The Year in Review: John in 2022

 On the evening of December 6th, Steven, John and I went to the stake center to meet with our stake president and John was released from service as a full time missionary. 

It has been a rocky three years since he was first called. 

September 2019: We dropped off at the airport and sent him off to Brazil. (See blog written at the time) He attended the MTC in Brazil, and then continued on to the Brazil, Sao Paulo West mission where he served until...

March of 2020: ...when he returned home because of the pandemic. (See blog) He decided to defer his mission for a year in the hopes that the pandemic would subside by then, and meanwhile he attended a year at the Colorado School of Mines.

July of 2021: John left home again, this time to the Florida, Jacksonville Mission, with the hopes that it would be temporary and he would be able to return to Brazil before long.

September 2021: Due to anxiety issues, John returned home and transitioned to a service mission. (see blog) For the last 15 months, John has been actively engaged in serving. On Mondays he has driven to the Fort Collins Temple, where he worked for several hours in all weathers, planting flowers, pulling weeds, shoveling snow, scrubbing goose droppings, etc. to keep the temple grounds beautiful.

On Wednesdays, John has been serving in the Denver North Mission office, where he has been a tremendous help to both the mission president and the office staff. He has also worked with other missionaries in the mission, making reports to track the success of social media ads.

Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, John has worked for Global Services, which is the department of the Church that does tech support. When people have problems with the gospel library app and report them, John and other service missionaries would respond, either guiding them in how to do what they wanted to, assuring them that the programmers were aware of the problem and working to fix it, or reporting new problems to the programmers. John had opportunities to work with, train and lead other service missionaries throughout the country.

John also had leadership roles among the service missionaries in the Denver area. He served as a district leader and as an assistant to the mission leaders (The equivalent to an assistant to the president (AP) in a proselyting mission.) 

When not anxiously engaged in missionary work, John has developed his music talents. He accompanied the singing at monthly mission conferences. He has has also developed an interest in playing the organ as well as the ukulele, the recorder, the sax, and other instruments.

And of course he still loves to read and do computer coding. I think he is developing his own operating system. He is also working on an icon editor, which you can see/download here. He is looking forward to returning the the School of Mines in a few weeks where he will continue working towards a degree in computer engineering.