Home Away From Home

Ah Sunday, that special day of the week. As my family will tell you, as a kid I hated Sundays. It was the longest, most boring day of the week. The only thing I could do was antagonize my sisters, and I did. I got yelled at on Sunday more than any other day.

As a new missionary in the MTC, Sundays became the best day of the week, a true day of rest without any classes. If I was lucky, I could even sneak in a 15 minute nap. In the mission field, I soon learned that Sundays were the worst, most stressful day of the week - at least in Nicaragua this was the case. It was 2 hours of frantic activity trying to get the 10 people who committed going to church to church, then it was 3 hours of church, trying to make sure those people were ok, then, instead of a relaxing Sunday afternoon, it was off to the streets again. It was just that long day at the end of a week of rigorous missionary work.

Now, Sundays take on a different meaning for me. It is the one day where I feel at home. The branch here is actually quite strong as far as small branches go. About 1/3 of the branch are Americans. There are three entire families, two of whom work at the Embassy here, a slew of missionaries, a foreign exchange student from Michigan (who, cool enough, met the missionaries out here and recently got baptized a few weeks ago), and me. While the meetings are held in Latvian, it's all translated into English through headsets. I don't really even know anybody, and granted, the meetings can be a drag sometimes, but it's still feels comfortable just being there. After today's meetings, the missionaries invited me over to lunch. Once a month the whole zone goes over to the Hunter's home and has lunch after church. That was a treat. Dang, I would have killed for something like that as a missionary. As a Latin American serving missionary all I got were baptisms.