A killer sore throat without relief- June 19th and 20th

After a full week in Kellog I was spent. I felt we had done everything we could. In reality it was good to be able to spend an extended amount of time relating to Gennady and Sasha. But I was exhausted and missing my family terribly. I had noticed my glands coming up the day before. After an evening of translating before a crowd, my body just gave up. Thursday morning I woke up with a bad sore throat.
Still, I wanted to finish our prayer walk around the village, so Mika, Samuli and I went out for a couple hours in the morning.




I went to the local shops (really just rooms in people's houses) to see if anyone had anything for my throat. The best thing I could find was some stimirol ice chewing gum. Later Samuli remembered he had some eucalyputs drops and they did offer some relief. But I suffered through for a few days. All of Thursday afternoon and all day Friday I lay down and rested. I finished off reading Acts and then got really bored.

Our hosts kept asking me, "why are you sick?" "Did you catch a breeze on the floor?" (Russians are paranoid about the slightest breeze. Hardly likely though, none of their windows were physically capable of opening and it was so stuffy inside.) "Did you go swimming in the lake?" (No, didn't do this either, but swimming on a 25 degree day, sounds dangerous hey!!) Other visitors to the home also interrogated me heavily, "You shouldn't drink cold water in Summer!" they scolded me. (Man was I so sick of tea, that I bought my own mineral water from the shop and got in trouble for it.) It's kind of silly to think how many superstitions Christians are capable of having. Ahh, culture!