November 7, 2010 - Two Broken Ribs

Dear Family,

It sounds like some things were lost in translation on my injury so I will try to clear it up. I was having a hard night trying to get my companion get motivated. I wanted to house one last building before we went home. I was across the street from it and waiting to get a green light to cross the side walk. It was raining quite hard so I had on my white shirt, sweater vest, suit coat, and rain coat (which all together made for pretty good padding luckily). I got the green light and was trying to see if straight ahead or to the left side of the building was better for parking. I looked left and saw that the entrance into the parking lot was pretty far away so I looked forward and saw that there were bikes straight ahead (about 40 feet). I thought I was on a side walk that kept on going.

At first there was a little dip but I assumed it was just a little drop onto the side walk. By the way, Japanese roads and side walks are the biggest joke in the world. I then realized that I was falling forward and in my head I had an image of what I thought was happening but it was all happening too fast for me to realize what was actually happening. I thought I was falling into a smaller ditch and my pedals would catch on the walls and I’d catch my self and be fine. Turns out it was about 4 feet wide. Ditches are four feet wide and have horizontal pillars that connect the two walls. The ditches are about 3 and a half feet deep. So my bike went down and I went straight into a horizontal pillar. My arms went over it which resulted in a huge lump on my elbow. My chest went straight into the dang thing (it was cement and it was a rectangle so it didn’t have smooth edges). I bounced off of it and landed on my butt in running water at the bottom of the ditch.

I jumped up and pulled myself out of the ditch by myself (luckily I had enough adrenalin to pull my body weight up). Of course I had the wind knocked out of me so I took a couple of seconds and regained it a little. Then with the help of Elder Momose, I pulled my bike out. During the crash, my bike wacked my knee and thigh pretty hard. They are okay now though. When I pulled my bike out I said, “I’ve got two broken ribs.” I could tell that I jacked them up pretty bad. I also couldn’t breathe at all. Elder Momose asked if we could go home. I was so angry that he asked that, that just to spite him I said no we were going to house the four apartments in the building. I had already broke two ribs to get there, I wasn’t going to let that go to waste.

No one was home at three of the houses and the other one said to go away. I told Elder Momose we could go home. We started to ride home and I realized I was starting to hurt more and more. I was worried that I was bleeding internally. I caught up to him and told him we needed to go to the hospital. He asked why. Being a really stupid question and me not wanting to explain in Japanese I just breathed in really hard and he got the idea. We called a member who met us at the train station and then drove us to the hospital. They took x-rays and blood tests to make sure my liver wasn’t punctured. Finally they gave me a CT scan to make sure my lungs were okay. My lung was a little deflated but they thought it was a concussion of the lung and it would heal by itself. I’m on the mend. Elder Momose gave me a blessing and I’d say I have healed at miracle speed. I can’t do a push up by any means but I can breath deep and it’s just a little sore. I’d say I’m healing incredibly fast. It’s quite the blessing. So don’t worry about me. I feel worse for my suit pants which got a little tear and also for my rain pants which got a tear as well.

This week wasn’t one of the hardest weeks of my mission or life. It was just dealing with some pain. I had to do a ton of tracting though which I’m okay with but it sucks more than anything when you have a companion that complains or that gets angry when people turn us down. People that get angry about small things drive me NUTS. It actually makes me angry, which makes me a hypocrite, which makes me even more angry. It’s a vicious cycle.

Anyway, the missionary side of things this week just kept going down hill and I was about ready to break yesterday. I was praying in my head while we were walking and Elder Momose said that the phone in my pocket was ringing. It was the Ward Mission Leader. He was at the church and someone showed up and said that they wanted to be baptized. It was a Korean woman actually. She feels like she needs to get baptized. We quickly got her a Book of Mormon in Korean and some pamphlets and we are going to meet with her next week. Hopefully it will turn into something good.

So that’s pretty much my story for this week. I’ll try to be a little more organized next week. I love you all. I’m doing just fine. Just pray that things will get better in my area and that I’ll be more tolerant. I’m actually improving by leaps and bounds. It’s just that there is so much being thrown at me right now. It’s driving me nuts. I love you all once again. Have a great week. Good luck with everything and keep working hard.

Love, Tyler