ESTHER

December 21, 2010 Tuesday



There’s a woman on our branch list that we have never seen except for her picture in the paper when she helped officiate at the opening of something for the Aborigines. Anyway, we have tried and tried to visit her. Sometimes no one is there. Other times, a voice has called, “Who is it?” When we say who we are and that we want to visit Esther, the voice tells us she’s not home. Other times, her niece, young adult age, answers and tells us that Esther is teaching in Kunnunurra, a town 12 hours away from here by car. I even went visiting teach with another branch member and all the response we got was “the voice” telling us she wasn’t home. We suspected for a long time that “the voice” was Esther. So today we were tracting the housing complex where she lives and decided to try to see her. Her niece answered the door and greeted us. A voice called, “Who is it?” I guess the niece let her know it was us because that was the last we heard of the voice. Well, Orson was not to be ignored. He said, “Was that Esther?” No answer. He asked the niece if she always loses her voice when people come or just for us. Niece muttered a few things. Then he told her we just want to find out why she doesn’t want to talk to us. No answer. He asked if we had done something wrong. No answer. Finally he told the niece to wish Esther a “Merry Christmas.” We laughed a lot after we left the vicinity.
We went back to the clinic today and while we were waiting for my blood draw, Dr IK came out. I was able to give him the Book of Mormon. He smiled at both of us before calling his next patient. Then I called the hospital imaging department to see about getting my ultrasound done. They had lost the order for it that I’d left there yesterday. I was put on hold for a while and then the receptionist said she would just give me an appointment anyway. It’s for two weeks from now. Socialized medicine—gotta love it! Evidently what qualifies as an emergency in the US isn’t one in Australia. But my leg is feeling better tonight, so maybe I won’t need to have the scan after all.