I have very good news. I’ve been trying to keep it to myself all day, but I just can’t help myself. I’ve got to tell somebody, and since nobody around here understands my German, looks like this is the best place to go with it. Well, here goes:

I’m not dead.

Earlier in the week I would have seen that as bad news, in light of how sick I’ve been. I’ve wanted remove my throat and throw it out the window (which would be a bad idea, since that’s probably how got into this mess in the first place). But I haven’t done that, and I won’t.

I’ve just been so sleep-deprived because of the coughing and choking that I’ve been loathing the nights. I just want to shut down and let my body do its job and start healing, but truth is, if you can’t breathe, you can’t sleep.

So, the Branch President called yesterday and asked me to speak in Church. I was up until 2am writing my talk on two 3×5 cards—I knew I shouldn’t get too ambitious. Matthias luckily corrected all my grammar mistakes, but it didn’t make it any easier that I was sick, had to teach the lesson to the Youth, and had to speak as well.

But I made it through. That counts for something, right?

When I was in the Philippines, early on in my mission, I remember the frustration of not being able to speak or understand. After a while I didn’t want anything to do with the language. My thoughts were along the lines of, “Why can’t Tagalog be more like English?” And just as often, because I’d taken German in High School, “Why can’t Tagalog be more like German?”

One night I had a dream where my mission president called me into his office and explained that there had been a mistake. I had been assigned to the Philippines by mistake and that I was really supposed to go to Germany. He handed me my plane ticket and sent me on my way.

If I could travel back in time, I wouldn’t have the heart to visit my 19-year old self and say, “Look, kid. It’d be just as hard in Germany.”

I know that now because I’m going through it again. It was painful enough the first time. It is ironic, however, that my thoughts now are more along the lines of, “Why can’t German be more like Tagalog?”

It’s good to be reminded of these things, to remember how much the Lord helped me on my mission. The language eventually came, the comprehension came as well, and I was able to talk to the Filipinos just as easily as I could speak English.

Maybe even better than I could speak my native language . . . two years of speaking another language did something to me—it royally messed up my English at the time. But that’s another story.