Hooray for Packages!

Well, for privacy reasons I can't actually post all of Andrew's email this week, so it's going to be pretty short.  On the bright side, he does sound happy and his sense of humor is still intact!

Well, it's been a good week. I skimmed your emails, so I can't promise I'll be answering all your questions, but I'll try to remember what I need to.  So Melissa and I are the oldest 4th ward missionaries, huh? That's sure weird. I guess it probably has us both coming home "February 2013." Dang... that's the first time I've thought about those plaques hanging there. I remember I always used to walk past them and compare the time the missionary had left to how long I felt they had been out. Thinking in those terms, looking at a plaque that said "February 2013," I'd be thinking, "Huh, not too much time left for him..." DANG IT!

I've been thinking about how this is the second Millward reunion I've missed in my entire life. I had a creative idea - a lot of the Elders here have tape recorders. In Russian, they are called "dictophones" (or at least that's more or less how the word is pronounced). You know the ones I'm talking about; they're really small and just have a simple microphone and speaker built into the casing and movie producers and authors use them to record ideas they have right on the spot. Well I don't have time to write in a journal, frankly. I get into the apartment at night, and I'm lucky to finish nightly planning the way I like to before I'm on the phone, and I don't really get off the phone until I go to sleep after that. So... what if you bought one of those lil' guys before you go to Steve (Stanley/Beav). Then you could not only send it to me in a small package that need not contain large amounts of socks or peanut-butter-based candy, but just had the dictophone and maybe a few extra tapes, and ONE TAPE THAT HAD SHORT MESSAGES RECORDED ON IT FROM ALL SPEECH-CAPABLE MEMBERS OF THE MILLWARD CLAN! Plus from that point forwards, I could use it as my journal and have some kind of lasting record from my mission! I think it would be a cool plan.

I don't want to sound ungrateful for the package I just received. The socks are amazing (A++, they're just as good as the bamboo guys), the photos were SO awesome to see (when did Garrett turn into a 14-year-old boss master instead of a little kid?), and even though I feel like delayed gratification is something I've gotten a lot better at on my mission, the candy lasted me two days and I finished the lime chips this morning. So THANK YOU very much. Speaking of packages, Melissa said she sent me some stuff from Boston back in like January or something, but I'm guessing some dishonest postal workers are now the proud owners of whatever was in that box. Haven't seen anything.  Also, I got your letter Melissa, and the Star Trek stationary was too much. I went out and impulse-bought a bar of gold-pressed latinum right after I read it.

Well, the results are in with next transfer. I can't tell you yet, because it will leak. But probably either next week or the week after, I'll be able to let you know of any important changes.

Thanks for everything! Don't forget to send me pictures from Steve. Send everyone my love. Hopefully Jay Dee and Vance aren't too surprised when they get a package with nothing but borscht in it within the next month or so. Man. You all probably think I'm kidding.

Love,
Elder Andrew Broekhuijsen