Monday, January 5, 2015

Last Letter


Well - my last letter. What do you say in your last letter?

Today will be the last time that I will have to use a public computer. Two years of letters from you guys. Im a spoiled child.  Thank you family.



I was talking to my companion this morning about how we spend two years trying to help people that for the most part don't really want to be helped, We try to show them how to progress but most are fine with where they are. After pushing against that rock for so long it puts in us a strong desire to progress and be helped. But it takes time and it requires a lot of patience. Here on the mish, most of our time and effort is focused on others. Now that I am going home, that desire can be directed almost exclusively towards my own progress. I am looking forward to exercising, reading, and working on some other stuff.



The mission has been a lot of what everyone had told me it would be. Difficult, dirty, fun, boring, satisfying, trying. Really good days and very hard ones.  Its weird to almost have it in my rear view mirror instead of my windshield. I am pretty sure that looking back on in several years I will see that  I will have received a lot more than I gave.  On this end of the adventure Im glad that I gave it everything that I had and feel complete gratitude for the many great people here that often gave more than they had to help my companions and I.  

My dad always told me that "people are not the means to an end, they are the end of means."  That life is about people. That has been very true about my mish.  The people are everything, and it has been worth everything to have been able to help out an old widow, or the young family that has almost no money, or the self destructive man that has every vice there is.  


Things that have changed about me
  • I chew mint gum now. (every other type still makes me nauseous)  
  • I'm now not grossed out by using dishes washed by hand
  • I have eaten every part of a cactus.
  • I wash clothes using just stick and a pop bottle
  • I speak with the ñ and double rr
  • I eat everything from popcorn to peanuts with salsa and I pretty much always have had a tortilla in my hand
  • I can make some sweet cement mix on the street outside your house
  • I know pretty much everything one can know about dog behavior
  • I have a pretty good idea about what my mustache would look like...if one day I can actually grow one
  • I have eaten fried pig skin
  • I have seen how to prepare intestines for a good ol´ taco

Mexico has been a home away from home. A very spicy, and well armed, and dusty home, but I really have come to love my hermanos here. And I guess like many of those great hermanos, my time has come to cross the border.



A New Year


Ha "not going anywhere for Christmas" Eh??  :) that’s great that you got away.

I have enjoyed your quotes and ideas and I have been thinking a lot about them in these last few weeks.  It’s probably because I am finishing off the mish and I have a lot on my mind. I have taken a considerable amount more of time in my prayers to just meditate and reflect. My comp also gets tired and goes to bed early so I have time alone to think at night. I honestly have had an incredible experience with it. I feel like I have received answers to questions that I have had and I have been able to understand myself better.  I have really focused on questions like: What makes me happy? What are my fears? Why do I fear? What are my goals? How have I changed? How do I want to keep changing? What do I want my relationships to be? What do I want to avoid? How do I not fall backwards? What are my weaknesses/strengths? When have I followed the spirit? When have I ignored the spirit.  

I feel that my understanding of myself is considerably better. An interesting concept is that when we are children we have these fears, and habits, and insecurities that we don’t really understand and that make us act differently than we would like.  I feel like I have been able to sort through them.  

One thing that I have realized on my mish and especially in these last weeks is how essential good communication is to having a healthy life. When I don't communicate well, I normally feel rotten and usually the situation almost always turns the wrong direction. If we are good on a basic level at communication with God, other people and ourselves, this can unlock many doors.

Thanks for all of the letters that you and mom have sent me. I will be looking at them for a long time to come. I still read every now and then the letters that I have received in the past. I understand your ideas in a new way every time that I read them.  =) thanks parents.




This Week:  was killer fun. It really was one of my favorite weeks of my life.

On Monday we went to the center plaza as a district and blew up a bunch of balloons and connected them to little cards of "he is the gifts."  We went around giving them out to the people. It was super fun to see so many people with balloons, especially the children all running around and playing with them.  

On Tuesday we went to the mission home. In the mish home, I met up some buds of the mish and had a killer time. Piñata! We had a gift exchange and I received cologne.   haha awesome (gave it to my comp when we got home, I think I will stick to the old spice). During the party  I yelled "silly string!" and started spraying my buddies with it!  They laughed and ran away.  We watched frozen - Cate looks like the blond one.

Wednesday: I talked to my awesome family!! woot woot. I always leave those calls thinking "they probably think that I am really mischievous here.  Burning the shirt at the year mark might have been my craziest act here. Well, I still have two weeks to get arrested. We will see. We finished the night at Nacho’s house

Thursday: We went to Torreon and met with several zones. Pretty much all of my comps were there.  We played sports for 4 hours. I was in heaven.

Saturday:  A sister had a wedding here. It was in her house and it was really small, but it was fun. We helped serve the food because nobody else would do it.    




I’m cracking up about the eucalyptus tree joke. I had to look it up. I didnt know that word.

Nacho is awesome, I try to convince them to go to Utah.  His brother lived there for ten years so they have visited there a lot.  

I got a letter from the ward, super nice of all of them, I don't have  lots of time so I think I will thank them personally in 2 weeks. I also got an awesome package from Kristin. I will send her a letter.

I have been craving Great Harvest bread.  

I hear beards are in now. Haha - I would definitely grow a beard...But I can't get the hair coming out of my face quite right.  

Without lying,  I do have to shave my mexi-stache every day "cause im a man" (Jim Gaffigan voice) But on the cheeks only one hair comes out every once in a while and when I shave it it seems to die screaming: "I was your only hope and you killed me!" or just "i’m melting!"  Then it seems to pop up a few months later on another part of the face. 




This is me saying My Password worked for class registration: