Letters.

Writing letters is always fun. At least to me. Most people would prefer the easiest method--sending the receiver a message on Facebook. More often than not, it's instantly seen and can be instantly replied to. But there's something about writing out what you want to say and seeing your handwriting and seeing others and getting things in the mail that makes me happy. Plus its a great way to practice your handwriting since they have you type anything and everything these days.

*Side note about handwriting: Sometimes I deliver pizza to teenagers, and they're the ones who sign the receipt (their parents are gone or something). So I ask them, "please sign and total the receipt." I can't tell you how many times they simply write out their name instead of putting a signature. This literally depresses me. Yes, they lied to you in third grade when they said you'll use cursive all the time. That doesn't mean that you can totally disregard it. You're going to need to know how to sign your name when you buy a house or a car or write out checks. I'm 99.9% certain they won't take you seriously if you don't know how to sign your own name. They NEED to put cursive back in schools.*

Anyway. For the past almost two years, I have written letters to a friend of mine on a mission. He is serving in Brazil, so it takes about 3-4 weeks for my letter to get to him, then however long it takes for his response, then 3-4 weeks for his letter to get to me. So there's about 2-3 months between each letter I get from him. While it helped his mission fly by, it sucked having to wait for a letter. I wrote him a letter in November, which meant I was to get a response sometime in February. Then February came and left, and I still hadn't gotten a letter. I was worried my letter got lost, or his letter got lost, or someone had for some reason taken my letter, etc. Basically, I was paranoid (my friend had been consistent with his letters his entire mission).

Monday morning, I looked at my phone and realized I had some emails. The first ones were from the several stores who have my email address telling me I can get 30% off of something I would never consider buying. But then I realized I had an email from my friend. At first I thought it was either a joke or his email had gotten hacked (which is highly unlikely since its a church email), but then I read the first few lines and got really excited.

Missionaries can now write emails to people who aren't family.

You don't even know how much this excites me. Now I don't have to wait 2-3 months to talk to my friend, I can wake up at 7 AM Monday mornings and get an email or two from him and have said Monday be the greatest day of the week. As much as I loved writing to and receiving letters from him, I'm much more in favor of the email option since it takes forever for letters to get to and from here. Plus he extended his mission by at least a month, so this will (hopefully) make these last two months go by a little bit faster.