I was cleaning out a room today and found my old Missionary Weekly Progress Reports. On the back of it we always wrote a letter to the mission president (not realizing at the time that he probably never reads them).

For the last one that I sent into him I ended it like this:

"I've spent a lot of money this month..." ($184 dollars total, more than double what I would normally spent in a month. It was my own money, but I had to report it anyway) "...because of the sickness of the companions I had (in my last area)...my hours are way down. But everyone is well down there now, I think, and I'm over my diarrhea."

Boy, I think he really looked forward to reading that last sentence...lol.

I never wrote my mission president. Well, maybe once. But he never complained or chastised me for it.

I was too busy trying to drum up letters from the ladies.

I wanted to keep a journal, but figured that as long as I had to write weekly to the President, and we had been told that we'd get these letters back to us and the end of our missions, I decided to kill two birds with one letter and make my letter to him my personal record.

Every week I wrote a long and detailed account of all the news that was "fit to print." I poured out my heart into those letters. I couldn't stand the President, but he was serving my purposes, at least in this regard.

About three months before the end of my mission, the mission home was moved. While traveling with the mission home elders one of them told me that they had thrown out all of the old letters. I was so done with my mission at the end, I didn't bother to ask if they had thrown mine out too. I just wanted out. The re-occurring nightmares were reminder enough without having to resort to my written record.