Chapter 53 - It's Like He was saying "Let's see what you're made of"

(Go Nurse Ashley!!!)
9/21/2016

Wow it's been a crazy week. I didn't teach hardly at all because of all these things that were happening with nursing...This week was a really big trial for me and I really do feel like God was just saying "ok Hermana Roylance, let's see what you're made of." Something different happened every day but the two most stressful days were Thursday and Friday. On Thursday we (as in Hermana Hawkes and I) had to go to this clinic with an Elder because he needed an eye exam but it was a new clinic that we'd never been to before because it was a special exam he needed...anyway we were there but while we were there there was another Elder that had to go to the clinic because he had a lot of pain....but he was late and so he missed his appointment....so then they made an appointment in another clinic and they went there but a little while later they called me and said they needed a blood exam but at that clinic they didn't have a laboratory to do it so that had to go to another place to get it done...and take note that every time they have to get an exam or something, I have to call the Area Doctor and ask him what he thinks and get it approved and also I had to call the insurance when they changed clinics oh and remember that I'm doing all this while I'm at a different clinic with a different Elder...ahhh but then we finally get home from the eye clinic and the elder that was in the other clinic calls and says that on a scale from 1-10 his pain is 9 and I'm like oh no....what do we do? In the morning we were debating on whether to send him to the hospital but the area doctor said no that we could just send him to the clinic so that's what we did but now he was calling me telling me his pain was worse..I was like What do we do? We can't just be sending Elders to the hospital whenever we want, it's expensive...so I was like ahhh what to do. I went into my room and just kneeled down and prayed because I literally had no idea what to do. I prayed that I might know exactly what was best to do for this elder. Anyway, we went to the cyber (computer cafe thing) to send some documents and I call the Area doctor again and ask him what he thinks and he's like He's fine just give him some Ibuprofen but as we was talking, I was receiving incoming calls from the elder...like 5 of them...and so I knew something was wrong. Anyway, as I was talking with the area doctor, I just knew, with assurity that this elder needed to go to the emergency room. When I got off the phone, his companion called and was like hermana, he says his pain is 10/10, he's crying, and yelling and I was like yep, you guys are going to the hospital and you're going right now. I didn't call anyone and ask because I knew he needed to go and I knew he needed to go in that moment. So they went and to make a long story short he had appendicitis and he had to have surgery. SOO many things happened during those two days and I felt like I was pushed to my limits. I broke down a little bit but Hermana Hawkes helped me a lot. That's why we have companions (oh and to make everything worse, she's not even my companion, it's just basically like our companions are on exchanges all the time because they're not nurses and we're always together) 

But apart from all the stress, I could really truly feel the Lord taking the weight of my burden and putting it upon his shoulders. Yes I did have a small break down but not like I probably should have had. I don't know how, but I was able to bear all these things and keep my head on straight. There's really no way to explain what I felt than simply that the Lord was my strength and eased my burden. This week taught me that I can do a lot more than I think I can and that with the Lord's help, I, as well as each one of us, can do all things!

We also had an awesome Sister's Conference this week!