October 29, 2018 A (Very Overdue) Update

December 06, 2018

Good afternoon, folks!

It came to my attention this morning that I have missed two consecutive weeks in mission emails --- a near unpardonable crime, as far as mothers are concerned! However, rest assured that I am alive, I am well, and I am continuing to try to to my best.

The last couple weeks have been tough as I have been struggling with some issues of an intensely personal nature with respect to my mental/emotional health. It's nothing I haven't known about for a while, but it came back to the forefront with a vengeance the last little while, and has been something of an impediment in some ways. Things became especially rough on Sunday the 22nd, as I went to my Bishop for help and came away feeling bruised, broken, and unloved.

Fortunately, God is merciful and kind. He blessed me with amazing parents who have worked their butts off to try to understand and support me, and I have been especially blessed in terms of Stake Presidents the last sixteen-odd months. I will forever maintain that a primary reason that dad got a job in Kentucky was my spiritual growth and development, as my Stake President there helped me to build my testimony to a point where I felt I could serve a mission effectively. Furthermore, having met with my Stake President here in the last seven days, I can attest without a doubt that the reason God brought me to this mission opportunity, and the reason that my grandparents live where they do, is that this Stake President is who I need to continue to grow in faith and diligence in God's kingdom.

Life is hard; that's just part of the deal. Fortunately, that was the plan to begin with, and just because something is hard now does not mean it always will be. This thing that I am dealing with is hard. It might be hard for the rest of my life. But the fact that my thing is hard does not mean that God loves me. The way that my Stake President, my mom, and my fifth-cousin-once-removed-slash-best-female-friend have treated me the last couple weeks as I have been struggling with feelings of helplessness and inability to talk to others has been irrefutable proof of that to me. God loves each and every one of us, and through him all things --- even just enduring the unendurable --- are possible.

I love you all so so much, and I want you to know that I have a testimony that God loves us all, whether or not we are the perfect picture of a Mormon member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. You are ok! You can continue to get better! A little faith (and some times a lot of crying to let out the pressure) can and will work miracles for you, so long as you continue to put one foot in front of the other.

In other news, the aforementioned fifth-cousin-once-removed-slash-best-female-friend was bored the past month or so, as she has been home from her teaching mission for physical health concerns (worry not! She had a doctor's appointment this morning to confirm that she'll be able to return to the field, and she's going back at the end of this month! I will miss her dearly, but her determination both inspires and terrifies me), and so she offered to help me make a costume for Halloween (in exchange for me letting her piggy-back off of my 10% discount at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, of course)! Because I didn't want to go too over the top and end up distracting myself from my mission, we settled on Virgil Sanders, a character representing anxiety who demonstrates the ways that anxiety is a healthy and good thing when managed properly. I've attached pictures of the resulting hoodie below. At the Stake Halloween activity, my Stake President asked who/what I was, and when I told him, he died laughing and told me it was one of the best costumes he'd ever seen. Frankly, that made my day. Needless to say, I love the hoodie, and wear it every chance I get.

Some random mission stats:

Two (2) ties stolen from gifted to me by other elders (Elders Issertell and Sodja, respectively)
Unnumbered (∞) games of Farkle lost
One (1) game of Farkle won
Three (3) temples visited
Six and a half (6.5) big containers of Pringles consumed
Two (2) chocolate bars melted in the mail
Two (2) wrists sprained
One (1) wrist healed
One (1) Overwatch keychain received from Elder LeBaron the not-Elder
Three (3) bikes used