It's Story Time...: Look Who's Going on a Mission!

Once upon a time me and my friends grew up, well sort of grew up. It's crazy weird though to be at the age when all of your friends are leaving to serve missions. I still remember being in primary singing "I hope they call me on a mission" and thinking that was an eternity away. But it's here and although it's super sad to be left in the dust as my friends go off and serve the Lord it's also a very exciting time. And I'm so excited for my friend Houston who will be serving in the Alpine German speaking mission.

It's been a long road with Houston. When we were younger we would play together in nursery and primary.

He came to my birthday parties and we would always have fun.

But things changed when he transferred to my elementary school. You see, I was a very important spanish immersion student who didn't waste her time associating with the lesser english students. So we stopped being friends and we stopped talking at church.

Then in ninth grade I made one of the best decisions of my life and chose to take AP human geography. At the beginning of the year I hated the class and thought the kids were all very strange. But by the end of the year I had become good friends with almost every single one of my classmates. And that is how my friend group started. Anyway, Houston was in that class and although I couldn't stand him at the beginning of the year, I got past that and things started to get back to normal between us.

The summer between ninth and tenth grade is what really made us friends though. During that time I liked his best friend and he liked my best friend, so we often formed a five-some (we weren't sixteen yet so we couldn't be paired off) that was convenient for all of us except for that fifth person (usually James or Sean).

Since then our friendship has only gotten better. Yes we've had our rocky moments (more than any normal friendship) but we always move on. He has always been there to support me and I know I've already written about this, but some of the most memorable experiences I've had were with Houston and Sean and our lovely friend Skype while I was an exchange student in Spain for the year. But there have also been other moments in time, like right before I left for Spain and we were all at Sean's house for his birthday party and I needed space so I went outside and Houston came out and just sat with me. Or when I first started to get into hiking and Houston was the only one who agreed to hike Mt. Baldy with me.

There are several more memorable moments, but it's the normal weekend nights that I'm going to miss the most. Who am I going to watch play call of duty now?

Anyway the point is, Houston I'm going to miss you, but you are going to be an amazing missionary. Thanks for being such a great friend.