I've once heard that there are the three 'hells' of coming home:

1) Your family is going to hell because you dont do family scripture study or prayer...
2) You're going to hell because you arent the perfect RM you thought you would be...
3) What the hell?

Those three hells are true. I have been home 6 weeks, or a transfer, now. And let me tell you its hard. The first day I was so awkward with my family at dinner. I made us say a prayer at the restaurant we went to before we ate, I made sure we had family prayers every night for the first week as well. That first week I went to seminary with my sister, I cried when I saw the temple, and I got a cell phone. Man I wish I never did. It was a lot easier getting back into the habits of technology. A lot easier than I hoped it would be. Dont get me wrong, technology was annoying for a bit. I hated social media for more than 30 seconds at a time. Facebook was full of garbage and instagram had changed and I had no friends on snapchat. I still dont even have twitter again on my phone. But its a distraction. and I got sucked right in.

Within the first month of being home my ward was completely different, I knew hardly anyone, I had to go through a bunch of crap with my family, I felt completely useless and without purpose, and I had no motivation to do anything. Not even read my scriptures. I was still super sensitive to music and TV and cuss words though. But even that has lessened now. Coming home made me realize that everything I learned on my mission will go to absolute waste, unless I apply it in my life NOW.

For awhile I still felt pretty crappy about my life, but then I got a job. I started reading general conference talks, and I even opened up my scriptures. My prayers became more sincere, I decided to set some goals, and I had some hard talks with my parents.

I met with my bishop about a week ago and he gave me some great advice. "Life is not fair, and you have to be okay with it."

My mission was hard. But I loved it. I wouldnt change any of it. 

Honestly coming home was nothing like I expected. In some ways it was easier, and in others it was way harder. Im still not completely adjusted haha, I wish I was. And I honestly dont know if I will ever be. I dont want to be the same person I was when I left, so if I never adjust completely I think thats okay.

con amor,
Kaitlynn

Your weaknesses are shown so much more and are put under a magnifying glass. and thats okay.

Here is my homecoming talk. I kind of winged it and just talked as I went...

"Hola hermanos y hermanas. Hey dad I think my accent got better on my mission, I would hope so. Earlier this week Bishop Schultz said I could take 40 minutes to talk today, but I honestly don’t think that will happen, sorry Darrin. Today I don’t really have a topic, nor do I have a bunch of mission stories to share. I did serve in Utah, where mission stories are a lot less crazy and funny than Jon baptizing a clown, I even heard about that one from my dad via email. Don’t get me wrong, my mission is very unique in and of itself. It was only 30 minutes top to bottom, we had a lot of foreign missionaries, including the first missionary directly from Cuba, and I mean missionaries served in the wards of the apostles, like that’s super cool. But no, I never met an apostle, nor did I meet the prophet. I ate weird food, tongue, heart, stomach, but I still don’t like tomatoes. There were nights where I thought I was going to die. My companion and I were living in a members home at the time and the members were out of town. And it was about 11 pm. So we were technically supposed to be asleep already, but we were in bed trying to fall asleep, when all of a sudden we heard a door open and feet run across the floor. I sit up in the dark and ask my companion, praying that she would say no, and I said “did you hear that?” and she turned over and looked at me and said “yesss.” A nanosecond later we hear another door open and next thing I know, my companion and I are hiding under my covers. After a few more noises we hear, we muster up the courage to see whats going on. Goes to find out that it was one of the members kids with his family. And at one point I was chased by kids acting like zombies. And that’s about as funny as my stories get.

Hello hello everyone. Man when I first got my call letter it should have said "it is anticipated that you will serve for a period of 18 months, BUT BE WARNED it will by like a blink of an eye..." because it did. This week was grand. And went bye super fast, classic. 

"Food consumption, do you know what that means? Yeah disease."-Sister Poulson

This week in studies I studied on the attribute of knowledge. During my entire mission i have never studied the knowledge section. But it was great. A little hard to start off and build from, but what i discovered is that the knowledge we gain by faith will produce a pure testimony and a pure testimony had the power to change lives. But it requires action, like praying, reading, fasting, etc. and the knowledge i gain on this earth is to help bless not only me, but my family and those around me. It was cool. I hope you all have a great week! Cant believe February starts this week. Thats crazy. Love you all!