Laura has been having me go through my large stack of old letters. Most of them are from my mission, but really this includes virtually every letter I ever received. I thought I should make a few notes based on going back through those letters.
I have been surprised at the number of notes and letters I received in high-school – almost all of them from girls. It should be noted that very few high-school boys will communicate through notes and letters with other boys. I suspect that most of them would not take the time to write letters or notes to girls most of the time either, but I was one who would. I remember writing many times to Jen Marda (now Harris) but I had forgotten about the majority of my correspondence with other girls. Jen was easy to remember because my friendship with her impacted me so much. She was the first female who really let me inside her mind and heart to understand her – she was also the first who was dealing with the scars of abuse. What I learned from her was instructive for others I would later meet who were also inflicted with similar wounds (including Laura).
I remember writing and receiving a few letters from Dawn Christensen (from Woods Cross) and Michelle Hirschi (who I met at BYU’s AHSSP in 1994 from Othello Washington and saw once when we were students at BYU) but I had completely forgotten how many such letters I wrote and received from them and others. I truly had much more emotional support through my teenage years than I had remembered. Similarly on my mission I remembers a letter or two from Danielle Bentley (a dance partner from BYU) but I had not remembered that she had written me for the entire first year of my mission including sending the news of her time in the Japanese house (BYU Foreign Language Housing) and her call to serve in Japan plus a couple of letters after she left on her mission. I had also forgotten the sheer volume of letters that I received from Connie Burningham and others of my neighbors from home during my mission. Another discovery was that the Tooheys (Mike and Janet – we baptized Janet in Carbondale before they were married) wrote more than just once or twice and kept me up to date on their moves, and the birth of Alexis. I did remember receiving letters that Bishop Shumway sent to the missionaries in the ward, but I had forgotten that those letters spanned 2/3 of my mission.
How many times do we touch the lives of people, for good or ill, and not realize the impact we have. How often do people touch our lives and their effect stays with us even after the memory of their interactions has vanished?