June 30th

Dear Family,

If only you knew the story behind this email. Although it is the first and only you’ll have received this week, it isn’t the first I’ve written—it would seem as if the adversary has all technology conspiring against me.

Yesterday, at the Internet café I’d written 4 beautiful emails in Note Pad, some of the best I’d written in my mission, I’d even composed an Eagle Scout rap for Chris in honor of his Court of Honor, I was working on my 5th email when—ZAM—Note Pad closed, deleting forever all the hour of emails I’d written. We had to leave the café, so I quickly wrote to President Lindahl and we left.

Since it’s a rule to write your family weekly, we left this morning to finish what was stared yesterday. I wrote another beautiful email to the family, explaining in dramatic detail what happened yesterday. This time I was smart and wrote the email in Word, so if it accidentally closed, I might have a chance of recovering the document. I thought that would solve my problems, but I was sadly mistaken. As I was finishing up my email with what I’d learned from church, when none of our 5 investigators showed up—CRACKLE, POP—sparks began to fly from the electrical hub of the computer and—ZAM—the computer closed down. The screen went deadly black.

I couldn’t believe it. Could it really be possible that my 2nd laborious email had just been killed in such dramatic fashion? Sadly, yes. Providentially, the sparks didn’t start a fire, and the very kind worker gave me a new computer without charging me for the time on the first.

So that is the story behind this 3rd-times-the-charm email.

Oh well. Such is Life. Like Elder Worthlin talked about in his last conference talk, learn to laugh when things like this happen. Who would have believed that 2 consecutive emails would be eaten like this?

Last week in church I learned a lesson about counting the roses not the thorns in life. We’d committed 5 investigators to come to church, 0 showed up. I was pretty sad, even frustrated. So much so, that for all of the reunion all I could think about was “they didn’t show up, what did we do wrong?” I guess you could see it in my face because one member asked “¿Qúe te pasa?” or, “What’s wrong man?” I realized that there were good things too that I could focus on, and after wracking my brain for a while I came up with two great blessings: 1. The Branch President organized the first branch council that the branch has had in almost a year. 2. In Priesthood, we had Hot chocolate and cake. Sometimes it’s hard to look for the blessings. But we have them.

I love you family.

Sorry the email is late.

Sincerely,

Elder Reynolds