What a week...

What began as a regular Monday morning last week quickly turned into one of the craziest weeks of our lives. No joke.

Tanner went into work on Monday and noticed that he was having what he described as 'chest pain'. By the afternoon, his co-workers had convinced him to go to the embassy med unit to get it checked out. The embassy thought it was either his gall bladder or appendix and sent him to get a CT scan at one of the local hospitals. The CT scan came back inconclusive, and the embassy doctors told Tanner he needed to go to ANOTHER hospital to see a specialist. Tanner picked me up at home on the way and it was a good 1 1/2 hour drive out there. We met with a great doctor who works in a not great facility. We are still in Indonesia after all. Tanner was in quite a lot of pain at this point, and the doctor said he wanted to do another CT scan in the morning, and wanted him to stay overnight. When they admitted him to the hospital for the night, we thought we were getting a private room, but unfortunately they were all taken, so we ended up sharing a room with who we now affectionately know as "vomit-man", and we had to listen to it ALL NIGHT LONG. It was not pleasant and we couldn't wait to get out of the hospital. They ran the CT scan and they were able to confirm that it was in fact appendicitis, but it was not critically dangerous at that point. After talking to three embassy doctors (2 in Jakarta, 1 in Singapore), they decided Tanner could just get on a commercial plane and fly up to Singapore for the surgery. That was at 12pm on Tuesday, and by 4:30pm he was on a plane to Singapore. I went home to be with the kids who had been with our friends most of the day. Tanner had a laproscopic appendectomy the following day, and they gave him the go ahead to either fly home on Friday afternoon or he could hole up in a hotel in Singapore for the weekend and rest and recuperate. Tanner chose the former, mostly due to the fact that if you recall from my previous post, Elder Bednar was going to be here to form the 1st Stake in Indonesia that weekend, and Tanner wanted to be here for all of that. Tanner was home by Friday evening but was still pretty sore from surgery.

The following day was a four hour priesthood leadership meeting, and Tanner felt well enough to attend. I took the kids to the American Club to swim and eat dinner, so imagine my surprise and panic when I saw a call coming in from Tanner's cell. I was panicking because I thought he was having some post-operative complication during the meeting and needed help. I said hello and he said "Hi, hold on." I was like, what is going ON???!!! The person that came on the line was Elder Pratt of the Seventy and Asia Area President. He said he wanted to ask me some questions about my husband. ooooooookay. It was of course at this precise moment that Andrew decided to squeal about some toy he saw in the pool. Elder Pratt stopped and said "I assume that is one your children screaming and not you." Errrrrrr....yeah, sorry about that, hold on. I managed to get Andrew to run off and play and Elder Pratt then said "Let me clarify, I am a father of eight, so those are normal sounds to me." He proceeded to ask me questions about Tanner and with each passing question, I could feel myself getting more and more nervous but for what I had no idea. He finally said "Would you support your husband in whatever calling he is asked to do?" I responded in the affirmative, and he said "good, because we are thinking we would like to call him as the Bishop of the Jakarta 3rd English Ward. For once I was completely speechless. I couldn't even think of what to say. I did not know it at the time, but that was the first time Tanner had heard the calling as well, when Elder Pratt said it over the phone. Elder Pratt then asked if I would support my husband in this calling and I started bawling and managed to eek out a yes, and he said "good! I want to apologize for not meeting with you in person, but due to time constraints and traffic issues, it was not feasible, but I look forward to meeting you tomorrow."

What followed over the course of the next 24 hours were some wonderful experiences. Even though I joked with Tanner the next morning that "they could still change their minds!", he was called and sustained as a bishop along with 6 other men for 7 newly created wards in the Jakarta, Indonesia stake. Because we were a district, everyone needed to be ordained High Priests: the Stake Presidency, the High Counselors, and all of the Bishops. It was truly amazing what they were able to accomplish in 3 days, in addition to all the meetings that were taking place over the course of the weekend.

While our kids are still so young to truly understand what was happening, we will for the rest of their lives tell our boys that they got to sit next to an apostle of the Lord, and they only embarrassed us a few times! Sister Bednar, sister Pratt, and I hung out in the ladies room afterwards and had a fun chat talking about kids and church. It was so surreal, but more than anything and most importantly, we felt the Spirit and the love of our Savior.

There is a lot of work to do, and we are only here for another 9 days until we leave to return to the states for our R&R for a month. So, it is going to be a crazy 9 days, and Tanner already has his summer reading picked out: Handbook 1 of the Church Handbook of Instructions. He is the first one to tell you, he has a lot to learn!