My friend who serve in France when I was in Northern Argentina (insanely hot, really void of anything nice or touristy, and very unpleasant temporally). His emails always sounded picturesque and amazing and I was really jealous. I loved my mission and the people, but mostly because those things helped me gain a more grounded and complete worldview.

Anyways, we got home and we were talking about the mission and I said “yeah man, we can’t all be as lucky as you going to France!” With a laugh. He looked puzzled and said “what do you mean!? France sucked… I baptized a 9 year old inactive kid and spent most of my time eating shelf milk and running away from crazy people!” I asked about the sights, the countryside, all of that “cool” stuff. He said sure, that’s nice but it gets old and you get bored.