Week #26

Dear Familius,

Good heavens!  I am so excited to be writing you right now!  I'm sorry that my letter was poopy last week; I felt a little poopy, but I'm doing way better now.  

So here's the scuttlebutt.  Still in Florida, still doing some film stuff, still slowly learning a ton about myself, and currently conditioning myself to my new companion.  I'm not sure if I mentioned him last week, but Elder Burnett joined our companionship last week.  We are now in a quad-panionship, which is super epic, except for getting ready in the morning with one bathroom.  We manage pretty well though.

Here are the deets on Elder Burnett.  We're very much alike, but still super different.  We both like film and such, but he's still making plans to go into film, whereas I am not.  It's kind of weirdly deja-vu, because since we're so similar, and he's been out a couple of months less than me, I can look at where he is and realize, "Whoa, I was there at one point and have come a long way."  It can be pretty funny; for example, he doesn't really like it when I sing secular music, but he doesn't want to say it outright, so he just starts whistling hymns.  I usually sing louder, because I'm hoping that he'll lighten up at some point.

 That's nothing on him, there's a bunch of stuff that you learn on a mission but it just comes with time.  I think one of the hardest lessons that I'm still trying to learn is to be comfortable and confident with myself and my own relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ despite the company that I find myself in.  I've noticed that when I'm around negative people, I kind of just go into defense mode, and you can't really love someone if you're trying to point out their problems and justify yourself.  I just want to be comfortable with who I am and speak boldly about how I feel to everybody.

There is one elder in this mission who is just like that, and I look up to him so much.  His name is Elder Musgrave, from Centerville, Utah, and the thing that I love about him is that no matter who you are or what your opinions are, and no matter how little time you spend with him, you feel better about yourself after having spoken with him.   That's the kind of person that I want to be.  It's not too hard when you're around people that you love, but I want to learn to do it for people that I don't necessarily love.  Or maybe you just have to love everyone.  Idunno, like I said, I've got a ways to go.  

We have been working on the video project a lot more.  I am getting super excited about it.  During our zone conference this week, President Smith was talking about more unconventional ways to reach out and do missionary work, such as family history and using technology and such.  It was so exciting I started shaking.  Elder Burnett and I actually went and visited with President and Sister Smith afterwards and laid out all of our ideas for them, and they were excited too.  Everyone's excited!

Elder Burnett has way more experience in film than I do, so I'm super grateful that he is here.  He is having all of his filming equipment shipped out here from Idaho and it should show up in the middle of this week hopefully.  We've been bouncing ideas back and forth, scripting, storyboarding, and all that junk.  We make a good team because I don't really have the expertise to nail down the process of what needs to be done in order to complete a production (which he does have), but I love to imagine and talk about that kind of stuff.  I will definitely send a finished copy as soon as possible.  It should probably be done in about a month, for the big introductory video.

I don't have too many events to share with you all.  I have decided that I want to learn how to play the piano.  Amen.

All of you are fantastic, and I'm so grateful to hear from you.  Living it up at the Brighton Chalets must be super fun.  The stake president mentioned in stake conference the chapel that Grandpa Copier built up by the chalets, so I went and talked to him about it afterwards.  President Burton visited that chapel when Martin Goldstein was playing the piano there, who, by the way, is also in our stake.  

See ya at some point,

Elder Jon Hendrik Vawdrey

PS: I was reading in my journal the other day, and I kind of sounded like a noob.  I'm sorry if I ever subjected y'all to that, please don't hold it against me.

JV3