The U.S. Postal Service

I should be working on statistics or doing work for my research assistantship but I need to blog about something before I can focus.

I've discovered that I take mail for granted. I order something online, I expect it arrive within the next week or two. Or, if I request something from home, it'll arrive in a few days. I naturally expect whatever is addressed to me to be there when it should be (or close to it). I never used to think about all the mail that people might be sending me that I'm not receiving. I've always had faith in the U.S. Postal Service. However, that faith has died.

Let's flash back to December 2006. There was a really awesome missionary in my ward in Camp Hill right before I moved to Philadelphia (Camp Hill always had awesome missionaries but that's beside the point). During the couple of months that he was in Camp Hill was when I started to finally deal with the fact that I was in a "bad" relationship. I would meet with the missionaries and either given them attitude about my problems with the Church or I would often just stare at the wall and not say a word. They kept trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I finally apologized for my attitude in a note and briefly explained what was going on in my life at that time. Anyway, my point is that I probably shared some things with the missionaries that I shouldn't have--but at that time I didn't really know where to turn (I was still intimidated by the bishop at this time). This guy was so helpful...so sympathetic to what I was going through.

He was going home about the same time I was moving to Philly so we exchanged addresses. I received one letter from him but then they stopped. I sent a letter or card here and there but was ready to give up after a couple of months. When I was in Ecuador, I sent a birthday card..that was the last time I tried to contact him until a couple weeks ago (a year later) when I decided to try to send him another birthday card....

Lo and behold, I received a letter from him the other day. Turns out, he's been responding to me the ENTIRE TIME. I, for some reason, never received his repsonses. It's sad to think that my mail is floating around some post office somewhere. I don't really understand why I never got ANY of his responses. I can understand one letter getting lost or never receiving anything in Ecuador (too much of my mail was lost on its way to Ecuador) but not receiving ANY of his responses...? Was this some kind of conspiracy??? LOL.

Regardless, we have finally touched base after nearly two years and as he said, "It's about damn time."