Surprise of the Day

I'm trying to get things ready for Malia's baptism. She's asked me to speak on her special day, and so I've been trying to gather my thoughts. I thought it would be special to include in my talk some of Naki's own thoughts on baptism, and so tonight I've been searching for the letters Naki wrote me while we were missionaries, and I can't find them! I'm positive I kept all of them...but their whereabouts are a great mystery to me...I'm trying not to hyperventilate when I think about not being able to find them. They're just letters, not him. But still, I really want to find them. I do have his missionary journal, which for him is more like a journal just from the Missionary Training Center...he didn't write much consistently after that. But it's been cute to read his words from when he was 19. He copied a practice of mine with his missionary journal. Something I did as a teenager with all of my journals was name each one...seemed to make it more personable to write to 'someone', and so I named each journal. At the beginning of his missionary journal he wrote the following:

"With this journal I wanted to do a little something different. I decided to give this journal a name. I got this idea from my sweetheart Abby. I miss her...I especially miss talking to her. We used to have communications at least 2 or 3 times a week. So with this in mind I name my journal after my sweetheart, Abigail."

One entry I discovered tonight was dated February 26, 1997. It seems he'd just received a letter from me in which I vented some frustrations to him that I'd been feeling about some things he either had or hadn't been including in his letters to me. I can't remember the letter he'd just received, but I do remember that I missed him terribly. It seems that the two years we spent apart as full time missionaries was a dry run for our time apart from each other now. Here's what he wrote to me in this particular entry:

"Right now I want to say I love you and wish I could be with you every second of the day...that's why I miss you like crazy...I don't know why you get like this, thinking that you're alone and things. Don't you think I go through those things? Think about it. I'm here with people I never knew before in my earthly life and you talk about lonely. The only comfort I get from being here by myself is from the Lord. He makes up the difference in my life now. Know that I'd love to be there with you every second of the day but once I think about that, the days turn into eternity and just drag. I'm focused on the work because 1. it is the most important work in the church and 2. because the harder I work the faster the time goes and we can be together again, forever. So don't think like that again, okay Abby? You're not alone. I pray every night for you and worry about your safety. I'm there with you in my heart."

I know he didn't write those words for these circumstances, but they're my coveted Surprise of the Day.