Visiting the Sick

I was asked to help with some of the nursing duties in the mission. The last couple of days has been really busy with nursing, it is kind of like home health in Ecuador. I told you about the Young Women the President asked us to check on, they were robbed and injured. All the other nurses are away at Zone Conferences, so we took a taxi with the Elders from the office to find them. It is interesting to find apartments in Ecuador since there are no real addresses. This one was above a restaurant. We had to go through the restaurant, and the kitchen out to the garage through a door then up the stairs and through a gate. The girls are fine, they are leaving next Tuesday for home. We are thinking of visiting them again tomorrow. Last night we got a call from Sister Rogers, one of the young nurses. She asked us to go and check on a new Elder that was just transferred here who has been sick. We don´t usually go out at night and we are not very familiar with the city, but she gave us directions to the apt. they went something like this: Tell the taxi driver to go to streets La Frenza and Rio Curaray, it is by La Iglesia Concepcion (a Catholic Church), turn right, the street goes to the left, it is about 40 steps and is the house with the green wall. Well nothing was as described. We called the District Leader in the area, he is the only Elder with a phone, he only speaks Spanish, but a new Elder was with him that spoke English,(a tender mercy) he tells us to go to the wall with graffiti on it and turn left and we should find the house. Well - Every wall in the city has graffiti on it. The Elders were on their way to where we were because they were doing transfers last night (another tender mercy). We went back to the main street and waited for them. I now know what it is like to stand on the street in the dark. We found we were in the right place but the green wall was a green metal gate, in the dark it looked black, the apt is the upstairs of a home and you had to ring the owner to get in. When we did finally get there the sick Elder was out teaching. I left instructions for him to call but never did get a call last night. It was an adventure and we have now seen some of Quito at night. It actually looks pretty good after dark. We did contact the Elder today, he is feeling much better and had an appointment with the Doctor today. All in a days work as a missionary.