Thoughts on Adversity, Cleaning Closets, and Chicken-Fried Steak

Hey Mom!

Sounds like you all had a busy week. Cleaning is soooo much fun--I feel for you. The mission has taught me how to keep things pretty organized.  I´m really happy about that because I did not have that skill before the mission! Ha ha!

When you said "Dad is still recovering from cleaning the slider" I thought you meant cleaning the actual sliding door of the closet--like wiping it down with Windex, instead of cleaning out the inside. That would've been pretty lazy of him!  Ha ha!  [This is in response to my exciting account of how we've been cleaning out closets here.]

I liked Catriel´s comment on adversities in our lives. [Catriel recently commented that writing about major life struggles is difficult when you're a white kid from a middle class family in Washington.] That´s exactly what I thought when I was doing college applications!

And you and Dad have given Catriel and me amazingly awesome happy childhoods. There's no "relativity" there.  Seeing other people's lives out on the mission has only confirmed that to me. Especially seeing the lives of some people in Houston--just awful. We have it a lot better than everyone on the planet and the majority of it definitely is not related to finances. 

So thanks for being literally the BEST PARENTS EVER. I am serious about that. 

 

Not much has been going on down here this week. We had GREAT weather all week though! Overcast and almost chilly!!!!  We had a couple of lightning storms too--which was cool.

 

 

The mission has made me loathe heat and consequently the sun as well. :P So I´ll actually enjoy the weather back home now! Ha ha!

 

I´m in the same district as Sister Haight, [a sister missionary he trained with at the MTC] so that´s pretty cool! I surprised her at my first district meeting here. 

Picture from his time at the Provo MTC.  One of these young ladies in the center is Sister Haight.

I´m afraid nothing really exciting has been happening down here. Lunch is always good though. I've been eating these chicken steak things for dinner when I get back to the apartment each night. They´re just like the chicken nuggets you used to get for us when we were little; so that´s a bit of nostalgia I get to enjoy here--ha ha!

I really can't think of anything else to write. We've got a few people we're teaching; still working on finding more. We walk a lot. Such is the life of a missionary.  My Portuguese is coming along well, too.

Love you Mom! Thanks for writing me! Glad you´re all doing well.  Tell everyone I say hi!

Elder Duffin