Here's Quick One

Another little tidbit about me and my family.  Two weeks after I came home, my little brother (Jon) left on his mission.  Most people say that two weeks really isn't a very long time to be with someone when you're in a situation like mine.  I suppose they're right, but I've never really felt that it was a cruel thing that my brother is gone for another two years.

Why?

Well, a couple of reasons:  The biggest one is because there is an LDS family that lives across the street from us, and they had one of their daughters get back from her mission on the same day that their next youngest daughter left.  They were allowed to visit with each other, alone, for a very brief amount of time (I can't recall if it was 30 minutes or 2 hours--but you get the picture).  So I got pretty lucky to have an entire 336 hours with my bro. 

The other reason is because serving a mission is awesome!  I know he's going to be having loads of fun and will be having the most amazing experiences.  And unlike me, Jon is going to a truly foreign place.   Jon is serving in the Kobe, Japan mission, which covers the central part of the main island.  It is home to several major cities (Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, Kobe, etc.), and to some amazing culture.  This mission also has some really deep personal connections as well.  I won't get into all of those details here, but you can read about them here at http://jon-low.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html. 

Right before he left, my brother expressed some anxiety about leaving.  This is totally normal.  There's a lot of things to be anxious about.  I remember I had similar feelings as well right before I left.  I remember talking to one of my friends from my freshmen year at college about this.  This friend was older and had recently returned from serving a mission (I believe it was somewhere in South America).  As I went on about the thoughts of leaving all my friends behind and putting a stumbling block in my school work, my friend interrupted me and said "there will always be a hundred different reasons for not going."  I was taken off guard by his frankness.  "But," he continued, "you can't afford to not go."  Latter on, this same friend said the only thing I need to remember is that my savior loves me, and that the rest will take care of itself.

And it did. 

If you're interested in learning more about my little brother, you can visit his blog at http://jon-low.blogspot.com/.  Also, Jon's Mission President in the Kobe mission keeps a blog as well (a mission president is in charge of all the missionaries in a specific mission.  He is in charge of deciding on who goes to what town, as well as the well being of all the missionaries in his jurisdiction.).  You can follow his blog at http://presidentmcintyre.blogspot.com/

Welcome!

Hello there.  This is the first post in this brand new blog that I've created.  Yeah, I know--blogs are nothing new, I 'm kind of a late comer,  I don't have any real reason to be broadcasting myself to the entire World Wide Web, and so on and so forth.  But hey,  neither does Paris Hilton, and you don't see that stopping her.
 
I guess I ought to tell you a little bit about myself and what you can expect from this blog.  My name is Jake and I live in Utah.  Yes, I do happen to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (more commonly known as the LDS or Mormon Church).  In fact, I just returned from serving a two year mission for my church a little over a month ago.  Those of you who are Mormons know what this is all about, but for those who aren't :  this means that I was one of those guys you may have seen in white shirts and ties that you may have seen around town riding bikes and knocking on doors (perhaps it was yours at an inconvenient time).  This also means that for two full years, I was living away from my friends and family here in Utah, with my only contact with them being emails, letters, and two calls to home a year.  I was also severed from most of the rest of the 'real' world.  We missionaries don't watch TV, listen to radio or popular music, or go to the movies.

Here is a picture of me in the mission field, whilst in front of a bean field.

I'm the guy on the left.

My dad told me that the hardest part of serving a mission is coming home.  It really is kind of a culture shock in a lot of ways.  When I left home at the beginning of September, 2008,  the world had just barely found out who Sarah Palin was.  George W. Bush was still President.  Michael Jackson was still alive.  'The Dark Knight' was the big movie (and the last movie I saw).  Nobody knew what Twitter or Skype was.  When I got back in September, 2010, I had never heard a song from Lady Gaga or Justin Beiber (I didn't really even know who those people were--I just knew that one of them was a girl that dressed funny and appeared everywhere, and the other was Lady Gaga).   And this is all the cultural stuff.  The weirdest part about coming home is the personal stuff.  Seeing home again, catching up with old friends, that sort of business.  It's definitely pretty crazy to see how things have changed ("you guys did what to my bedroom!?"), but even crazier to see the things that don't change ("It's been two years and you're still arguing with that person?!"). 

Yeah, it's fair to say that my religion is going to play a fairly large role in this blog.  I'll probably regularly  share stories from my days as a missionary and such.  It should be fun.  But I'll also be writing a lot about my interests here--things like the YouTube videos I discovered, or thoughts on current events, movies, etc.  Hopefully, this will be an interesting read.