Just for today...

  If you are reading this on March 5th, 2010 - the counter at the right for my ever so handsome missionary now reads...... 300 days left.  But only for today - it's like a special in a store - just for one day - except there is only one and I claim the product to be mine.  As the new mission starts procedures to split into the Tucson Arizona Mission and the Albuquerque, New Mexico - it's time to trust the Lord again.  If Elder Hillary goes to the New Mexico Mission - the place where he's spent most of his entire mission - (El Paso, Horizon, Texas, and Hatch, New Mexico) it will be the 4th mission he's been assigned to just over a year ago.  Previously called to Chihuahua Mexico, MTC referral center (during recuperation from surgery on his lung), Tucson Arizona and ??  Each day, each e-mail, each letter humbles me and requires great restraint some days - to not just go and bring him home.  But he's been blessed with the Hillary/Bowen stubborn gene, and refuses to quit.  It's just not in him to do so.  If anyone has ever read something written by Ryan, you are witness to the smallest writing on earth.  The tougher his day is, the smaller the writing on the page.  This week.......... under a microscope..... I read the following.  "I had a strange dream the other night.  I sat up in bed, I was in a big bed with a mattress, a box spring and a frame for the bed.  But I knew it was a dream, because when I woke up - I was still on the mattress I sleep on, on the floor."  I stood next to my bed last night... it was tough to get in it.  I love this Missionary.  I love that when this kid devotes himself to something - he doesn't flake out.  He doesn't let people down.  He sleeps on the floor because he's grateful to just have the mattress.  He lives off of oatmeal cookies - because that's all they had that week.  He knocks on every door in the town in 3 hours time in the morning, and because he's not a quitter, he knocks on them again in the afternoon.   He's baptized people in this town in which every said - it could not be done.  He's the best at writing "I love you" on every corner of the envelope knowing that his mom needs every one of them.  Today - he's out knocking on doors, serving, training a new companion (of which I told him that if he decides to kill him, bury the body deep) and awaiting news about his future mission assignment.  I just barely figured out how to spell Chihuahua - and now I need to maybe take on Albuquerque.... So - take a minute and send off a prayer for this kid... 300 days left only today, 299 more nights on a mattress, on the floor.  I love you son.