Hereby Called to Serve:

I got my mission call! It seems sort of silly to write this as an announcement, since by now everyone who reads my blog probably already knows, but nonetheless, it's pretty exciting. I've been called to the Portugal Lisbon mission. I'll speak Portuguese and be generally awesome. I don't have to report until september 24th, so i think i'll try to find a job and maybe be productive for parts of this summer.

I'm pretty happy about going to Portugal, i'd be happy about anywhere, but last night, in lieu of the impending mission call, i spent a bit of time thinking about my ideal mission. I decided that i would prefer to learn one of the romance languages, minus romanian, and decided I'd rather go to europe than south or central america. Happily, Portugal fulfills these criteria with ease. It also fulfills the desire to go somewhere they play soccer, and somewhere that i can gain loyalty to a soccer team. (an aside: I already feel silly and ignorantly american calling it soccer, i figure a solid couple of years saying futebol will be enough to work it out of my lexicon. It's a shame throwball somehow ganked that word over here.) I imagine it also covers the 'challenging mission' requirement suggested by my stake president, as i imagine, given that Europeans and catholics are both notoriously difficult to convert, a nation of catholic europeans speaking a foreign language will probably be tricky. But i like challenges, they make life engaging.

eeny-way, fun stuff. Other News:
I can never remember the last time i make these, and by extension, how much i've already talked about. Wow, it would appear it's been a while.

So, wrapping up the trip in jackson was good, i managed to see everyone i wanted to, and then some. I even managed to see hunter and melissa, who i completely missed last time i was in town. Both of these were at restaurants (Bravo and Cups, respectively), and it made me feel so posh. Oh, by the way, i've been watching rather absurd amounts of doctor who and a bit of topgear lately, so i may tend to british wordage from time to time, things like daft, farce, brilliant, some unnecessary u's, that sort of thing. I should really just annotate these blogs, it would make them much easier to read with all the asides and digressions. Back on track: I managed to say goodbye to caitlin this time around (something i apparently didn't do last time. I don't remember, but it does sound like the sort of thing I would neglect), and even gave spencer rabies, along with a clever assassination attempt in the form of pop rocks and coke. Given the fact that he hasn't updated his blog since i gave him them, i'm assuming they worked.

Driving home from jackson was an adventure, or rather, it was so far from an adventure that i had to pull off to clean the car for 40 minutes to keep myself from passing out from boredom. It was a pretty uneventful drive, but that's ok. I got to the airport with time to spare, and managed to get Cami back to biloxi in spite of traffic and shoddy windshield wipers. The Wangsgard gang (i wish i had a group name that started with W, i'll work on that) was all asleep, but eventually we talked to them, and the Wade's and grandparents came a bit later. I was surprised by how well our house held that many people. So lets see, we went to dauphin island, which was nice. At the time it seemed the drive was longer than necessary but when we went to the closer beeches later we were attacked by a fleet of jellyfish, which made the hour drive seem more reasonably. We went to the naturito...naturitum...arboretum, yeah, and saw lots of trees and turtles and many things not starting with t. It's safe to assume we played some games, video and otherwise, and had generally fun times.

Sunday (the 15th) I gave a talk in church which was nice. I felt like i sort of lacked focus in the talk. In my defense, i wasn't given a topic, and, although it was father's day, my father asked me not to give a talk entirely on fathers, so i didn't. In addition i was somewhat unprepared, but i think it went over ok, except that part where i made it seem like i had to postpone my mission because of serious transgressions, instead of serious lack of coordination. Monday was Isaac's baptism, which i was able to do, which was cool. After that we went and got food at this little pizza place, which was good.

Tuesday i went through the temple, which was awesome, (perhaps even brimming with awe, any more awe and it would have been aweful) and it was cool to have my whole family there (unfortunately minus those stuck with baby-sitting, although katie and cami still drove all the way to baton rouge just to watch kids in a hotel) We got burger king on the way home. I got a chicken sandwich, which i will say, without qualification, was the worst chicken sandwich i've had in my life. The drive back was pretty chill and Logan and I talked about mission type things and such, which is especially pertinent now that I'm serving in the same place he did...hm, i hadn't mentioned that yet. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Now we'll will be able to have secret Portuguese conversations, it will be glorious.

The next day people started leaving, so where were lots of goodbye's. Amy and Dylan stayed longer, so we went to a water park and that was fairly fun. I think Water Parks would be about the funnest thing ever if there were no people and no rules. rules and people ruin everything, but it was still a good time. It was no Rapids on the Reservoir, but what can you do?

So that pretty much brings me to to now. Yesterday I had to talk a bit in Stake Conference, but that was nothing major. Today i went to see the Incredible Hulk, which was really good, and then came home to find my mission call and my security deposit waiting for me. I was planning to watch Iron Monkey (my netflix) before going to bed, but i've spent about an hour on this post due to various distractions and such.

Fyi, Pork and Beans by Weezer is one of my favorite songs and without a doubt the most magnificent music video i've ever seen. It just makes me feel good.

~Short on Money but Long on Time