Not every week is perfect

Missionary thuggery

Having served a two-year mission myself, I know that there are days and weeks of service that are far from perfect. There are frustrations and disappointments. The trick is how those days are handled and what you learn from them. If learned well, those are lessons that will serve you well the rest of your life. TMFKATB is going learning those lessons right now.

His letter this week reflected the challenges a twenty year old has when things aren't turning out exactly as you'd hoped. One of the things he's loved about his service is the chance to teach and in the last couple of weeks, those teaching chances have been few and far between. In the regimented (and rightfully so) world of a Mormon missionary, your options for working through those frustrations are limited, so you have to get creative in how you deal with them. So TMFKATB wrote that he we focusing on changing his mindset, with this quote in mind:

"We must learn to become creators of circumstances and not creatures of them." 

Not bad guidance. Not bad at all.

As I read and reread his letter, as a father and as one who has been in his shoes (albeit 30 years ago now), I tried to read between the lines to make sure I wasn't missing anything or if there was some magic bullet I could share with him. I realized he's learning these lessons for himself and when he can challenge himself to focus on being his own agent of change, I could breathe a little easier.

It didn't hurt that he also shared how a recent meal of higado (liver) drilled right through him faster than the #8 Combo Meal at Taco Hell Bell. You know that all is right in the world. That's my boy.