One Year

THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 2006

Something is absolutely crazy.  As of today, I have been in the country and off my mission for a whole year!  This email will just be an update of what I have been doing and possibly some reflections from the past year. 

    Let me start by mentioning my mission.  I heard a kid at church talking about his struggles to get on a mission, and I had the thought that if I could only choose two years of my life to have lived, it would have been the time that I served the Lord as a missionary.  Even if I could only take one year from my life, I would choose the mission.  My mission was the best time of my life.  I think I learned more in those two years than during any other time period of my life.  I loved living in the beautiful land of my ancestors.  I have been home for a year and I still find myself talking about England and the United Kingdom. I loved spending my time helping to teach and serve people.

    I think I'm adjusted to the non-missionary life, but I still miss it.  I miss teaching the gospel to people, I miss spending my days trying to help other people, whether by teaching them or serving them. I miss having an adventure everyday.  I miss being focused on something or someone other than myself.  I miss being so immersed in something so wonderful. 

    When I came home it took me awhile to get used to non-missionary ways, and to get used to a culture that I found I had forsaken in my heart.  It was difficult, but I now like the land of my birth.  The highlight of coming home was reacquainting myself with so many people from my former life.  I loved meeting people I hadn't seen in two years and seeing the changes that happened in their life. 

    When I came home I made a grave mistake, I thought I wanted to work for a semester and find the university I should do my schooling in.  Not going to university when I could and working at a call center for five months was a big mistake, if I could choose again, I would have gone straight into school and worried about which one to end up in while I was there.

    In January I started school, it was and is a great experience.  I enjoy learning about the different things in life and in the world.  I have found that I am a much better student now than I was in high school or earlier.  In February I surprised my family by moving out and getting a cell phone (435-760-6818) all in the same week. 

    Since spring semester ended, I have continued to work and go to school, I took a photography class for the first four weeks of the summer break.  It was a fun class, but it basically ate my life.  I would wake up, go to class, then go to work, than go to the lab to develop pictures, then I would go home at about one in the morning, wake up at six and go to class shortly thereafter and continue the cycle.  I am quite glad it is over.  During the class, I think I made up my mind on what degree I should not follow.  Since my senior year of high school I have wanted to be a graphic designer, but coming home from my mission, I was not so sure, so I have thought about it, pondered it, and prayed about it, but not until I took the art class did I decide that although I enjoyed it, it isn't the thing I should go into.  I am still not quite sure what I should go into, but I am leaning towards some sort of human services like education or psychology.  I want to do something involving people, something that I can help in some way.

    Now I am taking a biology class, and although I don't understand a lot of things, I am very impressed at how life is made up, and it makes me feel a new reverence for God's creations.  I am also still working at the same call center that I have been working at for about ten months now.  I am really wanting a change in occupation, but hopefully I'll be able to do that later this summer.  I am still not dating anyone, but I have dated a lot more recently than I have since coming home and I have a date this weekend as well.  I am still serving in the Family Home Evening program in my student ward, and there has been a lot of changes recently, so I am hoping it will run a bit better now.

    So that is my life in a nutshell.  I am happy for the things I have been able to do, both on a mission and afterwards.  I wish my life could be as productive as it was while I was serving, although I am fine with most of my current circumstances.  I would like to return to visit the place where I feel like I was really born, and hopefully I might be able to do that next summer, but I don't know.  As for now, I'm living in Logan and going to school, and that is what I'll be doing for awhile. 

3 Nephi 5:13