November 26, 2018
Hi Jon!
I know Thanksgiving isn't a Mexican holiday but I wonder if you did anything special at all. I bet you did - maybe a family cooked a Thanksgiving dinner for your or maybe your mission president had all the missionaries over.
I spent all day Monday and Tuesday trying to get Maddy's wedding invitations printed, labeled, stuffed, and mailed out. Then we drove up to Island Park on Tuesday night. I had a good time up there. On Wednesday there was only about 1 inch of snow on the ground but we got about 6 inches of snow on Thursday night and another foot of snow on Friday night. We did some fun sledding!
Uncle Chris came up on Friday morning with Nate and Abby so Nate and Aimar worked all day on a ski jump. It was so-so on Friday but it was amazing on Saturday after another foot of snow fell on it. Aimar learned how to do 180s and Nate did backflips off the jump. At first Nate went straight up and landed on his back. Later he rotated more but didn't get his skis all the way around so his skis landed vertically in the snow and he did a massive face-plant! The video of him is awesome - Nate Baldwin put it on Instagram and now it has over 1,000 views. Watching Nate face-plant is priceless. Later Nate did a full backflip and did come down on his butt a little but popped right back up so it looked pretty good.
Heber, Travis, and Nate did a lot of ice fishing on Henry's Lake. Travis has a sweet tent and a portable heater so you can sit inside the tent on a camp chair with your fishing line in the water and be warm while you fish. They caught a bunch of smallish fish that they threw back and caught one that was over a foot long that they brought home.
I played a lot of games and watched a few movies and finished a book - all tranquilo indoor activities. I tried to get Chance and Javi to get outside more but neither or them wanted to. Chance was sick and had a cough but if if he didn't he still wouldn't have wanted to go outside. We had doughnut college with Nate and Aimar and every single doughnut was eaten before the night was over.
We came home yesterday, attended sacrament meeting in Pocatello on the way home, and then set up Christmas trees. It was Heber's birthday and we played Christmas music and everyone put lights and ornaments on the trees. I was tired and grumpy after having packed and cleaned for 3 hours then driven for 5+ hours but it was still fun and a good memory.
Today the thought I want to share with you is 24 months is a long time!
One of the things that killed me was after leaving the MTC, was that all I could think of was “I’ve got 22 months left and that is a long, long time.“ I could not believe how long of a time it seemed. I would see others in the mission who were in their last month or two and I would just be amazed.
How do you eat an elephant? ONE BITE AT A TIME.
Or in your case, one month at a time. It really does fly by and you just need to work your rear end off and it will go by faster. Now we need to address the extreme of this. I knew one Elder who had one of those devilish charts. I say devilish for a good reason. The chart had a square box for every day in the mission. He would wake up every day and mark off a day. It represented how much time was left for him to serve on his mission. This poor Elder was really just “serving time” much like a prisoner in jail. At the end of this guy’s mission he decided to get everything together and work hard. But by then, it was too late. In his final testimony he stood and said that he had basically wished his whole mission away. He has to live with this for the rest of his life. He never really served hard. He just served his time. I do commend him for finally getting the message the last two months of his mission.
You cannot do this. If you know this going in, you will be better prepared and hopefully not wishing your entire mission away.
“Some missionaries are happier to have served a mission than to serve a mission.”
Don’t be one of those guys. You need to look at everything in chunks. You will reach the chunks and feel the accomplishments. These chunks or milestones may be
When you have a certain set of scriptures memorized
When you are a trainer
When you are a district leader
When you have made half of the goal that you set for yourself for baptisms for your mission.
There are too many to list, if you do this, the time will pass just a little easier. Satan could never get you to throw your mission away all at once, but he can get you to throw it away a little bit every day. Don't let it happen.
Love,
Dad
I know Thanksgiving isn't a Mexican holiday but I wonder if you did anything special at all. I bet you did - maybe a family cooked a Thanksgiving dinner for your or maybe your mission president had all the missionaries over.
I spent all day Monday and Tuesday trying to get Maddy's wedding invitations printed, labeled, stuffed, and mailed out. Then we drove up to Island Park on Tuesday night. I had a good time up there. On Wednesday there was only about 1 inch of snow on the ground but we got about 6 inches of snow on Thursday night and another foot of snow on Friday night. We did some fun sledding!
Uncle Chris came up on Friday morning with Nate and Abby so Nate and Aimar worked all day on a ski jump. It was so-so on Friday but it was amazing on Saturday after another foot of snow fell on it. Aimar learned how to do 180s and Nate did backflips off the jump. At first Nate went straight up and landed on his back. Later he rotated more but didn't get his skis all the way around so his skis landed vertically in the snow and he did a massive face-plant! The video of him is awesome - Nate Baldwin put it on Instagram and now it has over 1,000 views. Watching Nate face-plant is priceless. Later Nate did a full backflip and did come down on his butt a little but popped right back up so it looked pretty good.
Heber, Travis, and Nate did a lot of ice fishing on Henry's Lake. Travis has a sweet tent and a portable heater so you can sit inside the tent on a camp chair with your fishing line in the water and be warm while you fish. They caught a bunch of smallish fish that they threw back and caught one that was over a foot long that they brought home.
I played a lot of games and watched a few movies and finished a book - all tranquilo indoor activities. I tried to get Chance and Javi to get outside more but neither or them wanted to. Chance was sick and had a cough but if if he didn't he still wouldn't have wanted to go outside. We had doughnut college with Nate and Aimar and every single doughnut was eaten before the night was over.
We came home yesterday, attended sacrament meeting in Pocatello on the way home, and then set up Christmas trees. It was Heber's birthday and we played Christmas music and everyone put lights and ornaments on the trees. I was tired and grumpy after having packed and cleaned for 3 hours then driven for 5+ hours but it was still fun and a good memory.
Today the thought I want to share with you is 24 months is a long time!
One of the things that killed me was after leaving the MTC, was that all I could think of was “I’ve got 22 months left and that is a long, long time.“ I could not believe how long of a time it seemed. I would see others in the mission who were in their last month or two and I would just be amazed.
How do you eat an elephant? ONE BITE AT A TIME.
Or in your case, one month at a time. It really does fly by and you just need to work your rear end off and it will go by faster. Now we need to address the extreme of this. I knew one Elder who had one of those devilish charts. I say devilish for a good reason. The chart had a square box for every day in the mission. He would wake up every day and mark off a day. It represented how much time was left for him to serve on his mission. This poor Elder was really just “serving time” much like a prisoner in jail. At the end of this guy’s mission he decided to get everything together and work hard. But by then, it was too late. In his final testimony he stood and said that he had basically wished his whole mission away. He has to live with this for the rest of his life. He never really served hard. He just served his time. I do commend him for finally getting the message the last two months of his mission.
You cannot do this. If you know this going in, you will be better prepared and hopefully not wishing your entire mission away.
“Some missionaries are happier to have served a mission than to serve a mission.”
Don’t be one of those guys. You need to look at everything in chunks. You will reach the chunks and feel the accomplishments. These chunks or milestones may be
When you have a certain set of scriptures memorized
When you are a trainer
When you are a district leader
When you have made half of the goal that you set for yourself for baptisms for your mission.
There are too many to list, if you do this, the time will pass just a little easier. Satan could never get you to throw your mission away all at once, but he can get you to throw it away a little bit every day. Don't let it happen.
Love,
Dad
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