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Hi Everyone!
So these last few days have been pretty hectic and I am just going to type word for word from my journal from Saturday to Sunday, with a few of my own thoughts in parentheses haha.
August 27th, 2011:
Today has been so crazy, where to begin?! I guess I will start with a bit from yesterday (Friday). So yesterday morning my companion, Sister S., woke up with bug bites. She just got transferred here from Glenville that used to have bed bugs in their apartment. [That's right, BED BUGS!!!]. Yesterday, we thought it might have been mosquitoes since the previous night we were outside for awhile and there were a lot of mosquitoes. Today, we actually found bed bugs on her mattress and bed frame. From that point on is when the real adventure began. [It is an extremely long and arduous process with which we still aren't done and it's Monday!]
Last night, Sister S. had 30-40 bug bites, this morning she had 50-60 bites! When we saw our first bed bug on her bed frame, we; stripped the sheets, bagged all clothing and all items cloth and soaked our room with Permitherin. We sprayed all our furniture and every crevice in the apartment.
In the middle of all that, we helped one of our investigators, D., move some furniture into his apartment. [D. had literally nothing, no bed, no tables or chairs, no microwave, he was sleeping on a gym mat on his floor. Someone who we were going to try to teach (potential) lives really close to D. and had a ton of stuff he was getting rid of so he told us that we could take some of it to D. so he had at least some stuff. We had the Elders help us move stuff into D.'s apartment like a sofa bed and two tables and some chairs. We also dropped off some food to him cause he didn't have any and he was too sick to go to the store. D. actually is in the hospital right now, the doctors haven't diagnosed him yet they think it might be an effect to some medicine they put him on. For the past two days he has been in the ICU, so please keep him in your prayers! D. is also one of our investigators with a baptismal date. D. seemed so excited when he saw us and the Elders bring furniture in; it was great to see him smile for once, like a kid on Christmas.
After we helped D., we returned to de-buggifying our apartment. Actually, after D. we went to Wal-Mart and got stuff for de-buggifying our apartment; extra large black garbage bags for putting our clothes into, plastic gloves (we broke both pairs we were using, ha!), mattress covers, Benadryl for my companion and some other odds and ends along with a few groceries to get us through the next couple days. We threw all our clothes and such into the black garbage bags and kept spraying our room. We took everything to a laundry mat nearby and put everything into super heat dryers cause heat kills the bed bugs and their eggs. Got some gas after the laundry mat and headed back to the apartment to try and find an exterminator available at 7pm on a Saturday night. Of course, we couldn't find one so we had to wait till Monday (today). We gathered together some essentials and prepared to go to Urgent Care. We were on our way to Urgent Care when we realized we forgot to put the mattress covers on! Luckily we weren't too far from our apartment, so we turned around to go back and put the mattress covers on. We hurried and put the mattress covers on and started back toward Urgent Care in Liverpool - 15 minutes away.
We were also told that there is a huge hurricane that is supposed to hit NY, but we were told we should only have a blackout here in Syracuse, if anything. On our way to Urgent Care, we have all our clothes in garbage bags, food, water, scriptures, GPS, first aid kit and a full tank of gas. We were prepared to head just about anywhere, ha ha.
Right now it's 10 pm and we are sitting in Urgent Care waiting to be attended to. There is a long line of people ahead of us waiting to be treated as well, oh joy. We had called one of the members of the ward earlier today to see if she could look up a list of exterminators for us. She also offered to bring us dinner after we got home from Urgent Care. She is so sweet, she reminds me of my sisters and sister-in-law back home. She is one of the few members in the ward I really trust, cause it is kinda a weird ward here in Syracuse. Been at Urgent Care for almost 2 hours now!
Sunday August 28th, 2011
Last night we didn't get home from urgent care till around 12:30AM. After being in the waiting room for 2 hours, we were called into one of the doctors rooms and waited for yet another 45 minutes in there. While we were on our second round of waiting, Sister S. and I recounted her bug bites and we counted somewhere between 90 and 100 bites! Eventually the doctor came in and talked for a little while. Of course it took another 10 or so minutes to write the prescription and have the nurse bring it to us. FINALLY, we were on our way home.
When we got back from Urgent Care, we had two twin air mattresses that we slept on in our living room. We slept with all the lights on because supposedly the bugs don't bite when it's light.
Admist all of this, Heavenly Father did bless us with some tender mercies. One of our investigators, E., who for various reasons hasn't been able to get to church yet, finally came to church. What is even more amazing is that he got a ride for himself! That never happens! He also told me that he felt the Book of Mormon was true again and he still wants to be taught and baptized! We had two investigators at church and several of the sisters from the ward came up to us and offered to go teaching with us, also another miracle! Hopefully with the help of these sisters we can get more member present lessons.
So today, we spent all morning and into the afternoon waiting for the exterminator to come, he never did. We hope that while we are emailing that he will have come. He is just looking at the apartment, he probably won't even spray till Wednesday. This has been one of the longest weeks of my entire life! Or at least it feels like it. That is what we have been through this week! Crazy huh?!
Thanks for all the love and letters.
Sister Gifford
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