I’ve decided that one way I can make my interminable commute worthwhile is to spend bus time creating something worthwhile to post on the Internet. I’ve always wanted to be a regular blogger, but haven’t had a whole lot to say outside of boring work stuff. 15 years of parenthood tends to suck much of your creative energy and thought right out of you. (That’s not a complaint about parenting, which is immensely rewarding, just an observation about the tradeoffs parents make.)
I got this idea from a friend who’s doing the same: I have a box filled with the letters that I sent home from my LDS mission in the England Coventry Mission (now the England Birmingham Mission) from 1989-1991. My plan was to have these letters serve as my journal for the experience. However, I’ve realized that they’re just sitting in a box in the garage and not getting read by anyone, most especially by me. So, I thought serializing them onto the internet would do two things 1) give me an excuse to actually read it all and 2) put something positive and uniquely me on the blogosphere.
I’m going to try and include as many pics and links as I can, rescanning mission photos and so on. But the media side may lag the text, since the time I’ve allotted for this project is mostly spent on the bus.
Other notes:
I’ll be cataloguing ONE person’s LDS mission. By no means should anything I say be generalized into what every LDS mission is like. From what I know of other’s missions, I think mine was fairly typical of the time, but I want to be certain everyone reading understands that nothing I say represents the LDS Church, only my personal beliefs and first-hand experiences.
I’ll have to change the names of people unless I get permission to use their real names.
I’m not sure yet, but I think I’m going to let the letters do most of the talking. I’ll probably have to break in once and a while to explain or expound on something, and when I do, I’ll use
this formatting for my side notes.
It may help to know just a little about my background to set the context for this particular mission. I am neither a "5th-generation Utah Mormon" nor am I a recent convert. My mother and father were converts, with my mother being fully active in the church for my whole life, bringing me up in the gospel and keeping me involved, where my dad was what we in the church call "less active" right up through my mission years. They were both extremely supportive of my serving a mission, as were all of my friends.
For my part, I guess I was pretty much a "good Mormon boy", certainly prone to the usual teenage rebellions and disobedience, but I was an Eagle Scout and never did inhale 🙂
That’s probably enough of the life story to get started without boring everyone to tears. Plenty of time for boredom later.
Och Am Tighrd 