August 29, 2018

Here it is with a couple names:

Elders Barfuss and Lee are the assistants to the Wrights, the senior mission couple that watch over us. A.K.A. the mission grandparents. You can't see him in the picture, but the third assistant is Elder Thunder, who is Elder Lee's service dog.

If you don't know Elder LeBaron, I'm disappointed.

Elder Hickerson is the trainer over communications, which is the level I'm at right now. He has pretty bad social anxiety, if I'm reading him correctly (he acts rather similarly to myself), but is a HUGE nerd. He was wearing the Hufflepuff scarf you see in the picture on my first day and it's how I knew I was going to be right at home. He plays D&D in a group with some of the other missionaries too, which is cool and a consistent conversation point during non-service hours.

Sister Dearing is the choir director and one of the higher up trainers. She also keeps a quote board of funny things she hears missionaries say (my only quote thus far is, "I'm not yellow, thank you very much!" The conversation had something to do with bananas, but I didn't even remember having said it until I saw that she had written it down). She's super cute and fun, and if we weren't serving missions together, I would have asked her out twice by now (well, twice assuming that she said yes to and enjoyed the first date haha).

Elder Issertell is a MASSIVE dork. He served about a year of a service mission in Texas before suffering from crippling depression and deciding to come home. He and I like to discuss superhero theories over lunch and the occasional break. His favorite Marvel hero is Spider-man, so I'm thinking when time comes for his farewell I'll do something Spidey-related for him. We're basically brothers at this point. He cracks me up.

Sister Juárez is freaking awesome! She's the one who trained my on the Book of Mormon comparison project, and encouraged me to put together a demonstration of my Excel proposal. She's 23, so she's almost mothering some of the younger sisters, which I think is funny and cute all at once. She and sister Dearing are good friends. They used to sit next to each other, but now their work stations are directly opposite each other — with mine directly between them. They periodically go, "Sister [other one's name]! I miss you!" It's kind of hilarious. Fortunately I can put earbuds in while I'm working, or I might never get anything done!

Anyways. Love you!

M. Huntsman LeBaron