TBT - Hermana Blew

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Dear Sister Blew, 
You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Argentina Salta Mission. It is anticipated that you will serve for a period of 18 months. You should report to the Mission Training Center at Provo, Utah on Wednesday, 19 July 1995. You will prepare to teach the gospel in the Spanish language.

I still laugh as when we left the MTC, we thought we could speak like the natives! We were going to go preach salvation and never stumble over a word. Yah, it took about 3 seconds after getting off the plane to not only realize you could hardly speak the language, but also that you could not understand a word. Thank goodness my trainer was American!

In the mission you change companions and areas every few months. My second companion, Hermana Farias, was from Uruguay and did not speak one word of English.

I will never forget the first day we were out together and were talking to someone on the street. She spoke a little and then just looked at me to finish. I thought I was going to die. (I had been afraid to speak even though I understood pretty good by that point) She simply told me, "Hermana Blew, hay una primera vez por todas las cosas" or there is a first time for all things and stared at me until I finished the conversation. She would use that line on me many more times and it was always true. Still is.

Farias was determined to make me speak and with her help, it took only a couple weeks until I was speaking fluently. You have your trainer, then you have your favorite companion. Farias gets that honor hands down. Loved her! Still do. The things I learned in those weeks we were together were key in helping me become a great missionary as well helping me start to look at myself in a very different way.

I served in Argentina until the following May when my back injury sent me home. I spent 9 weeks home to go through PT then was reassigned to the Florida Tampa Mission to complete my time. My comps and I would be sent to Orlando to help start a Spanish speaking congregation.

I came home a very different person than the one who left. In those 18 months I had been blessed to see myself as Heavenly Father saw me. I was continually facing obstacles physically and mentally and would handle them to the point where I either overcame them, or found ways to manage/live with them. As far as the way I viewed myself and my future, life was excellent the day I stepped foot off the plane and took my tag off for one last time.

It was almost immediate when life started to remind me that the amazing person I had returned as was not the one who had existed prior to my mission. I didn't have the skills or the tools to fight that one and within four months, Hermana Blew ceased to exist. Over the next many years I would get a glimpse of her from time to time, yet that was all. It was never a moment I could seize and even if I did get ahold of it, it never lasted long. Every counselor I have seen has heard the line, "I wish I could still be that person."

Recently, I learned a valuable piece of information - sometimes things may not be gone, they may just be lost, misplaced, or hiding. And so the other night after writing a long letter, I thought to myself, maybe Hermana Blew is still around, I just need to go search her out. Where do you start with that? It's been 16 years since I took off my name tag and life has handed me a lot since then.

There is a good thing about me being a writer - mission journals and letters. If I am going to go looking for someone, best to remember who they were. What better way than to just start reading again. Once in a while I will pick one up and read a few pages, yet I have not gone from beginning to end for a lot of years. It will be a good task for me on many levels. To remember who I was will help remind me that I am still that person. There will be laughs as I remember things beyond the written words and I'm sure there will be some heartache in there too.

It will also help me remember. Several years back when I had some neuro problems, I lost blocks of memories. There are things that are just gone, as if I never experienced them even though people will tell me I was there. There are many "missing pieces" in my memories from my mission. What a great way to try and fill in the blanks again.

So, at the end of the day, I'm ready to go find my friend again. I'm ready to go find myself. It was told to me once, in order to fight for yourself, sometimes you have to fight against yourself. Although the person I am at this moment is a good person, I am not satisfied. There is someone greater in me She's in there still, I just have to go find her again. I'd say that is pretty good homework.

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