OI! FAMILIA!

From an email on August 30, 2013:

Oi! Como vai?? Eu MUITO sono. Eu quero dormir. haha What up y'all?? FINALLY P-day... seriously the longest & shortest week of my life, but it's been good. Exhausting & overwhelming but good. It seems like it's been an eternidade e ontem all at the same time. Where to begin.... Well, for starters, I LOVE my district & companheira. They're like the little brothers & sisters I never had. I wish y'all could meet them! They're all SUCH trips. We're constantly laughing & busting a gut which is both a good thing & a bad thing... haha 

Our teacher's name is Bro. R & he's from Sao Paolo & served a mission in Portugal. He's amazing & brings such a wonderful spirit in the class. He's wonderful & super protective of us actually. One occasion this week, me & Sis A were having a tender moment & Bro. R was talking to us & these 2 elders interrupted kind of abruptly & Bro. R totally chastised em. It was very endearing. I will confess... both the elders AND the sisters have crushes on him. No seriously! Elders too! It's hilario. Elder R & Elder W sit by the door in the classroom & it's been a running joke that Elder R can smell Bro R coming. We told him he should be a bloodhound & bay or howl when he smells him coming hahahaha. Bro R starts school again & when we found out he wasn't gonna be our teacher any more we were all super bummed. So Bro R stands right next to Elder R & like puffs his chest out & stretched his arms out wafting his scent to Elder R with this big smile on his face. It was so funny! 

My companheira is Sis A from Redding CA. I love her to death! (even though she dragged me out of bed this morning at 5:30 to do laundry.... yall know I'm a grinch in the morning especially at the buttcrack of dawn!) She puts up with me nonetheless. She's vastly talented & can play songs on the piano from memory! She Mozarts it up on a daily basis. all day ERR day! hahaha 

So yeah, all in all, it's been good. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have feelings of inadequacy and worries about the grandkids or really any of you, or it I wasn't overwhelmed with learning Portuguese & feeling at times like I'm being left behind but I'm learning to let go, slowly but surely. I know in time it'll get better & there will be a day when it just clicks for me, but that day can't come soon enough! Even in spite of the tears & frustrations, I'm happy. Truly I am. This has been a huge adjustment for me in more ways than one but I know I'm growing & my soul is stretching more than it ever has. 

There's a quote I saw yesterday that really hit me & made a huge impression on me that I think was said by Elder Faust about Heavenly Father. Something like this, "Of all the names of admiration, of power & of glory to give to a deity, He has simply asked us to call him Father." I can't tell you how true of a statement that is. He is Almighty, All powerful & Omnipotent, yet He has simply asked us to call Him "Father." Pai, Padre etc. He's the most loving of all Beings & we need to remember that. Love you all so much! 

Miles to Go Before I Sleep

I've always had a thing for Robert Frost. One of my first memories as a kid was finding the tattered copy of his poems in my family's bookshelf & putting little hearts and stars next to his name as I fanned the pages of his writings.

For a long while my favorite poems by him were the standard Road Not Taken and Fire and Ice, but recently I've pondered on another: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. 

At first glance, it seems to be just a beautiful sonnet about him traveling through a cold, white winter's night to get to his home or to a companion's house. He paints a gorgeous picture of a wooded forest filling up with snow and sparkling under the moonlight as he stops for a while to gaze at the scene before him.

But, lately I've gotten another perspective on this poem. I've started getting into Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's interpretation of Sherlock Holmes, watching shows like BBC's Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch, and now I've started to get into CBS's Elementary with Johnny Miller. It's an interesting take on the beloved tale, where Sherlock's character is a recovering drug addict barely released from rehab when the series begins. The 3rd to last episode, when Sherlock is supposed to celebrate his one year mark of being sober, he confesses to his partner Watson, played by Lucy Liu, that he relapsed the day after he was admitted & that it really isn't his one year anniversary. He then says, "to anyone else it is a minor detail, but I am a man of detail & it matters to me."

At the end of the episode, Watson gives him a present & said it reminded her of him & his situation. When he opens the package, he finds that it is a picture frame with the last stanza of this same Robert Frost poem,

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

To me, I took it as symbolic of Sherlock's struggle in his progress of working towards staying sober, in addition to his progress in assisting the police in solving various & assorted crimes.

But that got me thinking about my mission... I believe that truth & beauty & inspiration comes in many forms, and that certain aspects of the world are still "good" or "noteworthy" or "praiseworthy." And as I thought on this poem, I thought of how much that sentiment of "promises to keep" and "miles to go before I sleep", will help me in times when I do want to stop moving forward and do want to maybe take a break or give up.

Robert Frost gently reminds me that I still have much more to do, and many more miles ahead on my journey. I've started many projects and finished so little of them that I feel as if maybe in giving as much of myself as I can to my mission; in serving, in teaching, in learning, and then returning honorably, I will be able to keep at least one of the promises I've made.

However, even after a mission, a wedding, children, careers & life changes, all of us have miles to go before we sleep & many promises to keep. Until we leave this mortal coil, may we all complete our journey.

Now Panic & Freak Out

Over the past six months I have been "anxiously engaged" in whining and pining to get the heck out on my mission.

And several people have noticed. Since I got my mission call in March, it seems as if time has crawled along with both it's legs broken. Working 2 jobs, moving from Utah back to Georgia, getting 2 new retail jobs, buying necessities, making lists, getting shots & paperwork in order has made me want to stick my head in the oven and bash the door closed about a thousand times.

And yet, now that it's finally August, and my mission date is inching closer & closer as the weekends wrap up, I'm suddenly starting to freak out a little.

And starting now, I have 10 days until Salt Lake emails/ calls me about my travel plans and approximately 17 days until I'm supposed to report to the MTC (either in Brazil or Provo). Needless to say, I thought this day would never come, and on the flip side of that, I thought this day would never come. (see what I did just there?)

I'm sure every prospective missionary has experienced this feeling just before they go. The entire time leading up to the actual report date is full of anxious impatience, and then a week or two weeks out, it suddenly turns to just plain old anxiety. 

And how much of a hypocrite do I have to be? All this time I've been complaining about how this is taking forever & why can't I be out there already, and now... I'm starting to realize that this is actually happening & if I'm even ready to be out there.

Of course I'm going, and of course I'm excited and restless to be out there working, learning the language & getting to know the ropes. I've always said I hate excel spreadsheets, schedules & routines. I've always hated cubicles & time clocks and I've never had a shopkeeper's personality. A good friend of mine told me that I had a "discoverer, conqueror personality" and that I should never settle for anything less than that. But, when it actually comes right down to it, at the very last minute, I seem to suffer from an instance of adventure paralysis. And I don't really know why.

This is what I want. I've wanted this for so long. So, why on earth am I having these feelings?

Yet, I have to remember that at times like these, to think of Elder Holland's talk, "Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence." He assuredly states that, "If it was right when you prayed about it and trusted it and lived for it, it is right now. Fighting through darkness and despair is what opened this dispensation. It is what keeps it going and it is what will keep you going."

 I'm sure half of these emotions are just part of being human, and the other half is the adversary trying to prevent me from going on this mission to Brazil. And I know this too shall pass. And when I feel as if I'm going to be suffocated by worry and stress, to remember what Jeffrey R Holland says: "Don't give up when the pressure mounts. Face your doubts. Master your fears."

I know this is what I'm supposed to do. And I know I won't regret it.

xoxo
Sister Megatron