Good Morning

It's about 6:15am right now...the earliest I've ever gone to email because our wake up time is 6:30.  So forgive me in the rest of the email if my thoughts are not as cohesive as I would like them to be...we are going to Flanders Fields today for our p-day. We'll be walking through trenches and having a tour of the museum. So I'm excited! Well...excited as much as my 6:am self can be. :)

I feel kind of bad because I'm not able to write all the things I would like to tell everyone. And I've realized that I've never really spoken about all the things that we do on P-days. For example, we went to a concentration camp a few weeks ago - it was rather solemn and I wouldn't really know what else to say. It's not like you can say - we had a great time - at one of those things. We (sis. Fleming and I) decided one p-day we just wanted to chill out and so we bought some sushi and fruit and had a picnic in the park.

I've been pondering what to say all week. For the most part we've just been working really hard to find people who want to talk / meet with us. So far in my time in Gent it has been pretty easy to set up appointments and have them go through but it seems this last week and a half or so, no one, and I mean no one, wants to meet with us. Nearly all of our appointments except one or two fell through. Often times during the week we just look at each other and say - What is going on!? 

But it's still really good oddly enough. We are still having a lot of fun. And since we have less lessons and more time finding we have a lot more time to talk to each other about various topics ranging from questions about life to questions of why Sis. Fleming threw ANOTHER snail at my face. Most of our conversations leads back to us discussing what's going to happen next Wednesday when transfers come and we're not together anymore. She's been in Gent for 6 months so she's bound to leave.

It's kind of funny because she always brings up, at least once a day, the question of what I am like outside of being a missionary. She keeps telling me, "I wonder what you'll be like after a mission - like what you're like in regular clothes and if you're still funny or crazy..." I respond that I think I'll be the same but then I'll start to question myself of what I will be like in a year. 

So many things can happen and it's weird to think about what I would be like in a year after a mission because just feels like a compacted mini-life. For example in life you have these roller coasters of emotions in different periods of your life. On your mission you have those roller coasters weekly, sometimes daily. Where you feel, by the end of the transfer, that you are really different. You really only change in little ways but when you look back it seems like a lot.

I would say one of my favorite things so far on a mission is seeing other people change and grow. We had a lesson with one of our investigators that's going to get baptized on Saturday and as she was saying the closing prayer she said, so excitedly, "Thank you for my baptism." and she did this sort of squeal. It was so cute. I love seeing the gospel work in people. It brings out this light within them and you can see it through the happiness in their eyes; it's really amazing. 

I really love being on a mission. I want everyone to know that. It's really really hard at times but so worth the sacrifice. Yesterday a member took us with her family to go have a picnic at a kasteel (castle - but it was more like a mansion). As we were just sitting in the sun on grass I was just thinking about what an amazing experience it was just to be here; to meet new people and have all these different kinds of experiences - experiences you would only really get by being a mission. 

We were talking about the sequences of events in our lives and Sacha (one of our wonderful members) was telling us that she had always wanted to go on a mission but when the time came to it she didn't want to until she prayed about it and went on her mission to Scotland where she ended up meeting her husband and then coming to Belgium. She's from the Ukraine. 

It was weird because I had asked where did she think she would've been had she not got on a mission. She would most likely not moved to Belgium and then we might have not met... It's weird to think of things like that but fun sometimes - to trace the web of your life. Sometimes I like thinking about things like that because it makes you appreciate all the people that matter most to you and it gives you caution or direction on where to step next in your life. 

I love adventure! I love having adventures - meeting new people, going through crazy experiences and such. Life is a lot of fun when you think about - well, if you make it fun. I've been learning how to make even the bad and difficult times fun (it makes them go a lot faster). Anyways, my time is up. 

Hope everyone has a great week! Love ya!