I'd like to start by saying that this keyboard stinks, so hopefully everything is legible.

Happy new year.  It's all over.  This year I'm going home.  We get a new mission president.  I have a lot of goals that I hope to accomplish.  It was a little sad yesterday when I looked at my goals from last year and I hadn't achieved one.  There was only one of the seven that I even got close to keeping.  Hopefully this year goes better.  I have mission goals, post mission goals, and whole year goals.  It was kinda weird to think about all of that.  So I decided that I'm not going to think of the post mission goals any more until about the 2nd of September. ( I should go home the 3rd)

I'll let you know that today has been the best day of the whole year so far.  HAHHAHHA  I've been waiting all year to tell you that.

The great thing that happened today is that the other 2 elders that were living in our house moved out about an hour ago.  There is so much room now and it is much less cluttered.  I can now do all of my exercise without being cramped.  I can eat my breakfast and shower before 8 am because the 2 that took 30 minute showers just moved out.  It should be pretty calm now.

Guess what happened this week. I went the the hospital with appendicitis again.  But this time I wasn't the one that was sick.  They were the weirdest splits in my whole life.  They started Tuesday afternoon.  He has been struggling emotionally so I, as his Zone Leader, wanted to help.  I brought him to our area.  We were going to have a good day with a lot of success.  Well everything fell apart.  He started getting depressed and everything.  And so we talked to President in the night.  He just wanted to go home, and he wanted to send emails and talk to his mom the whole day.  He's still relatively new in the mission, so we thought that it was because of the Christmas season.

We talked to President for about an hour that night, because President was in the part of the mission where there isn't cell phone service all day.  We talked about goals and I was trying to help the Elder to be able to relax and set some reasonable goals, cuz he has that Mormon Perfectionism that almost every missionary has.  President gave us some recommendations and told me to stay with him for another day and I went to bed thinking that everything would be better in the morning.  Nope

He was worse.  It was crazy to see somebody tremble from anxiety for a few hours as I tried to calm him down.  As I said President didn't have service and the assistants told me to figure out what I could do to calm him down.  We played games, but he quit because he couldn't stop thinking about home and how sad he is. So we listened to conference talks.  That did help him a little bit, but not much.  He still wanted to talk to home and go home. so we talked to president again.  

And then he felt like throwing up so we went to the hospital because he felt really sick..  It was his appendix.  The funniest part was when he was laying down on the bed before the surgery and the tests and they asked are you comfortable.  He answered by throwing up a TON.  all over the bed and everything.  It was really funny.  I enjoyed talking to anybody that would come into the room for the 2 days that we were there. I felt a little like mom.  He's doing all right now and we are still a little concerned about him emotionally cuz he still wants to go home.  I remembered a lot about that hospital visit 11 years and one month ago and it was another one that I won't forget.

I'm sorry I'm short on time.  I love you all and hope you all have a great new year.  I'm excited to make these the best 8 months of my mission, and hope to do everything that I can to please the Lord.  Thank you for all of your help and support.  I love you and I know the church is true.  Have a great week and year.

Elder Brady Allred