactly help either.

What did help though was (surprise) the mission president. When we arrived back at our apartment we found him waiting for us, and he had bought a lot of liquid food for me. Now we know that I won't need it
all, but yesterday we thought that due to my skull fracture I wouldn't be able to fly home for about a week. After talking with use for a bit, we went to the store and bought stuff for smoothies (awesome), and then spent the rest of the night talking.

Well, actually, I didn't talk that much, with my jaw being closed and all, but I was able to say some words clearly, and if needed I could just pull a Zacharias and write down what I needed to say.

Anyways, if any of you are wondering, yes I'm fine, and yes the pain medication is working.

Really the only three things I'm worrying about is how are [1] how am I not going to lose a massive amount of weight (considering that I've been the most voracious eater at dinner in a Spanish ward and have still failed to put on any weight) [2] how am I going to keep my teeth clean, and [3] how am I going to eat ramen without any real gaps in my teeth.

Hasta manana!
- Elder Oeste