Karen has lovingly and consistently emailed me my entire mission. She always has thoughtful things to say and encouraging words to pass on. At the end, she always writes how many days I have left. It always reads 600, 500, or 300 some-odd days. Today, she said, "you have 19 days." It was the first email I had ever received from her in which I could comprehend the amount of time I had left. I got strangely emotional giving my bike away. I really loved that thing. After my bike wheels got stripped sophomore year, my mom bought me a total dad bike so I exchanged it for this bright green mountain bike instead. I rode it up Fenelon every morning on my way to seminary, zipping through Ralph's and Rosencrantz to High Tech High, then riding back exhausted after practice. I spent many lovely hours in Wyoming, biking around Casper following Elder Laudie. I remember riding my bike in suit pants and a crossbody bag up 21st street on a huge hill. Elder Laudie glided ahead. I passed a sign that said Sweetwater Road. At the time, I would have given anything just to be in Sweetwater, San Diego and ride back home again. Many times I locked my bike up with Laudie's on a street sign, locked it to the park bench for summer practice, or on the bike rack outside Mr. Aguirre's classroom as I was late to school. I had to give it a hug before I gave it away—I've had it longer than I've had a license. Now, another missionary gets to enjoy the great adventures that come along with it. Today was a good day. Elder Peña and I were both absurdly exhausted. I slept during lunch, dinner, and all our drives. I was so tired. Elder Peña and I are doing so well. We are doing so much good, too. We went to a man's house to pull weeds. He didn't answer the door, but we went to the back to the sea of weeds and began working. Just shy of an hour later, he came out back. He sat and talked with us as we finished up our time there. He confessed that since the divorce he has fallen back on alchohol and the craving for cigarettes is becoming unbearable. We gave him words of comfort, invited him to forgive himself and find personal applications of the Atonement, and gave him a blessing. In this lonely man's life, I hope we were a light. We visited another friend and had an amazing lunch with him. He talked about his prison days and how his temple shifts are going. He is really happy. We visited with an older couple we are teaching and helped stain their daughter's deck as a surprise to her before she comes back from a trip. We answered questions and visited many people, some of whom we've never met, and shared light. Everywhere we went, though exhausted, we were filled. I will miss this fulfillment. It doesn't always go this well. Earlier this month during a lesson with a family, we got into a discussion that I found funny, where I mentioned how I didn't like Disney. I probably went a little too far in poking around the subject. I said the prayer as we left, and I prayed that Disney would make better content. When we got out, Elder Peña was angry—so angry he wouldn't speak to me. I finally got him to talk and he told me how disrespectful and irreverent I was, how I broke trust and he implied he felt the spirit leave when I prayed. Now I've had three strikes: bearing testimony, reading scriptures, and praying...all times I have had someone tell me the spirit left when I did them. But I remembered something Sister Palmer said as an off-hand reaction to my joking about the man telling me the spirit left when I read the scriptures. She said, "oh, they just don’t know you well enough yet." That touched me so deeply. Maybe Elder Peña just didn't get me yet. Later, during a dull, uneventful comp study in which we just read meaninglessly to one another, he finally said, "is there something wrong?" I told him how I felt misunderstood. He said, "I want to try to understand you. I just don't. I don't get what's going on in your head." I said, "you never will, but that's ok. The point is to just repent and improve. God will aid this to work for our favor. These moments don't define a companionship. They're the smoothing of tough paths." Later, Elder Anduro and I went on exchanges and he said something that struck me. He said, "I'm going to miss my mission; I've never had so much fun!" That wouldn't be the first way I'd describe the mission. However, looking back, I have had some of my happiest memories here in WY, CO, and NE. It is certainly not fun in any traditional sense. A woman asked me recently, "how did you deal with the idiosyncrasies of mission culture?" I told her how I really just fell in love with it. Even its downsides become endearing. The short-sleeved white collared shirt, lame p-days, and awkward public interactions have become something I've appreciated and enjoyed. I'll enjoy not having them, too. Two of my high school friends, Sienna and Max, are hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. It's crazy to me they've been dating this long. Who would have thought? Sienna, in describing life on the trails, said, "the trail community is amazing, I think you would really enjoy it. Assuming you haven’t changed too much since I last saw you lol." I thought about that. The email was endearing and lovely, and I hope to join them on a section! My mom told me Nate and Reed, dropping off my birthday present last March, confessed they worried I'd come back completely different. She reassured them I'd still be the same. But I wonder...what have been the differences? I know I've changed, but trail life and screwing around still sound like a blast! I suppose it is much like editing a photo. When you take a photo, you collect data. Bringing it into editing software allows you to use that raw data to articulate an image. I'm still all the same raw data, just better edited. I've pulled out colors, removed grain, and played with shadows. I've enjoyed this process. Though I may be the same person, I hope I am far better than I once was. I've been wrestling with this idea I haven't been able to articulate until tonight. I was joking around with some members about why girls camp is such a strange ordeal and said, "you know, girls camp is really where discipleship and mischief meet." The mom laughed out loud. "That's going in my journal," she said. I've been wrestling with this idea of discipleship and mischief. Especially with home on the horizon, it seems I'll have a little more time for that. Now, the question is not when do I set aside my discipleship; the question is how do my curiosity and mischief play into my discipleship? I'll make mistakes, that's certain; however, I'm thrilled to find out how. It's an incredible thing to progress. It is not easy. It is wonderful. And it is heart wrenching. For instance, I am afraid out of my mind right now. For the first time, due to a series of odd events, I am showing a companion my blog...while we are companions. He is actually reading, from my perspective, about our companionship. Now, here's how this occurred. On exchanges during lunch, I reviewed the blog, something I rarely do. I was pretty shocked at what my mom had decided to include this time. It talks a lot about Elder Peña in the most deep and vulnerable moments of our companionship. That's not usually an issue, but a few days ago I was with a different elder. At the end of a pleasant lesson we were walking out the door, and as we took steps down the porch the gentleman we were visiting said, "hey Elder Whiteley, can I talk to you?" His wife gathered the kids and we stood on the porch. He looked at my companion. "Elder Jensen, would it be ok if we spoke alone?" Elder Jensen walked a little farther off. Oddly enough, this wasn't the first time this has happened. He said, "well, hello." "Hi," I answered, "what's up?" He said, "so, I was reading your blog yesterday and I had some concerns." Surprised, I asked, "what were they? How did you find my blog?" He answered, "I was scrolling on your Facebook and I found it." He continued, "it went into some pretty confidential stuff about a companion and even talked about an elder you had hard feelings for. I'm a counselor and deal with a lot of confidentiality issues. I just wanted to make sure you're aware." I affirmed that nothing on the blog included thoughts I hadn't made (or wouldn't make) directly to the people I write about. I also affirmed that I had asked Elder Peña's permission. After that conversation, it got my mind really working. How does Elder Peña feel about this? Does he know how brutally real I am? I got nervous; I even second-guessed the existence of the blog. "No," I reminded myself...this is part of the gig. I then whirlwinded into telling Elder Peña about it. Currently, he's laughing. He got through the first post. He said, "it's nothing I didn't know." We read my first post from the field and a post from Nebraska. He really enjoyed it! He told me it was helpful to get to know me. This really helped grow a lot of trust and he says he has no worries about it. He told me how much he loved and appreciated me after reading it. He just asked, "have I improved in my teaching since you wrote that I was a dull listen?" "Yes! I'm so glad you brought this up! Seriously, you've become so engaging and a much better teacher." He said, "good." He paused, then said, half- laughing, "I can see you're rubbing off on me in not bad ways." The man who cautioned me about the blog jabbed at a very vulnerable place without warning. When Elder Peña finished reading the rest, he called it insightful and said it was what happened. He's not mad, he affirmed. I sure hope that's true. Later, talking with Elder Peña at the end of weekly planning, we lay on the floor staring at the ceiling. During comp inventory, you try to ask the other person about things you can do better. He asked me, and I said, "I really just want you to remember how far we've come. Remember when you told me you gave up on our companionship? That seems ridiculous now. I want you to remember that feeling and then the steps we took to get where we are now." I shared my favorite poem. In response, he said, "I don’t love the idea of 'just letting everything happen to you.'" I said, "not everyone is as strong as you, Elder Peña. The companions you've had, the areas you've been in, and the struggles you face are incredible; I can't comprehend them. Most couldn't comprehend it, and those who can aren't facing it with as much class as you are." He told me he could tell how much I loved others and how he now understood me better. He told me how others see it too, even though last transfer people didn't really get me. He said people see my love. I said, "really?" He said, "most...and if they don't, they feel it." That meant a lot. An Alabama Shakes song came into my head that says, “now, I'm stepping on a plane; to fly somewhere I have never been; oh, Lord; don’t leave me on my own; because I still can’t get what I want.” During the lesson where I argued over the merits of Disney, I'd mentioned how I loved Of Mice and Men. The mom told me how much she hated Steinbeck. Even while we were leaving, the dad critiqued my comparing Steinbeck to Mormon, saying that Mormon had to write reality that was depressing, Steinbeck chose to write fiction that was depressing. Walking out the door, I said, "fiction doesn't mean it's not real." “Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then—the glory—so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world.” -John Steinbeck, East of Eden Out of all the ways God chose to teach us, He chose stories. I guess I love real stories because they help me know more about God. And those who believe in God, Nephi teaches, shall surely hope for a better world.
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