This morning we had a full day of work planned in the office but early we received a phone call from the AP’s in the South asking us to meet them in Bani at noon. They are completely out of petty cash and need it replenished. They also needed 6 cases of Book of Mormons and 2 cases of “La Restauración” pamphlets. And they always need the mail. Hna. Johnson and I were glad to go. The drive time is only an hour out and an hour back so we didn’t miss much work.
This afternoon I went to the camera shop to talk to the repairman that made the estimate on my camera’s repair yesterday. He told me that the water shorted out a very powerful capacitor that discharged all of its energy into the printed circuit board and fried it. That’s really bad news. He said considering the cost and the result; it’s not worth repairing. He recommended that I buy a new camera.
We got word today that another Elder has been in the hospital for the past 3 days and the doctor says he does have “Dengue Fever”! That’s really bad news. “Dengue” is the same thing Elder Lewis had last summer (See August 19, 2009). Dengue is a disease carried by mosquitoes. The World Health Organization and other humanitarian organizations and funds are fighting Dengue all over the world. Worldwide 100 million people are infected each year and 20,000 die.
This week I read that the richest man in the world, Carlos Slim, and the second richest man in the world, Bill Gates, teamed up with Spain to donate $150 million to fight Dengue fever, malaria and malnutrition in Latin America. Five years ago Bill Gates funded a project that discovered a revolutionary new way to kill the Dengue carrying mosquitoes. Unfortunately none of this progress in the fight against Dengue will help Elder Flake right now but at least progress is being made against the decease.
There are 4 or 5 different variations of Dengue, each one progressively worse. The worst form can cause death. The local name for the disease is “Break Bone Fever”. They call it that because the fever is so bad it feels like your bones are breaking! To my knowledge This Elder is the third missionary that has had it since we’ve been here in the Dominican Republic. The Caribbean Area doctor says there are dozens of missionaries that get Dengue all over the Caribbean every year.
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