Being Myself

There are three sisters from Orem in our zone, and I have connections with all of them! One of them knows the Sopers, one of them knows the Reeves, and one of them is the sister of a girl I went to EFY with. Weird. I love our zone though. There's an Elder that's also pretty determined to make music someday, and he can't believe that I'm in a band that's already finished and released one album, and always treats me like a celebrity and shakes my hand with two hands and announces to everyone in the room that I'm a great man. Fun times. I'm making so many friends in the mission, and it's pretty useful that Utah is all Ziony meaning that a lot of missionaries will end up there after the mission at some point and we'll totally hang out.

Obama is coming here on May 3. Wonder what kind of ruckus he's gonna cause. Just kidding, I've never been enough into politics to have a strong opinion about the president. What's up with Korea? Aren't they threatening the states or something? J---s asked me to baptize him yesterday, which made me super happy but I'm also stressed now because nobody is going to do anything about the font problems and I'm going to have to scramble to figure out how to get it full. But yeah, he's getting baptized this Saturday. If everything goes absolutely perfectly, we could baptize at least one person every weekend of this month! J----n did indeed get confirmed yesterday. I'm so happy that he is a member. The first thing he said to me when we were changing after the baptism ordinance was ''Just one more year till I can wear a plaque that says Elder G------s.'' He's gonna be an awesome missionary.

I'm not necessarily overwhelmed as District Leader. There are eight missionaries in our district, including my companionship. I just have to get everyone's numbers each week, do baptismal interviews, and teach District Meeting each week. I teach my first one tomorrow, but I feel prepared and fine about it. I still don't have any details about the Skype call! I'll let you know as soon as I know. Well, the Monday after I find out haha. Tell Alex I say congrats on his call! That's so awesome. Leaving basically exactly a year after I did! He's gonna be great. I totally dig the carpet in the family room. I'll definitely lay on it first thing when I walk in the door one day. I miss carpet. It's super rare here. We actually have it in our bedrooms in our house right now, but it's the hard, classroom type of carpet that hardly counts.

I'm really happy to be here. I think I was a little occupied before trying to figure out how to be a missionary, and losing part of me. Now I know how to be a missionary, but instead of being a missionary called Jacob Hampton... I'm Jacob Hampton, a missionary. I don't know, this probably all sounds stupid. I'm just happier because I know how to be myself and a missionary at the same time now. Maybe that wasn't a balance I shouldn't have ever had to try to find, but I did it, and I'm glad. I also think in my first area, the struggle to understand people and sometimes to speak caused people to kind of write me off as the serious, quiet type. But in this area, I can finally show people my personality, and they actually want to talk to me! It's been a self-esteem booster.

Hope you guys are having an awesome week! Getting close with LOST? Love you all!

--Elder Hampton

"Finally, here's the baptism picture from last week. I realized I don't have any photos with Elder Gutierrez. We'll have to take one for next week haha. "