Five years ago today, as I was going through the normal motions of getting ready for work (and it also happened to be a Monday) I received an unexpected call from the wife of my favorite mission companion, Joel Dean. Her voice was shaky and I immediately thought that maybe Joel had been in a wreck. Instead, it was much worse: Joel had passed away during the night. It was eventually revealed to be caused by viral pneumonia.
I can't tell you how sad I was to hear this.
I met Joel when we were assigned as companions while we serving missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Eldersburg, Maryland in February 1998. Joel was very athletic and seemed to be the ladies man, on first impressions. Both of those qualities, I was not. But I found immediately that he was a whole lot more. He was really funny and interested very much in other people. He seemed to really enjoy making people happy and he always made me feel good about myself. He also had a great testimony of Jesus Christ. We served together for three months.
After the mission we kept in contact, but not as much as I would've liked, which I blame myself for. He would call a lot to see how I was doing and just to chat and we would always make plans to have lunch but it never seemed to happen. The last time I saw Joel was the September before his death when he had invited me to his house for dinner on what happened to actually be his and his wife's wedding anniversary that they were celebrating later that week.
When his wife called with that awful news, it was devastating. I don't mean to demean my other mission companions, but it was absolutely horrible that out of all of them, Joel was the one chosen to go.
I think of him often and can't wait to see him again on the other side.
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