My Dearest Family,
I have been here in Arcadia, CA for about 2 hours now. When we flew into the Ontario Airport,
we were met by our mission president, his wife, and the AP's. It's great here. Both the mission president and his wife
are awesome, just so calm, relaxed, easy to relate to and very much aware of
their missionaries. When we were
walking towards our luggage, still in the airport, President Becerra walked
straight up to me and said, "Welcome Elder Ostler!" Then he proceeded to meet everyone else
or introduce himself to everyone else in our travel group, all 19 of us! I was very impressed that he called me
by name because I realized that my backpack strap was covering my nametag! As I watched President Becerra introduce
himself to each missionary I observed that he knew each of us by name. Yes, we are all wearing nametags, but
he didn't look at nametags once.
It was quite awesome. I
can't even imagine how much preparation time he must have spent staring at our
pictures so he could greet us by name.
Truly amazing.
We then piled our luggage into cars and vans and were all
transported to the mission office/stake center (which is where we are
now). We ate lunch, Panda Express,
and I realized that in all my time in the MTC, my taste buds had forgotten what
non-cafeteria food tastes like!
Right now, all of us missionaries are waiting our turn to have
interviews with President Becerra.
Our "Grandma" of the mission (forgot her name right now)
brought us this piece of paper and asked us to write our families at home. She will take care of sending these
letters off as soon as she can. In
a couple hours, we are going to be allowed to take a nap. And when we wake up, President Becarra
will have decided where we are assigned to, and who our trainers will be. This is truly so exciting. I'm no longer nervous. I'm here!...In Arcadia, CA! And this is my home for the next two
years.
Oh, one cool thing, myself, Elder M and two English speaking
Elders were lucky enough to be chosen to ride with President Becerra from the
Airport to the Stake Center. It
was great to be in the car with him.
Elder M and myself absolutely loved getting this opportunity to meet our
mission president. As we drove
down the freeway, he told us about the mission and the areas we were driving
through. It was just awesome! Loved it! I'm so excited for this. I think I was doing such a good job at living in my moments
at the MTC, getting as much as I could from that experience rather than
constantly counting down 'til when I would get to leave, that I didn't realize
how excited I really was to come here to Arcadia, CA! I just feel so excited and ready for this new step along the
journey. Obviously when I say I
feel ready, I don't mean that my español suddenly became perfect (this
should be obvious at least to Dad after he heard me this morning on the
phone). What I mean is that I'm
ready to put my preparation to work.
It's not going to be perfect at first, in fact my Spanish may quite possibly
never be "perfect", but it's going to be tested in real situations
and I'm going to know exactly what I need to work on and improve.
This is gonna be awesome!
So you know how our phone conversation got cut short this
morning? That ended up turning out
to be a slightly odd situation.
After Elder M and myself surrendered our phones to the missionaries that
had told us there were no other phones for them to use, we discovered that they
weren't even prepared to call home.
They had not bought calling cards at the MTC like we were directed
to. My first thought was,
"Really, you kicked us off the phones and you can't even call
home?" But when I remembered
that I had a backup calling card, which I had bought in the event the one you
sent me had any problems, I immediately felt like I needed to give it to those
Elders so they could use it to have the same wonderful experience of talking
with their families as I had just had.
It was in this act of kindness that my frustration at the unpreparedness
of these two missionaries disappeared and I was able to realize or remember
that we are all doing our best.
And thus, I learned through experience, a lesson I have heard many times
with words, but only have just now started to truly understand. It's a lesson my parents and many other
teachers have tried to illustrate to me, but it took this experience to begin
to understand. The principle I
have begun to internalize is that as we serve, we learn to love and that when I
chose to serve even those whom I am initially annoyed by, my attitude can
change and I will no longer be frustrated. But rather instead of feeling frustrated I will realize that
we are all indeed trying our best.
When Elder M and I left those Elders, we walked literally
only about 50 yards and came across about 20 open pay phones. When we saw this, we were really
confused, and I'll admit we were also annoyed. After all, the whole reason we gave up our phones in the
first place was because they told us that there weren't any other phones
available! But we simply reminded
ourselves that we had made the decision (giving up our phones) based off of the
information they had told us. We
had strived to do as Jesus would, and this was a comforting thought even though
our family phone time had seemingly been cut short unnecessarily.
It was while we were sitting there, waiting to board our
flight, that we decided to see if our phone cards would let us make another
call. And this was when I made the
second phone call home that Daniel answered. Apparently, Dad had just left for work, Kara had just left
for school, and Mom had just hopped in the shower. So it was just us boys. Nathan, Daniel, and I got to talk this time. I'm so glad Daniel answered the
phone. It was fun to talk, just
the three bros for a bit.
Well, right now, my head is spinning with the excitement of
the unknown. Who will my trainer
be? Where will my first area
assignment be? When is my first
real lesson? How much am I even
going to be able to understand in the first lesson...or the first whole week
for that matter? Oh boy! This is truly exciting! I'm only hours away from beginning to
find the answers to these questions.
I can't wait!
I love you all,
Your son, brother and missionary,
Elder Ostler
P.S. When my
phone call got cut short, I forgot to mention that I think I want to go to BYU
Provo immediately after the mission.
And by think I mean I'm 98.99% positive. Elder Moss and I were talking about it together a couple
nights ago (all the way back when I was still in the MTC) :o). And I'm assuming it's way easier to get
in now. Not only do I have the excellent
college grades, but the new missionary age announcement will probably make it
even easier. So I have no idea how
I would go about applying while on my mission, but I bet my miracle-working mom
could figure it out for me.
:o) I think all that has to
be done is my college grades need to be added to my original application and then
just go have it all resubmitted. But like I said, I'm not sure how one would go about it. The good news, mom, is that two years
is plenty of time to figure it out.
And if you can get bright neon colored duct tape to me for my luggage in
only a days notice from over 14 hours away, then this will be a cakewalk
;o)...or at least it might be a cakewalk.
Well, love ya! Adios for
now!
