One Month

It feels weird that Will has been gone for a month already (in three days).  It's easily the longest he's been away from home.  I miss him.  He seems to be doing really well and is happy and growing.  I was thinking about it the other day and I think it could be a little sad that he isn't too homesick but I realized that this is actually exactly what I would hope for.  I think it's a sign of healthy attachment.  We gave him a safe place to grow and that safety (and love) allowed him to leave and move on to the next step of his journey in a healthy and appropriate way.  I hope he wants to come back and that he isn't relieved to be done with us.  Hahaha.  I'm grateful he's doing well.  I know that there will be hard days and moments and that will be difficult for me to watch from a distance but for now, I'm glad he's happy.

He left Japan with periodic pain in his side/back and an ingrown toe that will.not.heal.  I've taken him to the doctor so many times about his toes and he's even had surgery on one of them twice.  I took him to the doctor about a week before he left and the doctor sent him off with six weeks of antibiotics and told him to take them the second the toe looks even the slightest bit injured and gave a few other tips for keeping those toes happy.  As soon as he got to the MTC both toes got infected again so he quickly started the antibiotic and the would not get better.  He set up an appointment with the MTC doctor and the doctor said that his doctor(s) here in Japan did a terrible job and didn't know what they were doing.  I guess they didn't get all of the infected toenail out when they did the surgery the first or second times so he had surgery again on both toes!  He said that they are already doing so much better.  We are hopeful this is the end of his painful and long ingrown toe journey.  

As for his side/back pain, the are looking into a possible dairy intolerance.  They took a urine sample and blood test and will see if maybe that is causing this pain that comes and goes.  

He has also found that he really enjoys the choir, something that he never experienced being a part of previously.  They've got him singing tenor and he's probably a baritone but he really likes it and especially enjoys getting to sit next to his friend Nathan (Elder) Michels.  Elder Michels and Will were really good friends here in Japan.  Elder Michels is going to Germany, speaking Russian to Ukrainian refugees.

He is struggling to get the weekly email sent because his PDdays are so packed and he is often rushed during our phone calls so that he can hurry and finish the email before the PDay ends.  He only has two weeks left in the MTC and he said he's ready to go get to work.  He was sad and nervous to leave but he adjusted to the MTC quickly and I assume he will be nervous to leave for Singapore and that might take more time to adjust to but I hope he can view that new change appropriately.  The mental health counselor for Korea, Japan, and Mongolia (and maybe Guam?) are in our ward.  As an aside, I love them so much and hope to be like them when I'm old(er). Anyway, Elder Yamada told me that what he sees the most are missionaries who are taking themselves and the experience too seriously.  They show up unable to speak Japanese, which is an incredibly hard language to learn, and find themselves maladjusted and depressed, viewing themselves as failures.  His advice for Will was to give himself grace and not expect himself to know what he's doing or how to speak the language or teach the Gospel well for awhile and not let that discourage him.  He said to enjoy the work and enjoy the play and don't take the mission too seriously (while also being obedient and hard working).  I hope Will can do that.  

Shifting gears,  the day we took Will to the airport, I first ran Felicit to the doctor for a rash.  She mentioned in the waiting room that her throat hurt but she didn't show any signs of being sick.  The doctor looked at her rash and said it was a viral response.  He took a test and it came back positive for three virus--Covid, RSV, and a common cold.  Poor girl.  He snuck us out a back door and had us wait outside the pharmacy while he went in to deliver the prescription for us.  I kept her home for the next week and she gradually got more sick as the week went on and has developed a cough that has lingered, I assume from the RSV.  Her rash took longer to go away but it's finally cleared up.  Anyway, she was sad to stay home from school and she and I spent a fair amount of time on the roof of the apartment making volcanoes, or outside in front of the apartment playing hide and seek with her baby dolls and coloring with chalk.  Our little road isn't terribly busy but it's not terribly quiet either so we had a good flow of people coming and going so while she played I tried to capture scenes from my "front yard".