A year and a half as a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
That sounds weird auf Englisch.
I've been back from my mission in southern Germany and Austria for a week or so now.
I won't try to summarize my whole mission in one post. As missionaries, we kind of joked that a mission is like a whole life squished into 18 months (or two years for the guys). The first area in which you serve is where you were "born," when you train other missionaries, they are your "children," and you "die" in your last area. As you go through your service, you experience such highs and lows as you've never seen before, and they are somehow compacted. All the rules of time are broken, or so it seems. You get to know so many wonderful people and forge friendships that will last through eternity.
I can't believe it's over. It seems like it was just last month that I was packing my suitcase to go on this grand adventure, but irgendwie also a lifetime has come and gone.
I wouldn't trade it for the world.
It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Harder than leaving home for the first time for college, harder than moving to Germany to live with people I didn't know. But it was also the most beautiful, most rewarding thing I've ever done.
In the words of singer/songwriter Brendan James:
"Memories as sweet as these, you cannot take them, they belong to me"
I'll post more in the near future. Relive my life and share my few stories.
