HI JACOB!
Hey man, how are you doing these days? I hope all is well. It was crazy leaving for Institute on Thursday and hearing your voice through the speaker phone as mom and dad spoke with you. They told me about how you've been feeling and about how President Bednar talked with Mom and Dad on Wednesday. I bet it has felt like a wild ride on your part. That said, everyone says you sound good (not depressed, like me) that despite the headaches, you are loving your mission and the people out in Pennsylvania. I'm very proud of you, brother, I hope you know that. I know first hand that missions are not easy. Personal experience has taught me that. Just keep doing your best to hang in there. I know you are probably not liking that you have to take medicines. That's fine, but know that medicines are there to help you. Once again, personal experience. You know how it was for me and how it still is. Just monitor yourself, do what the doctors say, and I'm pretty sure everything will be fine and work out for you in the end. I was reading mom's last Monday's replies to you as you were talking back and forth. I was surprised to feel a bit of de ja vu reading them, because, when I was with Elder Porter, mom sent me a letter that was almost identical to what she wrote you. I searched for it and reread it. I'm glad you are doing well on your mission, despite all the difficulties. You have truly shown resilience.
Well, I had my first self reliance meeting tonight. It was pretty good. I'm grateful for my group, and honestly, just glad that diego and Tyler Frederick are in a different class than me. I almost had given myself no time to go over the class before. I spent 15 minutes Saturday night after 12 to go over it. I like the members of my group. No one appears to be too dominant a person. Also, one member, a sister Lee is someone of note because Sarah Rebecca may switch contracts and move in to her room that she is offering.
So yeah, you might be wondering why Sarah is changing people to live with. Well, it's only been 10 days since Sarah has moved in and already her landlady is acting like a Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde situation. One day she is happy and wants to pay for Sarah to go to get both a manicure and a pedicure, and the next second she is getting angry Sarah (and I) are doing one thing or another. In the contract she specifically asked for me to be over. But one night this week, I went over to her place. Kimberly wasn't home, but Sarah and I were going to play a game but before we set everything up, Sarah accidentally got dog poop on her shoe and so we scoured the house looking and cleaning all the poop stains we could find on the tile floor. Well, long story short, while Sarah went to wipe away the poop from her shoe in her room, Kimberly barges into the house, incensed and goes around turning off lights and things. We had turned on all the lights. She was very angry and said that that was one of her pet peeves because people can see into her house and she was being very not calm. Finally, we got her to calm down enough for us to tell her why all the lights were on. She was pacified, but told us we couldn't play in the dining room. So we took the game to another (not so well lit) place in the house, and I was going to leave at like 9:30ish, but a few minutes later she tells us that she doesn't want me to stay at her house past 8:30pm. Anyways, it was just a crazy situation. I'm afraid that I might accidentally set her off again in the future.
And thus, the reason why we are searching for another place for Sarah to live. We found a room with an LDS member that I had heard about in Institute a couple of weeks ago. Fortunately, for us there was this opening. We are going to check it out tomorrow night. Hopefully it is all we hope for. Sarah is probably going to give her 30 day notice to Kimberly tomorrow, if all turns out well (the 30 day thing is in the contract). We already know the lady, Sister Lee, she's in the self reliance class. Contrary to belief about her name, she is not Asian. She seems very nice. I'm hoping things work out.
So, Mom probably clued you in to how the BYU-Utah game played out. Needless to say, we lost, and obviously an L never feels good. I was really hopeful in the first and second quarter, but then I kinda lost the hope in the 3rd, but my hope renewed in the fourth quarter when we came into one score away from them. I was pretty optimistic. ESPN app said that BYU had the better chance of winning the game by like 1.3%, haha. The 1.3 was probably because it was at home. Tanner did better when he was being hurried up, otherwise, he took to long to decide where to pass it, granted, he probably needed open receivers, so it works on both ends. But he threw about 3 or 4 interceptions, unfortunately, and it was those turnovers that killed us. It was crazy when we got to within one score. We were extremely hopeful. I'm just glad we weren't in the New York time zone like the Knudsen's and creeping on our sleep and next Sabbath day activities.
I was able to go to the temple on Wednesday with Sarah to do Endowments. I got to stand in the prayer circle with her. We are talking of big things, Jacob. We have decided to get married on the 30th of December of this year. It's a little poetic that we end the year with a bang and start the year 2017 as a married couple. I do love Sarah Rebecca. She's helped me out a whole lot in my shortcomings and weaknesses, and I'm grateful for her love. I still haven't proposed, but it will happen and soon. It's been nice to introduce football to her. I have a joke with her about tennis. She had naively asked if the Australian Open was just a tournament for the Australians. Of course, I told her no. Wedding prep is going to be interesting because we both do not have that much money, but we will let you know how that goes.
Anyways, you're probably bored from my ranting. This is a pretty long letter, haha.
I just want you to know how much I love you with letters like this one. Thanks for acknowledging the birthweek letters. It wasn't an easy task writing those. I had originally wanted to write you for the 7 days before and after your birthweek, but that wasn't easy. Emails are easier. Maybe next year's birthweeks will be a letter everyday emailed to you.
Love you man. Take Care!
John
