Well since I'm home personally typing this entry, it won't take the email format that the past entries have. This is an interesting missionary experience. I'm lying here on my living room couch, recovering from this injury just as I have done several times throughout my accident-prone life. With Mom's encouragement, I decided that I would update my blog during this period where I am laid up and healing, so that I don't lose focus of the goal I have to return to the mission field.
Since being home, I've heard a few different negative statistics about the number of missionaries who return to the mission field after being released for medical purposes, and I am beginning to see how that happens so easily. It's definitely been a shock to my system to change my lifestyle from one having the mantle of an "Elder", living with higher purpose and much higher standards, to being thrown back into the world, released from my calling, feeling as if I have hardly any meaningful purpose while I'm home, and feeling much less of the Spirit in my daily activites.
The way I feel I need to keep from feeling this way is by giving myself a meaningful purpose each day. It's been difficult since the surgery Wednesday to focus on anything for too long, being on all these pain killers.. (I hope this entry is making sense!) But as I create meaningful goals and plans to work on each day, I can feel some satisfaction that comes from improvement, even if it is only small. Mission life was so structured with goals and plans and accountibility. Applying that as much as possible to my "inter-missionary" life will hopefully bring back that feeling of purpose that I miss!
- Taylor
