it's become a quick favorite for me.
makes it a little bit better
that morgan is from knoxville, tennessee
just like yours truly.
but a lot has changed in the last little while
with the way i talk.
today marks two years since i entered the mtc
and started one of life's big journeys:
a full-time service mission for
the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints.
i now speak with a little utah vocab,
heck, fetch and crap.
a little bit of that tennessee drawl,
y'all, darling, sweetheart.
there are a few more spanish pleasantries mixed in,
gracias, por favor, and hola.
and now the vocab of a returned missionary,
college, work, homework.
the way i talk
is now a little bit more grown-up.
i am trying to grow up.
prepare for the inevitable part of life
that requires you to snip the safety net
made by your parents
and create your own life.
and i owe a lot of that growing up
to the experience i had in nicaragua.
two teenagers, with a very rough idea of the real world,
wandering the streets of a foreign land
preaching a message that they firmly believe.
there is very little training considering
the objective that is given.
yet, the way we talk
is not with our mouths.
but with our testimonies, the spirit of god
and a lot of faith.
it's a language that you don't learn
from someone else.
rather, it's an individualized experience.
there may be similarities you share with others
but no feeling, notion, prompting
is the same person to person.
and that's an incredible language to master.
a good missionary sees it occasionally.
a great missionary sees it frequently.
but an extraordinary missionary sees it always.
i am no judge of character for myself,
but i do know that there are many moments
that i can remember that i spoke the words
that the hearer needed.
they were not my words,
but the way i talked
was enough to let me know
that they were the right words
that the man upstairs understood
and knew that person needed
at that precise moment.
it sounds a little bit like my daddy
it don't cuss around my momma
some words you've never heard
'less you come from down yonder
the man upstairs gets it
so i ain't tryna fix it
no i can't hide it
i don't fight, i just roll with it
oh, kinda slow like the Mississippi rolls
it's the only way i know
man it ain't my fault
i just live the way i talk.
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