Foam Fingers and Facepaint

Hi sweet mom! It's me! Your boy!  I'm currently sitting in Seminary at 5:30 in the morning.  Honestly these kids are so cool for coming here so early. Most of them don't want to be alive right now but that's ok because they're here anyway. Our chapel doesn't have a cultural hall because it's very spatially limited due to the fact that it used to be a gentleman's club. But there is a nice spirit here and I admire these kids immensely. 

We had a good week this week. I LOVE CONFERENCE. It's literally the biggest deal when you're on your mission. I wanted to get foam fingers and facepaint. Just kidding. Mostly. But it is the best. I only have one more in the mission field! Wow. Soon I'll be hanging out with you! I really like when my homeboy Holland said, "Every one of us aspires to a more Christlike life than we often succeed in living. If we admit that honestly and are trying to improve, we are not hypocrites; we are human. May we refuse to let our own mortal follies, and the inevitable shortcomings of even the best men and women around us, make us cynical about the truths of the gospel, the truthfulness of the Church, our hope for the future, or the possibility of godliness. If we persevere, then somewhere in eternity our refinement will be finished and complete." I like that because we're all just here to try to be better. 

We had a good week. Lot of cool people we're teaching. We fill our days, that's for sure. Yesterday in between sessions we went for lunch with the other missionaries to the house of a member in the bishopric and he is a funny guy. And there's this other member that's super old and kind of reminds me of Grandpa if Grandpa was Cuban and turned his hated of Bush into a hatred of Fidel Castro. And Yomairy was there and her friend Lenin who got baptised after she did and is getting ready to go on a mission. It was just a nice time and conference was great. 

I got home from Seminary and ceased to exist for a few hours. My bed is nice. Our apartment may be insanely small and sometimes you have to do the dishes in the bathtub but nothing beats a nice bed. Today we're just chilling. Probably will take the majority of my day sleeping.

I've actually thought a lot about what you sent me in regards to God's perception of heartache and pain. Even Enoch when he saw God weep he said, "How is it that thou canst weep, seeing thou art holy, and from all eternity to all eternity?" To which God said, "Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency; and unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood." And later, "wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer?" That's the really cool thing about God, and it was a concept that was relatively lost until the Restoration. That God is not a punisher nor an amorphous presence void of human emotion. God is an Empathizer. True, He is the Man of Holiness, and unlike us He is not prone to the irrationality that our emotions so often bring us. But he definitely feels. I think He feels with us because He loves us. There's some kind of cool communicative divinity that comes from that. I mean God almost always communicates through feeling and emotion. And that whole "Adam fell that men might be and men are that they might have joy" thing basically just says that you need bad to have good. So I mean one cannot properly develop their emotions, their strongest communicative power with the Divine, without hardships. Which is why I think so many strong and faithful people have had it so rough. I mean even Joseph Smith had like the hardest life. And nothing holds a candle to that of Jesus Christ. So it's all just really cool. 

I feel like the luckiest boy in the literal entire universe. I have the best mom and best family. How did I get so lucky. I don't even know. We are chipping down on 8 months now. We can do that. Thank for your nuts package. Literally lol. Thanks for all your packages. You're so nice to me and I feel so loved. So so loved. So thank you. 

I love you. XOXOXOXO
​-your boy Jack