“In high school I did swimming. I had a lot of talent, but I don’t think I worked that hard. I think I could have been a lot better. Looking back, I wish I’d done it, but it’s in the past.
I’m really tall. I have a perfect body for swimming. I was good. I did try somewhat, but I feel like I never tried really hard in anything before my mission. I knew when I was doing it I could have tried harder, but it would have been a lot of work. I went to State, but I didn’t place. If I’d worked hard I could have gone to State and been getting first in my races.
Whenever our school went to State we would usually get 5th or 6th out of all the teams. There were a couple teams that were just way bigger than us. It wasn’t like we were going to beat them. But my year was really fast in swimming, so when we were all seniors we went to State and hoped to get third.
Everything just went down the tubes. We barely lost each race. In swimming, the first day there are preliminaries and then the next day it’s finals. How you do in preliminaries determines what heat you’ll be in for finals. First to eighth gets in the first heat. I got ninth. That was just one of many things. That happened to lots of people on our team and we didn’t do that well.
After high school I served a mission in Tampico, Mexico. It was really hot. It was really hard work, especially at the beginning. I think it’s like that for everyone on a mission, but especially with a foreign culture, foreign language, foreign everything. It was hard, but that taught me how to work hard.
Everything is in retrospect one of the hardest thing you’ve ever done. I see my life like that. Before, in high school, I think swimming was the hardest thing I’d ever done. The mission was harder. Since then I can do way harder things more easily.”
Everything just went down the tubes. We barely lost each race. In swimming, the first day there are preliminaries and then the next day it’s finals. How you do in preliminaries determines what heat you’ll be in for finals. First to eighth gets in the first heat. I got ninth. That was just one of many things. That happened to lots of people on our team and we didn’t do that well.
After high school I served a mission in Tampico, Mexico. It was really hot. It was really hard work, especially at the beginning. I think it’s like that for everyone on a mission, but especially with a foreign culture, foreign language, foreign everything. It was hard, but that taught me how to work hard.
Everything is in retrospect one of the hardest thing you’ve ever done. I see my life like that. Before, in high school, I think swimming was the hardest thing I’d ever done. The mission was harder. Since then I can do way harder things more easily.”