She was always super shy, and totally not my type. I'd never been remotely attracted or interested in her romantically but she'd been a good friend and always in the background. I never once suspected she might be interested, and I just never was. And when she started writing on my mission I was like, great! someone's interested in LDS missions and this was a good opportunity to talk about what I was doing in South America. Then I got seriously burned by the 3 week delay in pouch mail.

The delayed mail conversation meant two critical letters crossed in the mail. One written by me where I was joking about how funny it would be if we dated, even if that was completely ridiculous (why was that a good idea to write ever I still don't know) . And another written by her arrived where she expressed how she's always had feelings for me.

The day her letter arrived, there was actually two letters. I opened the older one first and my heart sank to the bottom of my stomach as I realized what my letter was going to do to her. And the second letter from her written in furious caps to NOT OPEN THE OTHER LETTER and threatening me with all kinds of nastiness if I did. As a missionary, I should have written back to her and lied about reading the other letter but I told the truth like I felt I should and we never really recovered from that. Her response was filled with four letter words and all kinds of woman scorned rage. She was furiously embarrassed and pretty much stopped talking to me. I believe in honesty, but now think this is one of the few instances in my life when I absolutely should have lied.