The week I thought i had EBOLI! 

So this week has been an insane week. :) as you can tell by the caption. as a precursor! i don't have eboli its a story i will get to before the end. i just liked the title. :)

First off this week we had EXCHANGES!! crazy right? haha i thought so. Sister Arbon (who is my trainer) got to leave me which i meant i did what we call "leading out" in my area. in other words i was incharge. which really freaked me out!! Sister jacobs came with me and she is my STL which means she is over me. Really What Exchanges are... they are just making sure that we are working right, but it was still fun! First we stopped by The parkers house because the Elders had made us some Maple Bacon cookies. So stopped by there for a quick cup of lemonade and a cookie. They weren't that good but Elder Fowers wanted to make them for us so we had some. :) then we went tracting. which was aweome we got to talk to twelve people!! woot!! we knocked on doors for two hours and only twelve doors opened up to us. it was soo excited. then we went to the Tams for dinner. I love the Tams! they are this cute Chinese couple. They are from Hong Kong. Brother Tam actually served his mission in Hong Kong where is from so that way awesome. I have yet to have Chinese Food at their house. We had Chicken Cordon Blu and rice and veggies it was delicious! They invited a non-member friend for us to teach. It was really good that the other set of sisters was there because we really needed to see Rae. Heather came and Picked us up for our Team-up and off we went to visit cute little Rae. We talked to Her and Heather a little bit more about tithing. On the way back to our apartment, Heather and I were discussing Jimmy and Tristan. This family is seriously a miracle family. Sister Jacobs had heard all about jimmy and wanted to meet with him. So we went back to the Parkers for like 10 mins to talk to him. he asked the usually questions (whyd ya come? whats your testimony and have you got a boyfriend?) it turned out to actually be a super spiritual night. :) it was a great way to end it. the next morning we got up and did studies. Exchanges are hard sometimes because we really don't have set investigators right now so we didn't have any for sure lessons.  so we rode our bikes about 3 miles to Rae's Neighborhood to drop in on someone  :) We rode all the way out there, and she told us to come back next week! it was so exciting! we stopped by a couple more places and with no luck we finally headed back home.  The other Sisters picked us up and we went to Panera. Which is the exact same thing at paradise bakery in Utah. its soo good! 

Wednesday was the first day i got sick. ugh it was awful. I woke up all achy all over and my nose was running and i had the biggest headache.  but hey! missionary work never stops!! we exchanged back and we had one appointment that Sister Arbon and i tried to go to but they didn't answer the door. so we went to dinner with Sister Todd. I love sister todd!!  she owns her own company and her husband stays home and raises all five of her boys. :) haha its awesome. we went to this place called O'Charley's. It reminds me of like an Outback Steak house or something classy like that. Plus it has free pie wednesday and we all know i love free pie wednesday so we had to get some. Our appointment for that night canceled as well so we just enjoyed a long dinner and went to bible study!! before we went to bible study i started feeling a little down, i was missing my family a lot, sister Todd had started asking about them and we were discussing it. but i wasn't going to let the homesickness get to me. Until we went to Bible study. We were reading in Luke and i was just struggling. i didn't think i was showing it but apperently i was. I went Home later that night to find little notes in my planner that were from Elder Fowers, Elder Roy and Tristan telling me everything was going to be okay. i seriously love our Elders and tristan. they are the best! 

Thursday i woke up with a huge headache and i was achey all over!! i seriously felt like a bus had hit me. I was coughing and Sneezing and couldn't breathe AND!! the Day before we had started a District fast! so i wasn't allowed to have water or food for the next two meals!  i went back to bed for a while and later that day took a huge nap. I decided i could handle walking to the Parkers house. so i bundled up and off we went.  we showed up and the first thing he did was bring us out two huge mugs of Hot Chocolate! we had no idea what to do! we didn't want to say no, but we were fasting!! so we just decided to drink it, but we still didn't eat anything. by the end of the lesson, we came the conclusion that us and the elders are going to team teach him until the twenty ninth which is his baptism date. :) woot woot! that night for dinner we had a CEREAL PARTY!! the Kelley's went out and bought all our favorite kinds of cereal and thats what we had for dinner it was awesome!  she took us home and sister Coffee took us out for the night!  Sister Coffee figured out i was sick (no shocker there, i can't breathe and i constantly have tissues in my hand.) and took me to buy Mucinex which is awesome i think. haha then they dropped us off at the Parkers.  The first thing we got when we walked in was jimmy saying " i bought you something! Jo are you sick? you better not lie to me!" so naturally i had to tell him i was feeling under the weather and that i had no idea what to do because i had never been this sick without my mama before. Heather appeared out of nowhere and handed Sister arbon and I electic blankets and i hear jimmy say im calling your mama! The next thing i know my mom is on the phone with Jimmy and he gives the phone to heather to explain whats going on. I immediatly started crying, i was really close to bawling when in unison jimmy and tristan both said don't cry! or ill punch you in the throat! (side note: they would never do this its just an on going joke. and they hate crying!) so Here i am trying not to cry while i watch heather talk to my mom and explain that i am dying. Jimmy is also yelling I THINK SHE HAS EBOLI!  it was quite the night. I had a sore throat, runny nose, an ugly cough and an earache. I really needed to go to the Doctor. Heather finished talking to her and after a text from my mom telling me to take echinacea and Vitamin C. Tristan jumps up to go get me some from the store while jimmy is calling to get me a doctors appointment. i seriously Love this family! they are my family away from home! they tell me to not go out the next day. So i spent the next two days inside while we did companion exchanges. Sister Kafu and I hung out with Sister Arbon and Sister Kelly went out and did missionary work. we waited until 6 when jimmy got off work to take me to the Doctor. The elders came over and gave us both blessings. That was an awesome experience because the majority of my blessing wasn't about my sickness it was talking about adversity and how i need to be prepared because it is coming and its going to be hard. haha yay! that is exactly what i want to hear. so pray for me. Lots.  So to conclude this insanely long email! I went to the Doctor and he put me on two different types of meds and i have an inhaler. :) woot. I am doing loads better and i hope to start getting back out there tomorrow! there are people to talk to and lessons to teach! 

i love you all! and i hope your week is full of miracles and laughter!! 

Love Sister Hanks

~This is me after being Stuck inside for three days! i was ready to go out and save souls!! 

~ they have a store out here called the Big Bass Pro Shop. Its like Cabellas. :) we had a little too much fun in there. :) 

~ Made it to the Parkers!! you'd think that i was ready for a huge snow storm!! 

~ Chilling at the Doctors Office. :) We talked to the Doctor and The Secretary about the church. :)

~ I got an awesome Package from home. Sister Arbon and I had a fun time blowing up balloons and figuring out what my family was thankful for! Thanks guys!! i love you lots!