Living away from Salt Lake and all my usual sights and tastes(I haven't had anything spicy in 20 days) starts to boil me down and I think of myself as this blank state.

This is what a lot of people wish for. A chance to start over and run away from your problems. And in this case, it really worked, but that doesn't mean I don't miss the people who usually help me solve the problems.

I got a lot of texts from people I love today, which sounds really stupid, but means a lot when I haven't seen any Salt Lakers in 3 weeks. And this is just the first "trimester" of my trip. Ha. But I take each day at a time and know I won't be given a gift so huge as this trip, again, for a really long time. Or maybe I will, this year could be God's way of saying, "Rachel, good job hanging in there for all of 2009 and the hard parts of 2010." I can't really tell if that is a sacrilegious thing to say. Right now I have some Benedryl  starting to kick in.

So here are some of my action steps in hitting the reset button while I am out here in the fields of waving grain.
- I've been catching up on my daily Bible readings. (I am only one month behind now. Woohoo!)
- I am trying to clean up my speech, in all ways.
- trying to be quick to serve.
- learning the stories, the heritage. Geesh. I am supposed to be writing these stories down.

Judy told me today that she cried really hard when we moved to Colorado to start a church. She was devastated. And I never really thought about that. We have always just kept moving farther and farther from home base, and it never seemed to phase my parents, but it was really hard on the grandparents.

I told Judy today that I feel like I am supposed to be writing my proverbial novel. You always see the writers go off into the country to write, but here I am watching Reality Television and painting my fingernails.

I will try harder. I will.