Calendars and Pennsylvania

I am currently creating, as I do every year, calendars for my extended family. I can't tell you how grateful I am for Calendar Creator, which keeps track of all of the birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries for me. Every year there are more of them. Every year I have to add another one or two. But I am extensively glad that I only have to worry about them for a few seconds as I run back over the past year trying to remember who has been added to our family. This year, I only had to add three people. Now, this makes this task sound fairly easy, and you would expect that after having done this job since my mom bequeathed it around the time I started high school that I would have a handle on it by now and I wouldn't make any mistakes. You would be wrong. Every year, I ruin between ten and fifty sheets of card stock. So far, I've ruined only two, but I'm not even a fourth the way through yet. And so, I figured while these are printing I might as well rant on my blog. I've got nothing else to do. :D
I have been missing Pennsylvania a lot lately. I'm not sure what has brought it on, whether I'm finally getting past my depression enough to be able to look back on my mission and love it, or seeing my old district leader in my friend's ward, or just thinking about how beautiful it probably is right now. I had looked forward to seeing Pennsylvania in the fall and never actually got the chance. I hope to next year though.
I was thinking about my mission while driving home today. If someone were to ask me what the worst time of my life was, I would likely respond with my mission. But I would answer the same if asked what the best time of my life was. A mission is so amazingly encompassing that it's absolutely impossible to describe with words. I cannot tell you of the love I feel for the people and the place. I miss the people more than I truly miss PA, but I do miss the state as well. Oddly enough, I miss the spaghetti-like roads as much as anything. I miss the smell of chocolate in Hershey as you walk out the door, I miss the smell of sewage in Hershey as you walk out the door. I miss wondering which it was going to smell like on any given day. I miss walking down the street on Chocolate Ave, passing all of the interesting churches, restaurants, bars, clubs. All those places I never actually went into, but caught a lot of people as they exited, hoping to get them interested in discovering the truth. I miss walking forty-five minutes to get to a less-active's house in Lititz, never quite knowing what might come out of his mouth while you were there, if you would be teaching, or if he would be. I wonder how he's doing. I love the people I served so much I can almost physically feel the love filling my heart as I think about them. And I miss them so much it's almost painful sometimes. I know I'm where Heavenly Father wants me to be, as odd as that sounds sometimes, but I wish I could go back and visit sooner rather than later. Oh, how I loved and hated my mission!