Tuesday, we had our Youth World Christmas party, a day that I won’t soon forget. I think I must have eaten something sketchy on Monday night, because I felt slightly strange most of yesterday morning, but not bad enough not to work. After lunch, though, Cameron told me I was looking pretty pale, which I’ve learned is a sure sign I’m about to lose whatever food I’ve got in me. Cam drove me home and I actually did get sick, but then slept it off and felt pretty good by 4:15 when I needed to head down the hill to the office for the party. I figured I’d be fine.
Turns out the Christmas party was an “Amazing Race” that split us up into teams and sent us out to see who could make it to the “Pit Stop” first. My team was Casey, Phil Payne, Ivet, Jorge, Kyra and Beth. We were sent out from the YW office, all around Parque Carolina, and then finally to Plaza Foch in the Mariscal. We rode bikes, peeled potatoes, bought Christmas ornaments, and rented paddle boats. I was in a paddle boat with Ivet and Kyra and we’d made it almost all the way around the lake when we realized Jorge had gotten stuck in a boat by himself, so I jumped ship and helped him paddle back around the the lake. This definitely helped us pull out ahead, but twice around the lake was not a good idea for my health.
We finally completed all our tasks, and made it to the restaurant that was our end-point, meeting Brad and Sandi and discovering that we had won. I’m not sure if it just took that long for sickness plus ridiculous amounts of exercise to catch up to me, or if my body was like “Oh, he’s relaxing now, I can finally freak out.” But I began to realize as we hung out, waiting for the other teams to show up, that I couldn’t relax my arms.
Before I knew it, my hands were clenched into fists that I couldn’t release, and my upper legs and forearms were starting to tense up too. Dave Gardeen came over to sit down next to me, and I told him “Go get Casey now.” I’m really thankful that Casey had been on my team so that he was finished at the same time as me. Before he moved to Ecuador to work with Casa Gabriel, Casey was a physical therapist. I truly think I would have had to go to the hospital if Casey hadn’t been there, realizing that I was dehydrated and knowing where to put pressure and what to have me consume to get my muscles to relax and blow flow going back through my arms.
Now, I explained all that concisely in one paragraph, not for lack of description, but that I simply would rather not relive the experience. On a scale of 1-10 from least to worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life, it was easily a 9 if not a 10. I threw up a significant amount, and Matt took me home (as in, to his home, so he and Marlo could keep an eye on me).
I have eaten a lot of plain food yesterday and today, relaxed and recovered at the Jensens’ house under Marlo’s supervision, and got to go to the regular Youth World meeting this afternoon. At which I was scheduled to lead worship with Brad. So I got to be in front of all those people who saw me in a pretty embarrassing state two nights ago. I decided to just embrace it, so as I got everyone’s attention before we started to play and sing, I made reference to the fact that I tried to die at the Christmas party, but I was wearing my winning-team-Santa-hat, so it must have been worth it. Mary Scholl shouted out in her best mom voice “And what did you learn?”
To which I responded, “Not to try to keep up with Jorge.”
