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Well Doc, I'm speechless. Well, not really. Actually, I'm smiling. I appreciate your sharing your missionary journal. As you may know, I have a special place in my heart for LDS missionaries. I would love to read the missionary journals of the ones I got to know.

Would you ever have thought back then you'd be Elder Shades now?

msnobody wrote:Well Doc, I'm speechless. Well, not really. Actually, I'm smiling. I appreciate your sharing your missionary journal.

You're welcome. Glad you're is reading! As I transcribe it, it all seems so totally mundane from day-to-day.

Would you ever have thought back then you'd be Elder Shades now?

I may as well have been Elder Shades back then, too. "Dr. Shades" was a nicknake I'd thought up years before my mission. It took the advent of the Internet before I could finally make some use of it.

I've loved Shades' missionary journal!

He was an adorable boy.

KA

I enjoy reading the missionary journal as well. I'm afraid to go back and read mine. It's been packed in a box ever since I returned.

I am also enjoying his entries. They are in so many ways just like mine.

I started out every entry with: "I love ......" And then straight to the "I am not worthy stuff."

It's cracking me up. I swear if I put mine up next to his, they are just the same. Except that I would forever be too embarrassed to admit some of that stuff I wrote.

For that reason alone, I am fully impressed with the good Doctor. He has balls that I don't have, for sure.

Yeah I'm impressed to that Dr. Shades was willing to publish what he wrote. I burned my misisonary journal. I just didn't see much value in other people reading it. More than anything my journal was a therapy for myself to help hack through those two years.

I still am amazed at the variety of perspectives that one enters the MTC with even within Mormonism (a culture in which we mistakenly say everyone thinks the same). It's helping me understand why other people pharased differently or even disagreed on gospel truths. Yet this was impossible to understand at the time for me. I barely understand it now. I think that's a lot of what made me so depressed.

One thing I still agree with Shades with that he wrote in his journal was that I felt the spirit much stronger outside the MTC than in. I guess I just did better when I was alone and not influenced by false ideas, or at least philsophies that I don't subscribe to because they have problems that those who do subscribe to do not concern themselves with.

What strikes me is how mature you were then. I guess you were older and had a little more life experience than I did. All I could think about at the time was my studies in physical science (I still don't put much stock in soft sciences). I had no girlfriend and wouldn't for another 10 years. I can see the trial of leaving a girlfriend you probably worked very hard to obtain, yet on the other hamd it was hard to not be loved, as was the case for me at the time. Keep writing Dr. Shades. I want hear what eventually happend between you and Teresa.

Was what you wrote in your missionary journal exactly what your thoughts and/or feelings were at the moment, or did you often write what you thought you should write in it?

msnobody wrote:Was what you wrote in your missionary journal exactly what your thoughts and/or feelings were at the moment, or did you often write what you thought you should write in it?

Really quickly before I respond to everyone else:

Msnobody, those were my EXACT THOUGHTS at the moment. Every word is 100% sincere in every way. I NEVER, NOT EVEN ONCE, wrote what I supposedly "should have written," since it was my journal and no one else's.

gramps wrote:It's cracking me up. I swear if I put mine up next to his, they are just the same. Except that I would forever be too embarrassed to admit some of that stuff I wrote.

For that reason alone, I am fully impressed with the good Doctor. He has balls that I don't have, for sure.

Oh, the real embarrassments are yet to come. The only reason you think I have "balls" is because it's been over 17 years. Had all this stuff happened yesterday, I'd be much too bashful to share it.

What strikes me is how mature you were then.

HOLY COW! That's one impression I didn't think anyone would get.

I can see the trial of leaving a girlfriend you probably worked very hard to obtain, . . .

Actually, it wasn't too hard to obtain each other at all. The magnetism between us was palpable right from the very start.

Keep writing Dr. Shades. I want hear what eventually happend between you and Teresa.

Your wish is my command!

(By the way, her name is spelled with an extra "s," for "Theressa." Unlike the people you've met named "Ter-EES-a," both her "e"s were the "small e" sound, rhyming with the "e" in "extra." So "Theressa" rhymed with "Contessa.")