I Love My Nickname

Dekan's email: dekan.blacker@missionary.org

       Hello everybody, sorry I forgot to send an email last week, but hey you get 2 for this week. This week was rather up and down. I think I'm headed toward a low point in my depression because my mood has been just kinda off at points during this week. Which means I'm upset for no reason and so I keep to myself and don't say anything, ever. My companion had to teach a few lessons without me saying a word this week. 

       Other than those spurts though it was a pretty good week. We got to teach Aubree (11) and Alivia (9) Van Der Spek and put them on date to be baptized. Unfortunately Alivia's mad at us, but that's because she doesn't want to wait 2 weeks to be baptized. The Van Der Spek's are so much fun to teach and they came to church this week, finally! It's so exciting, they're actually going to be baptized. 

       I was on exchanges with a greenie and we went to Fred's house (the guy who gave us some funny Anti) and the idea was to have a quick chat and then not reschedule a lesson, essentially dropping him. What actually happened is we were there for 2 hours, I got rebuked for not reading the entire book, the greenie got a copy of the Anti (which he burned), and we have another appointment with him tomorrow. It wasn't the best, but I noticed something really interesting there. After about 100 minutes I was so tired of being there, I hated the entire thing and I thought, man I haven't felt the spirit in a long time. That was actually a cool realization for me because it implies that I have the spirit constantly with me and when it was gone I noticed, missions are so cool. 

      As missionaries we don't ever use our first names; we all have the title of Elder. So when we want someone's attention we use their last name, so I refer to my companion as Titus. Oftentimes though we give a nickname, Patterson (Patty), Knudsen (K-Nuds), Naatjes (Nacho) basically most missionaries have a nickname based off their last name. My nickname however comes from my first name; my nickname is Naked. If you're wondering why, look at this until you get it, Dekan Naked. My nickname is finally catching on though and I love it. Titus uses Naked much more frequently than he uses Blacker, even in public and really anywhere except during lessons. I don't know why I like that nickname so much, but I do. It's funny and I think that I find it cool. 

There's work to be done, 

Elder Blacker