Mission in the Works

For those of you who aren't already aware, I have been contemplating the idea of serving an LDS mission for almost a year now. I started thinking about it around my 20th birthday last December and have gone back and forth about the decision until last October.

After the Sunday Morning session of General Conference, my sister decided to follow a prompting to give me a call. We had a nice long chat about what was going on with one-another. The question about serving a mission somehow came into play. I cried to her for roughly half an hour because I was having such a hard time with the decision. Being the sweet sister that she is, she listened to all of my concerns (which is hard to do through tears) and offered me some words of comfort. She shared with me some of the talks she heard both Saturday (unfortunately I missed the entire morning session and it was all about missionary work) and Sunday morning. My sister helped me to realize that I have no need to fear because if this is what Heavenly Father wants me to do, He will be there for me 100% of the time. Throughout the course of our conversation, I remembered one of the talks that had been given Sunday morning. I can't remember who said it, but one line that really stuck out to me was, "I can do hard things as long as I have the Lord's help."

Following our conversation, I contemplated everything I have heard from all of my family members, general authorities, and friends about serving missions. Needless to say, I decided to get going on mission papers.

Later on that day my bishop gave me a call to see if I had started on my papers (I had my first interview with him about a month prior to this experience). He helped me get started. I finished all of the paperwork last Sunday. Here is the picture I sent in with my papers:

After ward prayer last Sunday, my bishop pulled me into his office for a final interview with him. He then gave me a call around 10:00 p.m. informing me he was at my stake president's home and the stake president wanted to talk to me. I set up an appointment with him for today.

I had an excellent one hour interview with my stake president this morning. He was so easy to talk to. At the end of our discussion, he told me that my papers should be going up to Salt Lake City this week!

Hopefully my next post will be about my mission call!