My First Case of Homesickness!

Missing the action . . .

. . . The Finish Sprint . . .

. . . The Podium

This week was HORRIBLE!!!!!!!!! Friday night when we were walking home through the centro of the city, guess what I saw!!! A bunch of guys setting up for a UCI professional bike race, “O Tour do Brasil.” And Stage One was going to end in Assis, on Saturday morning!!! Dang! Commence homesickness.... now!

Okay, well no way in heck was I going to miss it. Luckily it was in the morning, so we still got in our proselyting time. It was a very nicely done set-up. It was all decked out and they had everything except righteous techno music blasting at the finish. Oh, and the crowd had NO idea what was going on. Hence, NO ONE had cowbells, or even clapped. I was the only lunatic screaming when they came in at the finish.

There were 14 Brazilian teams (did not even know that Brazil HAD professional cycling), and 7 foreign teams. 5 South American teams, one US team, and one German team. “Sutter Home Cycling Team” was the name of the American team, and one of them took 4th place.

Anyway, it was cool, and I loved every bit of it. But, it came with one horrible consequence, that is that I’m a little “trunky,” or homesick – for the first time on my mission. I should say WAS homesick, because I’m over it now. It was interesting that I couldn’t focus at all for 2 days, just all my cycling memories. That finally made me understand something. In May of 2009, before I got my mission call, I had a very detailed dream. In the dream, I took out my call from the envelope and read out loud, “Brussels Belgium Mission.” Well, we all know that didn’t happen, and I always wondered why. Holy cow, now I understand! Belgium is one of the cycling capitals of the world, and if I would have been sent there I would have died of homesickness. And now I have grown to really appreciate cycling more since not being able to ride a bike for the last 14 months.

I was momentarily distracted -- but I'm back on target now!

Well, out of time.

Tchau!
Elder Titus