Refreshing Memories

One project that I have wanted to get started on for months and months was the typing up of my old mission journals. I will admit that I did not do the best job of keeping a regular journal, but the bit that I did do holds some interesting insights into how my mission progressed for me. For a long time I have wanted to type them up just so that I would have a good reason to read through them again and remember some of the fun things I did during my two years in Ohio.

Well, that time finally arrived last night as I was passing the time in the office while Holly and her sisters made secrets to distract Julie from the agony of Tim apparently.

I think I made it through about six different entries by the time I was done, not realizing that I was such a long-winded journal writer when I did put pen to paper. I didn't start from the beginning because I thought it would be more fun to do it on a more eklektik basis and start from somewhere in the middle. I just grabbed one of the journals I had used on the mission and started from wherever it started.

Turns out, that it started with the day I got transferred to Lancaster, Ohio and I was expounding upon the difference in life now that I wasn't a District Leader anymore. It was a short lived difference because only a couple entries down the line I was back to being District Leader after the Assistants called to tell me there had been a miscommunication with Elder Carlson who thought he was still District Leader. Needless to say, apparently the first few days I was in Lancaster were a bit of an adventure.

Oddly enough, all the entries I typed last night mentioned Elder Brandon Payne from Idaho Falls, Idaho. He was quite an interesting companion who I both loved and hated on a regular basis. What makes this all so interesting is that while Holly's father was in town last week he took us to Los Hermanos, a Mexican restaurant in town, and who else but Brandon Payne walks up to our table as the server for that evening. I had not seen him at all in the nearly three years I have been back from the mission, and it was a great experience to do a little bit of catching up on his life and tell him about the things happening in mine.

Holly and I both agreed that we should go back and eat there again sometime in the near future so we can do a little more catching up.