3 April 2012

Tonight I am alone, for a change.  It’s still a little scary, but my companion leaves the phone for me so that if anything goes wrong, I can call.  He’s been very good to stay alert about me during the last few days while I have been trying the reduced dose of drugs.  It has really gone pretty well.  I feel so much more like myself now.

 I don’t think you can call a doctor on off-hours here.   It’s just, ‘go to the hospital’ if you need help after hours.  There’s no competition for patients, so there’s no pleasing the customer, so to speak.  The doctors get paid through socialized medicine, so people go for an average of 5 months before they are able to see a specialist, and in the meantime, often get addicted to drugs to help with pain during the wait.  (I saw a story on the news yesterday about this.)

Medical personnel don’t have any idea how insurance works because they don’t have to deal with it here.  We are a novelty because we pay for our services.  I tried to get a receptionist to have the doctor write a letter to my insurance company this week about my requesting another prescription for Lyrica so soon after filling the higher dose, but I finally had to give up because she couldn’t understand what I wanted her to do, and was, may I add, quite put out at me for even asking!  (There is a movement now to legalize all drugs to prevent citizens here from becoming criminals!)

This lack of a ‘pleasing the customer’ attitude is common here, as we noticed it in Europe a few years ago.  Outside America, people don’t understand ‘customer service,’ as Ray’s brother, John pointed out to us.  He was a businessman, used to bending over backwards to please the customer, so it stood out in blaring clarity when he was in Romania as mission president.

It seems to me that it spills over into everything—this feeling that the individual is not important.  Even in driving!  The pedestrian has not the right of way, and there seems to be no courtesy expected.  Here, less, however, than in other countries we’ve been in.


It has seemed for the last couple of weeks that we couldn’t make appointments with most of our contacts.  Everyone seems to be waiting for Easter!  “Call after Easter,” seems to be the common answer.  We don’t like to have long times in between seeing our investigators.  It gives them time to come up with excuses, or to fall back into old habits, like not reading, and not praying.  We have been exhausting our referral lists in the area book till there are no more.  I think we may start using the video made by one of the California Missions a few years ago to try to motivate members to share the gospel with their friends.

In my testimony here in the Albany Branch on Sunday, I told about a conversation I had with my Daddy about one week before my baptism 55 years ago exactly.  As he lay on my bed next to me before I went to sleep, he explained about baptism and about my cousin, Brent, who had died of polio suddenly a few years earlier.  He explained that Brentie would be with Jesus in Heaven for sure, because he died when he was only 5, but that after my baptism, I must be careful not to sin, because only the clean and pure could be with Jesus.  I remember thinking that it would be nice to die that week so that I would be assured a place in Heaven.  I am grateful for the blessing of the Sacrament, so that I can be made clean again every week if I repent. 

I told the members that we, being still alive, still have an opportunity to say things to our children and grandchildren that can last a lifetime, or forever in their memories, just as I still remember that conversation from 55 years ago.  I still remember the feeling I had, even the breeze blowing against the white lacey curtains on that spring evening.  It was perhaps my first experience with the Holy Ghost. 

I told the members that I would love to have a conversation now with my parents, but that I have felt them nearby in the past weeks as I have struggled with my health, and I am sure they have been near me to bear me up!

Sometimes I have doubts, I'll admit.  But sometimes I know for sure that this is the Lord's work.  And I am praying for faith to keep my covenants, especially when the doubts creep in, because I know that it is not until after the trial of my faith that I can have the miracle.