I'm A Service Missionary!

      I've officially started my service assignment and so far it's been pretty great. It ended up taking a lot longer than expected to get it approved, but on Friday I did finally get to start. This is going to be a good thing for me. Friday was easily the happiest I've been in over a month. Sadly, that's not saying much, but I'm confident that I'm on the upswing. The last few days have honestly been rather confusing though. Given the anomaly that we are as service/proselyting missionaries, there's a lot of times where we aren't exactly sure what we are and aren't allowed to do. So we basically just do it until we get told not to. It's been fun, my assignments are at the church office building, the mill, and the temple. 

      From the last time I wrote an email until Friday was honestly the most depressed I've ever been in my life. My brain just couldn't release the chemicals that I needed to function. Basically, it made taking a shower feel like I just ran a marathon. So, I didn't do anything. I would stay in bed for hours each and everyday because it was far too exhausting to go get some food to eat. I just kept noticing more and more things that were signs of depression, I started to push people away, I was way more angry than normal, I couldn't get out of bed, I hated the person that I am, I felt like a burden to everyone around me, but somehow I made it through. I'm confident that the worst part of over (partly because I can't imagine experiencing anything worse in my life) and I'm ready. I'm so ready to be reintroduced to the non-depressed version of myself, I like that guy better.

       That's really all I have for you guys this week. I'm not at all adjusted to the service missionary lifestyle and I'm still very confused about where we need to be multiple times throughout the day, but things are better and right now I really don't care about anything else. 

                               Sigh of relief, Elder Blacker