Monday, September 2, 2013

All The Work on Labor Day Took It Out Of Me

All,

I'm so tired. 

I'm so, so tired.

I sleep all night every night, and wake up exhausted,

I've had a continual headache for a week now, and it got a lot worse yesterday (you'll find out why in a second).

I'm... tired. 

But anyway, I'm so tired because We've been working hard. And that makes it all OK. 

But it doesn't make me any less tired.

We had a family move in from Fresno CA. They speak NO (1%) English. It's been really fun to teach and talk to them. 

Transfers this last week. Elder Dyer abandoned me, to go back up to Fairbanks to train. 

On the Plus side, I'm so excited to stay in Hmong one more transfer, until I'm done. 
...Well, as Excited as I can be when I'm so tired...

Anyway, this will make about 1 year and 3 months in the Hmong branch, which is now an absolute record in the AAM (Alaska Anchorage Mission). No one in recorded history has ever spent so long consecutively in one area. Not That I'm here for the record, but it's a nice bonus.

Anyway, yesterday was transfer meeting, which is why I'm so tired. Something ALWAYS goes wrong on transfer day, but never the same thing twice. So, I was looking forward to seeing what would go wrong this time, seeing as we had gone through pretty much everything I could think of.
(missing keys, loss of internet, incorrect software/hardware, camera trouble, audio relays go wrong, someone throws the circuit breaker switch during the middle of our broadcast... and so much more) 

Anyway, don't ever think that. Something else can ALWAYS go wrong.

This time I walked into the library, opened up the webcast broadcasting box, and found...
nothing. 

It was empty. The entire system was missing. This trumped three transfers ago, when half our cameras and the internet disappeared and the computer disappeared. All the other times, as least we could put the broadcast out there; then something would go wrong. this time we couldn't even create a Broadcast, much less have one mess up on us.  I'll admit, for just one second, everything of the past couple weeks, the exhaustion, the workload, the stress, fell on me like a load of bricks. I just looked up and almost asked God, "Why Me"?

I never asked before, because it didn't matter why me, or why now. I just moved on. There are people out there with much bigger problems than a missing broadcast. God knows all of our problems, and he lets us go through them so we can grow. And in some way, from this experience I did. We adapted and persevered, and got an approximation of the broadcast up and running... kind of. Think "Video Conference" with 50+ people, including showing slideshows and movies. 

It worked in the end. We could turn off Defcom 1, and life resumed. 

Now I'm trying to train my companion to do everything that I can do with the mission, from burning CD's to trying not to panic when everything falls flat.

I'm also trying to not be tired, but it's not working so well. I'll work harder on that, but it's not really at the top of my list. 

"Overwhelmed is for people who still have the time, and time is a room that's in no house of mine!"        -Ian Calk, former AAM Missionary, in one of his songs.

I should send you that song sometime. It's pretty much been my theme song for the past while.

Anyway, I'm out of time. Just got out of doing a leadership meeting. At least I'm not District Leader anymore, so that's one thing off my plate. 

Tired...

Anyway. 

I guess there was a lot to say. 

...Tired...

Love from the Exhausted North,

Elder Darcey

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