October 22, 2018

Hi Jon! Here up north we're in the middle of Fall Break and you know what that means. Camping somewhere cool? No. Hiking an amazing canyon? Nope. Aimar had soccer games scheduled all weekend and Chance and Javi want to do NOTHING so we are home doing absolutely nothing.

Aimar's soccer team made it into the quarter-finals but lost on Saturday so they are done for the season. So I guess we could have quickly put a trip together and gone camping somewhere for a couple of days before Fall Break ends but Chance and Javi didn't want to.

Maddy and Heber are busy planning their wedding and trying to figure out what food to have at the reception. It would be easier if Mom and Gaynell weren't trying to control everything but I guess that's to be expected. They want to have a nice event probably a lot more than Maddy does at this point.

We went to Frightmares at Lagoon on Friday. That place gets really packed during Fall Break especially because Lagoona Beach is closed so the rest of the park has to pick up the slack. I really like a few of the rides at Lagoon even better than Magic Mountain. My favorite rides are Colossus and Cannibal. I had never been to the Frightmares part before - Lagoon has 5 or 6 scary attractions that don't open until 7pm and the park closes at 11pm. I was only able to go to two of them! For the first one we got in line just before 7pm and I didn't get into the attraction until just after 10pm! More than 3 hours waiting in one line! I finished a book I was reading and watched an entire movie just standing there. It was crazy.

My friend Sean Warren wrote a book for missionaries and I think I gave it to you once but I doubt you ever read it. I thought it might be good to include a few sections of it here and there in my letters.

Your mission’s impact on you

The mission means so much to me. There is never a day that goes by that I do not think about it. There is never a day that goes by that I do not use some of the skills or things that I learned in the mission. Forget about all the eternities that you will change for other people and just look at your own eternities for a moment! You cannot imagine that the things you will learn and do for the next two measly years will affect you for the next few hundred million years and that’s just the crust of it! There are decisions that we make that have eternal consequences but not as many have the huge impact that this will have. 

I truly believe that everything I am or will ever be, everything I know, everything I have accomplished, or will accomplish, is either from my wife, my mother, my mission, or my mission president. It is that important. Remember that President Benson said "A mission is no more of an option than tithing is". How optional do you feel tithing is? That’s important. Remember that this mission is in a lot of ways your tithe on your life so far. Do you want to pay no tithing, part tithing, or a full tithe? I mean you got to really go for this thing. 

Remember when I used to do those runs that were 20 miles or so? The best part of those runs happened after the run was finished. The feeling of knowing that I did it and the feeling of knowing I gave it my best shot and holy mackerel that was 20 miles! The mission is a lot like that. There is one difference though – the feeling that you get after a great mission is one you get to carry with you forever. You cannot afford to sit back for the rest of your life and think about all the time you threw away or the times you did not quite give it all you had. The best quote about this is“2 years to serve and a lifetime to think about it”. Lots of guys use that quote but there is another part: you get an eternity to reap the rewards from it.

Love,

Dad