Week #24

Dear Family,

We began filming the video this week, and I am pretty freaking stoked.  Since we are going to be filming hopefully every missionary in the mission, we get to travel to different places and film the areas and interview the missionaries in them.  It's been way fun so far; we spent the night in Crestview and interviewed in Fort Walton, and everyone's testimony is so great.  I've gotten a few shifty looks from the other missionaries when we start to explain what we're doing (we're still not exactly sure), but I've been getting shifty looks my entire life, so it's not really anything different.  We won't be travelling a ton this week, but next week we go to Mobile and Pascagoula.  Hopefully we can stop along the way and get some footage of the legendary white sands beaches that everyone down here talks about.   

Our apartment is nice and cozy with the three of us, but it would probably be more comfortable if it were a touch bigger.  We have to use a bunk bed to have enough space, and Elder Buchanan hit is back on the moving ceiling fan while getting into bed last night, and then in the morning nailed his forehead with that same fan when he was getting out.  Needless to say, we're a little cramped, but we have a great companionship.  Elder Buchanan was a competitive road-cyclist, so he is very much health conscious and makes sure that we eat well.  We eat pasta pretty much everyday, with a salad or something and munch on some carrots.  It's good because otherwise I would probably gain a lot of weight, being either sitting in the office for the majority of the day or driving in a car eating fast food.  Gotta keep my weight down, some elders here gain like 30 pounds, which is not what I'm planning on.

So I've got some interesting insight for all of you.  It's crazy how funny the world is when you take a minute to just observe things.  So one of my companions has been having some issues, in a urological sense you might say. We went to the urologist the other day, and it was just so funny to sit back and watch the different types of people that came in.  We had a to come back a couple of times that day, so I saw just about every type of people coming in.  And the thing about a urological clinic that's so funny is that it's a leveling ground.  No matter how rich or poor or white or black or angry or happy or classy you are, as soon as you walk into that clinic up to that desk asking for an appointment, everyone knows with certainty that you have a problem that you would rather not talk about.  Except for the old people, they love talking about it.  For them the urologist is some sort of club, because there are so many old people there.  They walk up to the front desk and now all of the secretaries by name.  It was super funny to just sit there and watch.

Well, I hope my letter put a twinkle in your eye and a song in your heart, and maybe a grin on your face and a virtuous thought in your head.  Just don't get hung up on the fact that the longest paragraph in my entire letter was talking about a trip to the urologist.  I promise, my mental capacities are very much devoted to the work.  We're just not really teaching since our time is spent on filming and planning and moving elders, and finding apartments was just added to the list.  It's solid.

I love you all.  I can't believe school is starting again.  Time goes by super fast.

Sincerely,

Elder Jon Hendrik Vawdrey