Missionary Letters To Jon

Hi Jon. It's exciting you're leaving the CCM soon. I don't know which day but maybe it will happen before you get this. If not, enjoy the remainder of your time at the CCM. When I was in the MTC it got really old really fast but after I left I realized that it's one of those places that once you leave you never go back so it's actually good to just enjoy it for as long as you can. I've been sending you pics so this all might be redundant but I spent almost two weeks in Grand Teton National Park. I car camped for the first week, hammocking some nights but mostly on my cot in a tent because these crazy lightning and thunderstorms would roll through nightly between 2am and 4am and I didn't want to be caught out in my hammock in all of that. The first night I stayed in my hammock and when the rain started at 2am I had to run to the van and then set up my tent in the rain. Not fun. During the week I visited all of the major sites to see, did some 4-6 mile hik...

Hey Jon. I hope everything is going well in the MTC. We had a great 4th of July week. I hiked Provo Peak with Heber on Tuesday. On Wednesday I took mom to Maddy's apartment on my motorcycle and we watched the morning parade with Maddy and Heber. Then we went to Colonial Days and hung out for several hours and went to Stadium of Fire in the evening. As usual, Chance and Javi didn't want to go to Stadium of Fire so I was trying to give their tickets away but then at the last minute they said they wanted to come. OneRepublic played and Chance and Javi seemed to have a good time. On Friday I hiked Mount Nebo with Chance, Javi, and Steve DuBose. It was a really good hike and a good trail until the very end where the trail ended and you had to basically rock-climb the last 500 feet up. That's where I stopped and turned around. When you're on the side of a cliff and every time you take one step up the gravel you're standing on slides 6 inches down the mountain, it...

Hi Jon! I hope you're having a great week. Do you have any idea how long you'll be in the MTC? Not that it matters much back here I'm just curious. This week on Tuesday I hiked this crazy trail in Big Cottonwood Canyon by myself. It was like 9 miles roundtrip with an elevation gain of 5,500 feet which is pretty crazy even for me. I got 3 miles and 3,500 vertical feet into it and then the trail just disappeared and it was 2,000 vertical feet of boulders straight up from there. That's when I called it quits. My body is too old and too achy to slip and slide down loose and steep trails not to mention unmarked bounder fields. The hike served it's purpose though - 6+ miles and some steep terrain for conditioning not to mention really beautiful scenery to look at. On Thursday I made Javi and Chance go with me on another hike + camping trip. We went up Little Cottonwood Canyon this time and hiked an 11k foot summit called Sugarloaf. The trail started at the base of Alt...