Happy to be eating again!

Dear Whoever Actually Reads This,

I ate food on Monday. Literally the best day of my entire life. Hahahahaha that's about how my week was last week! But it was a pretty good week nonetheless. Here is a quick breakdown of what happened last week!

Every day I worked in the office with the office missionaries til about 4:30-5ish. Then I'd go with the Senior couple Elder and Sister Beals to their house until one of the APs or Secretaries would come and pick me up. I stayed and still stay at the house of the Secretaries and APs, and it's super fun there! My "hijo" or son or companion Elder Castro is currently working and staying with other missionaries while I'm getting all this dental work done. So my "companions" for right now are Elder Naisbitt (Utah), Elder Hayes (North Carolina, no relation to Jord), and the APs. They are all awesome! Every single day last week, all I did was drink protein shakes. And an occasional yogurt. And water. Needless to say it was a pretty long week hahahaha. But... I got some great studying in, and I did do a little work in the field! The problem was that I couldn't open my mouth very much to talk, and I had two shattered teeth hahahah. But hey we had two baptisms on Saturday! I don't have the pictures but it was lots of fun :) that's about it for last week, but I have some good details on what is happening right now.

So I went in Monday for my operation to get the one tooth taken out and another fixed..... and it turns out that I have to lose two teeth :) all they did on Monday was take out part of the lower tooth, so I'm currently without a tooth! The toothless wonder! And tomorrow is officially the big day! They are going to take out the rest of the lower tooth and all of the upper tooth, drill in titanium posts, and fill in the fake tooth! It'll take about 4-5 months for these posts to recover and solidify with the gum, and that's when they put in the new teeth around the posts. So tomorrow is going to be lots of fun listening to doctors drill metal into my mouth! Then in a couple days I should be good to go completely! I've eaten a little this week and it has literally been the best thing in the entire world because I can chew on my right side! Life is so good!

Yesterday we went out to Mombacho! It's a Volcano here in Nicaragua, and it was sooooooo sick. President took the whole office staff out there. Us 5 missionaries hiked like 2 million feet up and my legs were absolutely dead afterwards, but the views... wow it was worth the pain :) President is really, really strict, but he can have some fun too :)

Not a whole lot to say, but I just wanna send a big thank you for everyone that has given me support here. It's really not all that bad, I just got a rock thrown at my face, but the love that I've received here in Nicaragua and back in the States is a testimony to me how great this world really is. I'm pretty dang lucky to have the people I do in my life, and I don't know what the heck I did to deserve it. I thank you all and love you all :) Que Dios les bendiga!

Elder Merrill

John looked at this picture of Sam in the hospital and said "That's embarrassing, there's hardly any blood!"

Temporary Companions Elders Naisbitt and Hayes

Mission APs

Smiling!

Not smiling...

Worth the pain!

President and Hermana Russell