On October 6th of 2012, I was sitting in a hotel room in Salt Lake City with my family. I was curled up on one side of the hotel couch, watching the itsy bitsy screen. I was trying to pay attention, but it was the middle of a semester and there were a lot of things going through my head. Grades, work, boys, responsibilities, lots of stress, lots of problems.
When the prophet began to speak, I tried really hard to listen. When the announcement came about elders serving at eighteen I knew, I just knew that I'd be able to go. More importantly, in that moment I knew I had to go.
This is part of my blog post from that day
"Oh my gosh, crazy weekend!
Today it was announced that women can go on missions at age 19. I'm almost 18 and a half. The instant it was announced, I knew that I needed to go. That was when I was called, or rather, when I realized that was being called. Just the simple knowledge of this has pulled me out of my hole. The last eight or nine months of my life have been really hard, I sort of lost myself. The worst of it came this past week. School has been terrible, classes that should be easy turning sour and concepts I used to know slipping out of my head. Just the other day I was thinking, Why am I in school? I'm not supposed to be here! I set up an interview with my bishop, trying to get some help with things that I'm going through. None of this made sense to me until today.
I'm going to spend 18 months of my life in the Lord's service. Going on a mission was never something that really considered, so this is a real change for me. I've already taken a few prerequisites for the accounting program, and they usually advise you to wait until you come back to do that. I'm not too worried. I might need to retake a class or two, but I know that my sacrifice will benefit me in the end. I'll need to take mission prep classes next semester and finish my GEs instead of accounting prereqs. I'm actually really excited, it's going to be great!"
I was too young to put my papers in right then, but I still had a lot of work to do to get ready. I was down pretty far, but I was determined. I took my testimony a lot more seriously, I talked to my bishop, started going to the temple a lot more, and took a mission preparation class. Things were going great!
The adversary did try to stop me though. The weekend before I put in my papers, three of my friends and I took a trip to Colorado for the weekend. I posted a lot about this on my blog at the time so I'll take some exerpts from that too.
"We stopped at my family home in Laramie for a while, and then continued on. I took the driver's seat for that leg of the journey. Around an hour later it happened. Suddenly, I was partway off the road. I don't know how it happened, I can't remember drifting off or anything, I was just all of a sudden there. I tried to get back on the road, but I panicked a bit. Stuck on cruise control at 75 MPH, I overcorrected and veered into the other lane. There was a semi truck in front of me and a car behind, so I tried to get back into my lane. This time I pressed the brake. Still, it was another overcorrection. We slid right off the road and into the median. I tried to gain control, but there was nothing I could do at that point.
When the tires on the driver side left the ground, I gave up. This is when I stopped paying attention tothe crash. I closed my eyes, let go of the wheel, and prayed. In that moment where we were upside down, I expected to die. There were three thoughts in my mind at that time.
I was so glad that I had taken the Sacrament that morning.
I realized all the things in my life I still needed to do.
My friends were in the car too, and I wished that they weren't.
Gratitude and shame. That was what I felt. When the car stopped rolling (after at least two full rolls) these were still my feelings. Grateful to still be alive, but so ashamed of myself for endangering my friends. Turning around I could see Megan starting to shake, obviously heading into shock, blood on her pillowcase, and glass and dirt everywhere. I grabbed her by the hand and started apologizing over and over again. I could see that Jonathan and Cortney were alright, but I didn't know how badly Megan was injured. Through the next hour, waiting for the police, the ambulance and my parents, I didn't have time to think about it, all I knew was that we were alive, but I was responsible for anything that had happened to them.
...
First, being alive and well. There were many things that I feel contributed to that. We'd prayed that morning before we left. I truly believe in the protective power of prayer, but it was more than that. I believe that the Lord protects those who place their lives in His hands and do His will. Of the four of us in the car, all of us had done this. Jonathan has a mission call, I just turned mine in last night, Cortney is on track to finish his in the next week, and although Megan isn't planning to serve at this time, she has her priorities based on what the Lord wants her to do. We have all decided that our lives are not really in our hands, but that we were being directed by the Lord."
The day we got back to Provo was the day I got my Stake President interview and turned in my papers. Then began the two weeks of waiting, wondering and trying to pretend you could focus on anything else. Something I found interesting was that I could think of a place and all of the cool things about it and totally be fine with serving there, and ten minutes later I would completely forget where I was thinking of. Talk about stupor of thought! I thought about Brazil once or twice, but in the sense of I might not want to serve there, so of course I was called there.
"This week I received my mission call. I've been called to the Brazil, Florianopolis mission. I will admit, beforehand, when I would get asked where I wanted to go, I'd either say it didn't matter or that I'd like to go somewhere Spanish speaking. Those were my feelings. Although, when someone would suggest Brazil, I would get this secret fear or reluctance, like I didn't want to go there.
When I opened my call my mind was racing. I saw the passport application and immediately knew I was going foreign. Then I pulled out the official letter/call and started reading. Before I said a single thing I saw the word Brazil. It hit me like a wall, but not in a bad way."
So now I've had my call for a while, in fact I only have two weeks until I report! I still have lots of work to do but I'm so excited!
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