Lost

This week I've been going through my things, trying to consolidate before our move in a couple weeks. After seven years, I re-read a packet of letters my friend Ginger sent me towards the end of my mission. There were three letters that she had started, but only one was finished. All of them were written in an effort to tell me that she was getting married and would be moving to Alaska two months before I got home from my mission. Just before I had been given her letters by my zone leaders, I had told I would be transferred to my last area and I wasn't ready to go. As I read her letters, I cried, because it was so good to hear from her after so many months of not getting a letter from her and because I was disappointed by the thought that when I returned to BYU all of my friends who had been with me the first five semesters would all be gone. When I pulled the letters out of their envelope this past week, I was surprised to discover one more.

At the end of my mission as I got ready to go home, a member who we had been fellowshipping gave me a letter addressed to one of the sisters who had originally taught him the gospel and asked me to mail it to her when I got back to the states. Because I knew I wouldn't throw away the packet from Ginger, I guess I tucked Hermano Perez's letter in with the others. But with all the excitement of traveling around Bolivia with my parents and seeing my family again, I procrastinated sending the letter. By the time I thought about sending it, I couldn't find it and had forgotten where I had put it. Eventually I assumed that I had either left the letter behind in Bolivia or lost it. I felt badly about losing the letter, but I sort of lumped that guilt together with all the other guilt I felt about not sending letters and packages that I had promised to send. When I made all those promises, I knew I'd be distracted back in the states, but I knew I wouldn't neglect Bolivia. And then I did precisely that.

So after seven years, I discovered where I had placed Hermano Perez's letter for safe keeping. I was right about it being a safe place to keep it. Since I discovered it, I've been wondering what would feel worse for the sister missionary, knowing that a letter had been written to her and then lost or getting a letter with possibly urgent information seven years late. And then there's the possibility that she still won't get the letter. I tried to email her to verify her address, but all emails sent to her bounced back. So in the end, I sent it to the permanent address listed under her name and the one Hermano Perez had originally written on the letter. If it were me, I think I'd rather have the letter seven years late than know that one existed but was lost, but I suppose I probably won't even find out if she ever receives the letter.