Letter from Josh 16 November 2009

Dear Family,

this week has been interesting. Chyulu was fun, but i had to ride that stupid bike soooooo far! we went 80 kilometers in total. and it is hilly and rocky. and these bikes arent nice bikes by any means. there are no shocks of any kind and the seats are hard and there is only one gear, and the bike itself weighs about 40 pounds plus the five liters of water that you have to haul along with all of the normal scriptures and things. so i was completely beat when i got home that night. and then i was even more stupid and said hey, these guys actually have weights, ill work out. so the rest of the week my whole body hurt. it was almost a good kind of hurt, excpet that i hadnt worked out in too long so it was more of an annoying hurt. but other than being sore chyulu was good. we rode right up to the Tsavo game reserve. there is no fence and i guess during the rainy season the people have problems with the elephants coming in and eating their crops. as much as that sucks, it would be pretty cool at the same time.
the rest of the week was kinda slow. it probably will be for the next while. i dont have to show the other guys around anymore but that just means a whole lot of free time since we dont have enough investigtors to fill or days. hopefully they will come soon. but we will see. The best thing about my companion is that he has a very short attention span and a ton of energy so he cant sit for very long without doing anything. so that keeps us going and working. i have had many comps that were the opposite so its nice to have someone that pushs me along.
I saw a poster for the harry potter 6 movie the other day and it made me so jealous i couldnt believe it. i realize that was like 6 months ago but i was still filled with envy for people that can actually take two hours of their time to go and watch a movie that is sure to disapoint them since it wont be nearly as good as the book but that will still make them totally satisfied since they will no longer wonder if it was awesome or not. and that made me thinkof a whole list of things i wish i could just up and go do. but then thought of how guilty i would feel if i actually did any of them, and most of that desire went away. its odd how we can be so scared of ourselves. scared to act when we think that there is even a chance of feeling bad or something going wrong. and while this would have made me feel bad since i agreed to live by more strict rules for these two years, it made me think about how we hold ourselves back out of this same fear too often. the fear of "if i tell her i love her then maybe she wont say it back" or "if i get the promotion then i will have a lot more responsibilitys that i dont know if i can handle" so we sit back and do nothing, we accept being mediocre, because we are scared to fail or get rejected or lose what we once had. we "play it safe" but then we dont progress, and we dont live up to our full potential, and we dont know what we could have been or what we could have done. maybe i am talking more about myself than all of you when it comes to this. but i decided i need to be more "risky" and to take those chances and face my fears. i dont want to feel like i could be or do any better than what i am in the moment. i want to know that i am doing all i can.
anyways, i have to go, time is up for today. i love you guys!


love,
Elder Harris

P.S. i need more insoles for my shoes if you could put those in the christmas package. i would like the dr. sholls back support ones. the held up much longer then the massage gel crap thing that lasted about a week and a half.
and as for megan, thanks for writing me ocasionally, but like your blog said, "as for the brothers. . .