November 9 2015

holy crap... I've almost already been out for 5 months??? k listen, I am getting to the point where I'm learning to just love it here, and I'm seeing that more and more missionaries are getting emails from their parents about stuff like, "oh wow you've already been serving for 8 months, you'll be hitting your 1 year mark soon!" But dad, I want you and mom to do me a favor, Please never tell me how much time I have left on my mission. Please Please Never tell me how much time I have remaining. I litterally am almost 1/4 of the way through my mission, I don't know if you realize that already or not. But it's getting to the point, where I've had dreams about being just so devistated to leave this place that I just longed for nothing more than to come back. My heart is beginning to take root here in the Czech Republic and I will just hate to leave, and I can see that already. I am so happy to be going through the hardest thing I've ever had to go through, and I wouldn't trade my time here uz(already) for anything. dad, I said at one point during a previous P-Day, "I'm speaking this language." I believe that you mis-understood what I was saying. I said, "I'm speaking this language." But what I meant when I said that, was, "I am litterally understanding people and I am litterally speaking to people in czech." just think about that for one second... I'm speaking a foreign language. try to picture me for just one second in your minds, and then picture me speaking a different language... But I have MUUUUUCCCHHHH more to learn. But the reason I'm able to actually share the Gospel with these wonderful people at this point is because I have been helped by the Lord in so many ways. And the Lord is taking my weaknesses and is shaping me inside this fire to turn me into something that he can use, and this process really hurts, but I've never felt anything like this before. I didn't know it was possible to be so mentally and spiritually exhausted, and then so broken and just lost, and then at the same time, so happy and so close to the Lord... It continues to blow my mind. The other day, Elder Page and I were talking, and we realized that... we have no idea who we are anymore. We just realized... "hey, I have no idea who you are, other than that you're my companion and that you're a really spiritual person." We realized that we litterally have begun to litterally lose ourselves in the service of god, and I freaked out. We spent the next day talking about who we were before our missions and talking about what we liked, and who we were friends with and all that stuff. We're still trying to figure this out... the line between being so completely consecrated to the Lord that you just lose your sense of Identity, and become just... a missionary, and that's all. and then, on the other side of the spectrum, being the people that the Lord called. does that make sense? If the Lord wanted a "missionary" serving here, he could have called anyone and it wouldn't have mattered. But no, the Lord called me, Connor Dean to serve here, and for whatever reason, the Lord wanted me here. that means that I must still be myself. this has become a problem over the last 2 weeks because Elder Page and I litterally sat down on the first day this transfer, and we said, "We are going to consecrate ourselves to the Lord" and so we did, and we only spoke czech to each other, and we saw many miracles, and we saw how the Lord is involved in the work, and it was great. and then We realized that we had nearly forgotten who we were, and we are now really worried about that. So there's a ballance somewhere. The Lord wants us to lose ourselves in Service, but at the same time, we need to be happy, and we can't have every single waking minute of the day be work, work, work, work ,work... the Lord wants us to have time to relax and enjoy each other's company too. or at least I think so. I don't know for certain. we'll figure it out, we always do in some way/shape or form. anyway, I love you and I'm having a great time here. the Lord is teaching me many things. I almost feel like he bumps us onto the correct path, and then we get lost again, and so he bumps us back on again... and so forth.