An Idiot in Indiana (Bless His Heart.)

Brendan has his p-day (preparation day) on Mondays. Most missionaries do, when they finally arrive in the location of their assigned mission.
So why then, do I not post on his blog Monday afternoon, or even on Tuesday?
I will tell you why.
Because it takes me a few days to scrape together all the information he randomly sends out.
For instance, I wrote Elder Wadley a nice long e-mail this week.
This was the e-mail I got back.
Keep in mind, I AM THE MOTHER.

hey this week was really cool we got two people on date for baptism and we had interviews with president also i went on an adventure that was super fun!

That was it. Now internets, I am not an expert at reading between the lines, but it seems to me like there was plenty here for him to actually write home about.
Let's break this down, shall we?
"two people on date for baptism..."
This means he has been teaching some investigators who committed to being baptized. This is pretty exciting stuff!
 Then there is the matter of "interviews with president" (his mission president) and "an adventure that was super fun."

Three solid things here.

So I caught him online, and tried to pry some more information out of him.
Internets- this is like mining for diamonds. But not diamonds exactly, it is like mining for carrots or potatoes. He should be just telling me these things, it should be common-place, but I have to work really hard to get a full accounting of his week.
Like I should be able to somehow put this on a resume if I ever need a job.
Here is our back and forth, him in blue and me in red (since I am kind of bugged) and really, they should probably have a class in the Missionary Training Center on "How to Write Your Mother." If they already have this class, please don't tell me because clearly this class was a failure to a certain Elder in Indy.

Are you going to tell me more??

more of what?

You can't just say "we have two baptisms lined up and I had an adventure" you owe it to me to sit down for a couple of minutes and recap. Pretend you are writing your own blog post.

we have two investigators lined up for baptism as of right now one is for Sept 24 the other Oct 1 the adventure is we went to this abandon building called the icon building and we explored in it i found a pretty dope Christmas ornament in it it says happy birthday Jesus so that's cool 

Please tell me you took pictures? Did you teach any of the lessons for these investigators?

i did teach lessons for both of them will send pics in a second maybe

Then he did send pictures. Here they are:

"What are these photos?" you might ask. Well, let's get back to our online dialog, shall we?

And maybe some more detail about anything you've been doing. I mailed a package. Did you get it yet? How was your interview with your president?

we mostly tract um also we did three service projects (OH MY HECK MORE STUFF HE COULD WRITE ABOUT) in one day havent got the package interviews were good

What are these pictures of?

terre haute we climbed onto a roof and i took pics other then that i havent taken many pictures

What is that building though? Do you know?

Are you supposed to be climbing on roofs?

ummmmm im not sure if were suppose to but we did

Internets! Do you see what is happening here? We have missionaries climbing on rooftops at night, exploring abandoned buildings and possible identity theft (more on that later) but I guess I was getting a tad frustrated, and ready to book a flight to Indiana and beat him with a Book of Mormon. I got after him a little.

It's the Vigo county courthouse. I had to google. 

You do remember that a lot of people are interested in what you are doing week to week. I am not wanting to be critical- but your emails need to be more of a story instead of one sentence that I have to drag out of you. I need you to take a little bit of time and tell me what you have done for the week. I know it's a pain, but we want to know. I look so forward to Mondays to hear from you, and it hurts my feelings that you don't tell me anything. :(

i dont know what to say about my week what would you like to know its boring stuff all we do is walk around all day this email thing goes two ways you tell me about your week too

AAAARGHHHHHH!!!! So, if anyone else out there is e-mailing this kid, and he throws you any bones, please give me a head's up.

Later this week, I got a brief call from Fishers, Indiana on my phone. They left a message, but it was just silence. I laughed a little, and thought that maybe Brendan had butt-dialed my cell phone. I told Sam about it, and he said he got the same phone call?
Then it was weird. So Sam called the number back, and it was the mission home.
The sweet secretary informed Sam that there was a "problem."
Sam's first thought was "Crap! Already?"
Then she proceeded to tell us that several Elders went to the local mall, and I guess gave out some personal information to a data mining kiosk where they got some free crap to fill out a credit card application. Several of the Elders were involved, and she wanted to let all of the parents know to watch their accounts back home in case of identity theft.
Sam thanked her and hung up.
I assured Sam that Brendan was pretty street smart and would have probably given a fake name, etc, if he even participated in this at all, which I doubted he would.
This morning I got a credit card in the mail in Brendan's name.

Apparently he now has a $6000.00 credit line in a jewelry store in Indiana.