Elder Merrill pranks his family....sheesh

Usually in the morning I turn on the computer and then throughout the day, in the bottom right corner, I will see a brief message when an email comes in. You know, where it gives the sender's  name and then 2 or 3 words from the subject line. So I had come upstairs to put some laundry away and I see that little alert box come up and I glance over to see "Elder Ethan Merrill" and so I'm all "YES!!" and then I see the words "I'm coming home" just as the alert box disappears. I am here to tell you, we moms can do some incredible amounts of sheer panic/freaking out, all without saying a single word. I am pretty sure I came up with at least 274 different scenarios in the agonizing 90 seconds or so it took me to log into my email - pretty sure my blood pressure hit an all new high - may have stopped breathing for a bit, yeah......

That's right,  you heard me right. I'm coming home..........3 weeks earlier than expected.  Instead of coming home around March 14th, I'll be arriving home around February 25th.  This is due to the many missionaries who want to serve missions, visas, and a whole bunch of other stuff with the announcement from President Monson.  The assistants to the President wanted to have your email so you could see for yourself, so I'm going to give it to them today and we'll see if they send you an E-mail. But yeah....I'm coming home slightly sooner than expected.

Now that mom is back to her regular calm and cool nirvana-like state, we can continue with the rest of the letter...and find out he is in a new area!

I also got transferred to a new area! I'm in a place called Carlos Casares.  Funny enough, we got rain on our first day here (I'm seeing a pattern with rain and moving to new areas.....)This is, in all honesty, the hottest part of the mission. Like, this is where the last mission president sent unfaithful missionaries to suffer and burn.  Then there is the water. They put arsenic in it. As in the poison.  So we CANNOT drink it.  We have to jump out of the shower if it starts to turn funny colors too. But don't fret. We're doing good for having gotten through this first day.  Our house is like 100 years old and falling apart and it leaks when it rains. But my room is where the house is in the best condition and we have a fan for the night, so we are doing good.

Not sure whether to laugh or cringe! Elder Merrill is definitely going to have some interesting adventures ahead of him!

Enough about the unnatural lifestyle I live. I always enjoy hearing about the little stuff from home. I can see a couple of stars here like you, but I haven't had much success identifying what constellations or planets I'm seeing. It's still a cool way to spend the night, looking on stars on the roof. And it's so much better than being in the house, as it's cooler outside than inside.
Tell everyone I miss them and wish them a Merry Christmas. I'll let you know how it goes here.  We will go to the central office of our mission (Bahia Blanca) for a "party" of some sort on the 18th but we have to work Christmas day. How weird is that? Well I sure do love you guys, I'll see you when I get home (which is 3 weeks earlier) and until then, I hope you have an awesome week!           Elder Ethan Merrill