Personal History Of Anne Bailey
My parents are Brian David Bailey and Jodi Wheeler Bailey. My father was born on May 29th, 1955 , and my mother was born on September 15th, 1959. My mother is from Utah and my father was an air force brat, laying claim on no particular state has his home state. They met in Utah in their home ward. My father had served a full time mission on Korea and was attending Law school at University of Utah. They were married in the Salt lake temple two years later: June 3, 1980. My dad now works for the Government as part of the Justice Department. He was also in the army, which moved my family around a fair amount before he was put in the reserves when he got his job with the Justice Department in Washington D.C.. I have an older brother (the oldest) and an older sister and a younger sister. My older brother, Chris was born on September 14th 1981 in Utah, my older sister, Brooke on October 8th of 1984 in Texas. My family then moved to Korea for a time before I was born. I think I missed it by a couple months! I was born on December 10th, 1987, the best year in the space-time continuum, in Charlottesville, Virginia. My family moved shortly after that to Springfield, Virginia, in June of 1988. I have a few memories in that house. I remember our neighbors, a group of boys who would leave their bikes up against the side of their house, and my two best friends, Becky Lester, and Todd Dixon. We got our dog there. His name was scruffy and he was everyone’s favorite family member. He was a good dog. We lived there until I was three and a half years old, moving to Herndon, Virginia in June of 1991. My family and I have lived there ever since. I claim that as my home being that I spent the past 17+ years there. My best friend, Karly Kovalcik, was and is my neighbor. We have been best friends since for going on 22 years now. She has helped me learn and grow in so many ways.
In March of 1992 my baby sister was born, completing our little family unit. I was only three at the time, so I don’t remember a great deal, but I do remember having o spend the night at Karly’s house and my two older siblings spending the night at another neighbors, the Kessler’s. We were still fairly new to the neighborhood, it was a huge ender mercy that we all had a place to go and is typifying of the kind of neighborhood I grew up in. We were a fairly close-knit group. The neighboring families soon became more of an extended family than neighbors, even when one family would move out and another move in, the next family was quickly adopted in. This may have been due to the fact that we lived on a cul-de-sac, so the set up of the neighborhood was favorable to building relationships with one another. The closeness of our neighborhood was probably furthered in that fact that every household had at least three or more kids in it. All of the kids were friends and each one’s personality added something to the group. The dynamics of our little mini society were rather hilarious and besides that rather, indescribable. I received my first kiss while playing house with the neighbor boy during my preschool years. I remember countless clubs that were invented over the years, nature clubs, girl clubs, boy clubs, insect lovers clubs. Games! We played every game, every sport there ever was available to us. Baseball, S-P-U-D, red rover red rover, British bull dog, smear the queer, kickball, dodge ball, soccer, basket ball, football, h-o-r-s-e, tag of every variety, street hockey. There was never a dull moment. When we ran out of games to play we would move on and make up a new game, or twist the rules of an old one. I remember playing baseball games in which you had to tackle the runner before he got to the base instead of tagging them with the ball, crab apple fights, “war”, snowball fights, that would generally end in tears, hot chocolate and movies, igloo making when ever there was enough snow on the ground. Imagination ran wild. I also remember a game called “warped” where a group of kid’s reality was ultimately being controlled by master goblin who would send them to worlds full of dinosaurs or shrink them down to the size of ants. The days I remember seem almost endless, but that might be do to the fact that they didn’t really ever end. As the sun would sink below the houses and leave an eerie but calming glow lingering outside, the kids would follow the fireflies out as they finished dinner and congregate in the middle of the court waiting for everyone to assemble. They then would pick “captains” and siphon off into two huge groups and the night would begin! One group would count as the other scattered. The best event of the summer was night tag. It was more than a game. It was an exhilarating experience that we all looked forward to every night. Night tag came in it’s various forms. Our all time favorite was “jail break”, but we also were well versed in games like “bloody murder”, “truth or dare”, and “cops and robbers”. The world was our playground and we had no fences to hold us in. I look back now I realize what a healthy environment I grew up in. It prepared me for the years to come. As we all got older and people began leaving for college “night tag” slowly dissipated. People had homework or boyfriends/girlfriends. Others moved away, making hard to get a group together, even when new families moved in, it was too much explaining to go through. I don’t remember when night tag stopped completely.
I attended Fairfax County Public Schools from Kindergarten on. I received my diploma and went on to attend BYU-Idaho after graduation. I have always been and A-B student. My grades have actually gotten better through college
My best friend Karly and I went to the same preschool (Pender Hill), but were put into different classes. We actually were never put into the same class ever through all 14 years of school together. My preschool teachers name was Mrs. Knee-meyer (questionable on the spelling) was old, as far as my memory recalls, but I was a four years old so that detail could be a little swayed. She was kind and patient and would read to us every afternoon. That is all I can remember about her.
I attended Oak Hill Elementary School Kindergarten through the sixth grade. It had one of the best playgrounds ever up until the third grade. It was torn it down because it was wooden and deemed unsafe. It had three levels, tunnels, slides, towers, steps, t-pees. Every kind’s dream. It was replaced with a one-story metal colorful play thing. It was not as cool.
I was in Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Merlin’s afternoon Kindergarten class. Karly was in Mrs. Ramsburg’s morning class. We had access to coloring books, the sand box and a big tub of washers. My closest friend in that class’s name was Nick Oppelt. I was the shortest kid in the grade and he was the tallest. We made out to be quite the pair. I remember having a crush on him and having him over to play one day. I kissed him on the shoulder. There was another girl named betsy that I wasn’t o keen on. She was a bit of bully and would take my toys. I generally moved on pretty quickly but not with out a little bitterness.
First grade. I had an amazing teacher named Mrs. Scruggs whom I loved. She was kind and loving and patient and African American. I wanted to be all of those things. I’m still working on the African American part, it’s proving to be harder than my 6 year old self imagined it being. First grade is the first place that I remember having homework: reading books, spelling units and computer lab packets. There was a boy that had a crush on me in the first grade. He would bring me gifts and write me love notes and try to kiss me on the playground. He even told my mom, “your daughter may be short, but it’s ok, I love her”. Karly was again in a different class. We actually made it through all 13 years for schooling with out ever sharing a class.
My second grade teacher’s name was Mrs. Wilksinson. She knew how to teach! I still remember things she would tell me to help me remember thing easier. She is the teacher that taught me how to spell the word “people” and help us keep our cricket alive for our science lab. She was small, wore “Harry Potter” styled glasses and had a head of white-grey curly hair.
The third grade was the year that I learned the people could be mean. The world could be mean! My teacher’s name for the duration for the year was Jannette Walsh. I remember her name because it is burned into my brain after seeing it signed on my planner at the end of every week. Going to class that year was unpleasant to say the least. She ran her classroom like a good dictator would. It wasn’t a rare occasion for her to call us names and rip up nameless papers. We were 7 and 8 years old for crying out loud! Cursive also became apart of my life and that sucked. The class really banned together by the end of the year. I remember one boy got in trouble and sent out to wait in the “wet and dirty” area to wait for his impending doom. When she went out to find him he was missing. I remember listening to her looking for him saying things like, “if you’re hiding you can stop, because when I find you it’s just going to be worse than if you come out by yourself”. As it turns out he was hiding behind a trash can. She found him. He was torn apart and life moved on, but it was a traumatizing year for all of us. She actually transferred to my high school to work as a teachers aid in the history department. She walked into my Art class one day and I remember wanting to sink into the floor or the wall or just disappear completely. She even said hi, but called me “amy”. I was glad that she didn’t remember my name.
In the fourth grade I had two teachers. The school for had knocked down the wall in between the classrooms so the class was huge. My main teacher was Mrs. Potter and the teacher for the other class was Mrs. Linquist. I may or may not have spelled that incorrectly. Mrs. Potter was spunky, energy filled, borderline crazy but in the delightful sort of way. Mrs. Linquist was different, not opposite, but different, both of them were very kind and very good teachers, but Mrs. Linquist was calmer, came across as older and a little more serious, but not in an uptight anal retentive way that can sometime come with teachers. They made a good team. My mom also got a job that year working as a preschool teacher because my little sister had started kindergarten that year and that job allowed her to be home when we got home, but got her out of the house when we weren’t there. I think it was an easy transition too being that she had small children at home and that she had home-schooled my little sister Lindsey for her preschool years because she was not potty trained in time for preschool. She was by far the hardest to potty train and could hold her bladder longer than anyone I have ever met. (she still has that talent but has since acquired the admirable talent of using the toilet as well.
My fifth grade teacher’s name was Mr. Kokulus. We called him Mr. K and he has been a major influence in my life. I thought he was one of the coolest things to hit the planet. He was fluent in sarcasm and had a bit of a temper. No matter how much he ranted about how much he didn’t like fifth graders he was our friend before teacher. He loved math. He ultimately taught me how to and the importance of sticking up for yourself. He tied in life lessons with our academics. Not only did it give us some comic relief throughout the day, but it stuck. We learned more that year in school that a lot of my years in school. I felt my self-confidence Grow that year, but looking back I could see that not being the case for everyone. Some of his tactics may have been a bit unorthodox. He could scream and make you feel small like nobody’s business. I remember him throwing a desk out into the hallway because the boy who owned it failed to clean it out after being asked on a number of occasions. I helped with the ED and DD kids in that class. That was probably my first exposure to that population. I don’t think I was very aware that they were any different from me.
In the sixth grade we inevitably thought we were amazing. Top of the school, we ruled those halls, or at least we were under the delusions that we did. We began to “switch” classes in this grade, for different subjects. Mrs. Thoms was my main teacher, but everyone had someone for all the different subjects. I had Mrs. Lubely for history and geography and then Mrs. Thoms for Science and Math. Most people switched for math, but Mrs. Thoms’s son was in Mrs. Streck’s class so we never had to have her. I say “had to” because my brother had her and she was crazy. I remember being happy to dodge the bullet. My little sister had her her sixth or fifth grade year and loved her though, so she must have had some redeeming qualities. Mrs. Thoms taught me to love reading, at least more than I did. We read so many good novels in that class. We would read them as a class. I remember getting to the end of “where the red fern grows” and “the Giver” and having the boys in the class all in tears. We had pen pals too. That ended up being a nightmare for me. I couldn’t think of anything to write so I told my pen pal about a boy that I liked. I’m not sure if I even liked him at that point but I felt that it would be a fun thing to write each other about. He was in my class and another girl in my class decided to read my letter out loud while I was out of the room. I was devastated. For the rest of the year it never really went away. Sixth grade was also the year my brother graduated high school, 2000. This meant he was leaving for school the next year. It was hard to see him go. We fought occasionally, but I looked up to him a lot. He would attend one year of school and then go out and serve as a full time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of latter Day Saints. He was called to serve in the California Anaheim mission as a signing elder. He learn ASL in the MTC.
The summer between sixth grade and seventh grade We drove out to Utah to bring Chris some of his stuff. It was Mom, Brooke, Lindsey, me and the dog, scruffy. He probably had the hardest time. He didn’t go to the bathroom for days after we left the house and one day had to stop mid run jus to relieve himself. Poor guy. He was such a trooper. We rotated through the car but it was always mom driving two girls in the back with the dog and one girl up front with Mom. We have placed a TV in between the two front seats and bungee corded it down so we could watch movies. I remember Tennessee being my favorite place to stop. The motel six wasn’t have bad and the people were really nice. Texas was the worst. The motel six had cockroaches big black flies and the people were really creepy and weird. I tried to shave for the first time on this trip. I forget where we were staying, but I managed to cut myself pretty badly. I didn’t notice and when I walked out to get into my bed my mother tactlessly pointed it out to everyone and asked if I had tried to shave. I lied. And probably turned a fiery hot red. She obviously did not believe me. Our first stop was Utah. We also made a point to go down to Arizona to see my Dad’s parents. They had a pool in their back yard and lots of humming birds. Grandma Bailey also made homemade jam and orange juice and we looked forward to that when we were there. We also got to pick oranges and lemons and grapefruit right off the trees!! We then went back up to Utah again to head home. It was a very fun trip, but took all summer.
My middle school experience was pretty average. I attended Franklin Middle school. It was a little bit of a drag. It wasn’t until high school that I realized how much unpleasant middle school really was. I rode the bus. I had cat-eye glasses that I thought were so cool. I felt very grown up wearing them. In the seventh grade I took home-ech and an introduction to foreign language class and from that class decided to take Spanish the next year. My history teacher called us “chickadees” which I though was super weird. We made my math teacher cry, which we thought was really cool because he was a real jerk. Kids can be so mean sometimes. His name was Mr. Woolsey. I loved my biology teacher. I thought she was so smart too. She was a “permanent sub” because she had retired, so she could get the Social Security check every month and a pay check. We did the coolest stuff in that class. The best was when we built a little ecosystem pond thing on our desks and watched it all work. We each got plants and fish and other creatures to put in our little tanks we had.
Instead of taking home-ech in the eighth grade, I took drama. I don’t know why I took that class. I do not, and never really have liked being the center of attention or acting or being up in front of people. The whole class a little unmotivated and very unruly. I met a boy named Scott Metts. He was a member of the church and I didn’t even know it until I saw him at a stake conference. It was a cool experience for me because I didn’t really have any “member” friends. I also had a friend in that class named Courtney. I remember that she got pregnant that year. It was the craziest thing that had happened in my life up until that point. We talked on the phone quite a bit while it was all going on. She had an abortion and I can’t remember or don’t know if it was her choice or because her mom wanted her to. It was a hard thing. My English teacher and science teacher both had a few loose screws. It made for an interesting class time. I received a c+ in Spanish and decided I that I didn’t like Spanish all that much. I did not continue to take it in high school.
Ninth grade had some major changes happen. It was the year that I remember a lot of my friends making very different choices than I did. It was the first time I realized that being a member of the church really did set you apart and I felt a need to “choose” once and for all. It was a defining time in my life, but that was it for me. I had been baptized at the age of eight but my conversion to the gospel, the time it really felt like mine was freshman year of high school. I made my choice and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I do not know where I would be with out it. I did not have very many friends who were members of the church and many of my friends in high school made very different choices than I did. I do not feel as though I sought out trouble, but I did seem to hang around with a lot of it. Looking back it was a very hard and burdensome time for me. To me my friends were not threats to my well being or eternal salvation, they were just kids. The gospel would have very much blessed their lives. I felt and still feel like they were good people who made very poor decisions, but I can also see now the effect that they did have on me. Not all of it was positive either. We taught each other, helped each other, took care of one another, but the emotional burdens that came from some of the things we faced have followed me for quite some times. They did respect my decisions and I tried my best to help them deal with the consequences of theirs. It was then that prayer become very important and very real to me also. With out the close relationship I felt that I had with my Father in Heaven I don’t think I would have been as stable as I was. I was emotionally drained much of the time and sometimes I couldn’t understand why I could seem to explain to them the kind of peace that the gospel brought into my life. I am so grateful for the Gospel and the peace that it brings into our lives. One thing I learned a great deal about in high school through my friends was about unconditional love. I was able to separate the choices made from the person doing the choosing. I felt closer to my Savoir as I loved them and my understanding grew of His love for me. It was during this time that the idea of serving a full time mission first entered my mind. I prayed about occasionally. It had never been something I really wanted to do, but I knew that I loved to share the gospel.
I worked hard in High school and received A’s and B’s. I had teachers that I liked and teachers that I didn’t like. I remember having a particular distain for my English teacher, Mrs. Patey. She would take the clock down because when your in her class, you’re on her time. I thought it was very dumb. Some of my favorite administrators were in my sub school. I later worked in the office my senior year, not for pay but as a volunteer. My history teacher freshman year was awesome. He was on the shorter side and would memorize raps for us and rap them in front of the class. When I gave up on Spanish I picked up American Sign Language and fell in love. Kind of sucked though because my freshman year teacher was amazing and then went to go do an internship elsewhere and the remainder of my time sent in the ASL program was a joke. I barely went to class and got an A. Go figure. My algebra teacher was amazing! Big huge animated black guy devoted to making sure he explained it on a level you could understand. He even helped me out sophomore year when my geometry teacher was below par.
I think it was around sophomore year that I began to realize that most teenagers had a very real problem making decisions for themselves. Many went with the flow of things. “bird of a feather flock together” and I was a bit of an odd duck. I was a member of the church, but hung with people who were most definitely not living that life style. I knew that if I were to straddle the two worlds I could expect to face a bit of loneliness. I did and do. I have never fully connected with people who are not members of the church. There is an eternal side of things, of me that they just do not understand. On the other hand members of the church fail to understand the part of me that connected with my non-member friends. Their lives and choices were so different. Sometimes I feel as though deep down there is a little broken part of me that tried to carry their burdens by myself. It is that broken part of me that member friends I have made through out the years have never understood. IT is something that has helped me understand the Atonement. Although there is no one whom I have found who has grasped all of me, He has and does. He has and does heal my hurts and mend my wounds. He makes me feel not so alone. He understands everything more than I do.
I got my license at the end of sophomore year and consequently began to be a taxi driver for people on the weekends. I did not get along with my geometry teacher Sophomore year. She was cranky and fat and use to tell us that if she fell asleep to wake her up because she might die. All of us vowed that if by chance she did fall asleep, we would all walk out. She never did though, so no worries. I don’t know if we’d have had the heart to let her die anyhow. Sophomore year I met my second best friend (remember I’ve got Karly). His name was Dan. We dated for like a month when we first met and soon realized that that was just not for us. We’ve been best friends ever since and I do not know where I would be with out him. He has in a way given me a huge part of my testimony of the gospel and he doesn’t even know it. We have been through thick and thin. I see no end to our friendship. I also picked up the love of my life sophomore year. I got into photography and absolutely love it. It’s now something I hope to do in my spare time as I get older, if I have any.
My junior year in high school was nuts. One moment that stands out to me was a rather pivotal moment in my educational career. Growing up I always had dreams of becoming a zoologist. That dream changed when I was sixteen years old. After two or three years of associating with a certain crowd of people I had become a kind of mother figure to many my friends. My mind was almost constantly preoccupied about the well being of anyone of them. One in particular had been having some problems with parents, drugs and the law. I wanted so badly to help in some way, but felt a certain amount of helplessness in the limitations I faced. In my high school Psychology class I suddenly realized that rather than work with animals I wanted to work with people. According to my psychology teacher, becoming a psychologist was the way to do that. So I set my sights on being a psychologist later learning that it was really social work that would get me where I wanted to be.
My senior year was bitter sweet. On one hand I could not wait to get out of D.C. and on the other I had so much I was leaving behind at the end of the year. I graduated in the class of 2006. Karly and I got into one of our first and only fights ever. She got involved in a bad scene in high school and assumed that I would be angry. Sad more, not really angry. She said some things that I should just forget, but they have been branded onto my mind. We’ve never been the same. We’re still best friends, but it’s just slightly different. When she began making different decisions than I did I lost a support system I didn’t really know I had and I think a little bit of my identity as well. I received in award for photography. I had an amazing English teacher that helped my appreciate hamlet more than I did. My time spent in the sub school was precious and loved. I went back to visit for a while after high school ended. I got put on probation for a speeding ticket I got while picking up one of my friends. and had to do some community service for a speeding ticket. The whole thing was blown out of proportion and stupid. I got into BYU Idaho and decided to head out there for the fall. It’s something I had prayed about but and felt was right but did not want to do. I wanted to go to provo over BYU Idaho. I remember praying and telling Heavenly Father that if He really wanted me in Idaho He better make it my only option. And He did. I cried the day I got my rejection letter to BYU Provo. I knew my acceptance letter from Idaho was in the mail. After graduating I gained a ton of weight and then lost it when I went out to school for my first semester of college.
Rexburg. Attending Brigham Young University Idaho was a completely new experience for me. I was born into a strong LDS family and have been taught the gospel principles for as long as I can remember. But, for the past four or five years my life had been littered with drug addictions, sex, fights, flashing lights, arrests and court dates. I couldn’t claim any of these problems as my own, but they belong to some of the people in my life that I have come to value as much as I can imagine a mother would value her own children. Back home things were crazy, but it was almost as if how my life was playing out was exactly what I was put here for. I had a purpose and a place, a roll to play. I lost all that when our car pulled into the Day’s Inn across the street from where my new apartment was going to be. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why I was leaving everything I knew for one of the strangest places I had ever been. I was coming from the fast-paced Northern Virginia suburbs that lie right outside our nation’s capital and arriving in Rexburg, a place that could barely be called a “city” and where the lack of lights at night made one think that there was an alien invasion before realizing that those lights in the sky were just stars. To add to the over all weirdness I was encountering, the people walking around were all so – different. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out what it was, and then it hit me. They were all Mormon. All of the sudden the freaky awkward feelings I had been experiencing began to escalate to levels I had never known could be reached. I had never seen so many Mormons in one place before. Although I was Mormon, I had no idea how to act or what to say when approached by one. I had a strong testimony of the church, but when it came to the culture of it I didn’t know where to begin. All of the sudden I thought, “this must have been what it was like for Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” when he came in contact with other humans for the first time”. I was terrified and uncomfortable. The most attractive thought I could think of was a cave. A deep dark cave that I could hide in until the next two semesters were over. At the same time being in a place that was completely different than what I had was important to me, I did know that. I was exhausted by the life I had been living.
I never did find that cave, but luckily I did find that my room served the same purpose. I was rooming alone and it worked out very nicely. For the first couple of days I only ventured out for food and class, and even that was a stretch. I dreaded going to my religion class. Firstly, I had a hard time grasping “religion class” all together. I attended seminary in high school, but it was more of a “let’s read the scriptures and feel the spirit before we enter the cold dark hallways of the public school system” not a “by the end of the semester you must have the following things memorized or you fail”. Fail? Fail? “Fail” didn’t seem like all that threatening of a word until you followed it up with “Religion”. All the sudden if you didn’t pass your class it sounded as if you were doomed to an eternity of fire and brimstone. Another aspect of “religion class” that was completely foreign to me was that the professor saw it fit to share some of the thoughts and feelings you had while reading “The Book of Mormon” during your personal study time. “Personal study time”, I thought to myself, “Personal”. Had this word lost all meaning on this campus? I built my testimony on my own. It was built by the experiences I had and the long periods of time alone I had to think about things at any given church related activity. I was always a loner at church. Like I said, I had no member friends and as a result of the friends I did have I didn’t have much to start a conversation with, but it never bothered me. I liked my time alone, and the other kids seemed perfectly happy to give it to me. I only shared my testimony when prompted to. When I felt as if the person listening needed it. Never was it shared in a public setting, with more than two or three people with in ear shot. The thought of sharing a piece of it with all the bizarros round me churned my stomach like drinking a warm glass of curdled milk. I began to warm up as Rexburg began to freeze over. The cold weather was something familiar to me and classes hadn’t turned out nearly as dismal as I had imagined. By the time my first semester was over not only had I become a little more comfortable with “Mormon culture” but I had even made some friends that I didn’t feel all that awkward around. The transition into my second semester after winter break went much smoother. I got five new roommates; all from Hong Kong, my Family Home Evening brothers were outgoing and fairly normal and my social life had taken a major turn for the better.
My life had split in two. I had my life back home, and my life in Idaho. They never really have come together for me, but I have worked through a lot since my first semester. Much of it using the atonement and prayer. I remember one of my friends back home calling my second semester and having to step away. She was panic-stricken. I was useless at a thousand miles away. It was so hard for me. When I hung up the phone I faced trying to join my roommates again with out making things too awkward. I didn’t know what to say. I had been crying. I didn’t want to let them know, I didn’t want to explain. Those same “freaky awkward” feelings I had endured in the beginning of September seeped back into my heart and saturated every part of me. I felt to pray. I knelt down in poured my heart out to the only one, that I felt, could understand. From there the evening went smoothly. I walked back in feeling a lot calmer and a lot less awkward. I didn’t feel so alone or isolated.
I went home that summer and re-accustomed myself to everything that is D.C.. The next semester involved some more adjustments. The culture flip flop has really had an interesting effect on who I am. I’ve tried not to acquired things I don’t think very highly of from the west and tried to slough off some tendencies that are less than Christ-like from the east. Sometimes I don’t feel like I really belong anywhere. That third semester I lived with Mallory Mills (now Mallory Daybell). I finally decided to serve a mission and introduced Mallory to my long time friends Jeff Daybell. They were engaged by the end of the semester and married by the end of the next. I also met Lizzie Ferguson who became a very close friend and had a great deal of impact on my life. My fourth semester was a trying one. I had roommates who did not live that same standard that I did and I ended up spending a lot of time at my FHE brothers apartment. I got to know them well particularly Justin Pitcher. They were a good group of boys. That summer I went home and worked the best job I have ever worked. Would have still gone had they stopped paying me. I was a room leader at a therapeutic recreation camp for those with mental disabilities and worked with the 5-7 year olds. My coworkers names were Rebecca and Stu. We became very close also. Our classroom’s theme was “champ camp”. And our kids were so fun! Never a dull moment! We had one that would flush things down the toilet and one that loved glitter and another who could pitch a fit like nobody’s business. I also began attending a kickboxing class at a local gym. That class has since become like a little family. We still go out to eat when ever I’m in town and give little updates on our lives. One of my coaches wrote me my whole mission. They are some of the happiest people I’ve met. I love kick boxing! Alyssa Johnson, a high school friend of mine, and I also took a trip down to VA beach that summer. We met a boy named Micah Spencer who came up to see D.C. with us. We became close friends too after running into each other in Rexburg the following semester. To this day he is one of the greatest people I have ever met.
Things got a little crazy the semester I was finishing my mission papers, but I was able to get them turned in and receive my mission call! I opened it alone at the kitchen table of my grandma’s house. I served in Illinois Nauvoo Mission, to serve in the Visitor’s Center. I had to read it a couple times over. My first reaction was “what?”. Did my call not feel like it fit because I had way more growing to do than I though I did? Or did it not fit because…I wasn’t supposed to go? I was confused at best. I didn’t receive a real confirmation that I was supposed to be there until a couple of weeks of serving in Carthage. It was a hard decision. One made even harder by Micah Spencer who asked me to stay home.
I obviously left on my mission, stayed out the entire 18 months and returned a better version of me. So many things happened. I wrote home weekly and my mom posted those e-mails on a blog. Rather than try to re-cap everything that happened in those 18 months I will refer you to that blog:
Coming home from my mission was and is one of the hardest things I have ever done. I have experienced a great loss of purpose and had my faith tried in ways I never thought possible. The past year and half since I have been home are not really months I would actually like to have recorded. I have kept a meticulous journal as of late, but do not wish to transfer or elaborate upon it here. I have been experiencing some of what I hope is the darkest of my days and am fumbling in the dark in order to (hopefully) experience the brightest of my days here on this earth at some future point.
