We Choose Faith Over Fear

Fun fact for you guys! As of yesterday, I've had my call for a month and I only have 2 1/2 months left until I'm in the MTC! This is so crazy! Seriously. Time has just flown by! I can't complain about that though! I'd much rather that time went by fast rather than slow. On the other hand, it kind of sucks when time goes by fast. Example: I should be excited that this semester went by in the blink of an eye but I feel like I didn't get to enjoy it as much as I should have. It's still a little surreal to me that this is my last week in good ol' Ephraim.

Love this campus!

I went to my student ward for the last time today and my bishop got up in sacrament meeting to address us for the last time. His parting words hit me pretty hard. "We choose faith over fear. Don't forget that." I think part of the reason he said that is because a good majority of my ward is heading out on missions. I mean I found out that of the two Young Single Adult stakes here, my ward is leading in the amount of sister missionaries leaving with 50+ girls heading out. Pretty incredible for a junior college, if you ask me!

Let me tell you why this statement that my bishop said was so important to me. Going on a mission was never in my plans. Last summer, I received an impression that I should go on a mission but even then I still had two and a half years to prepare to go on a mission. When the mission age was changed, I definitely took that as a sign that I needed to go serve the Lord.

I received my mission papers and planned on turning them in about two months later. The time came for me to submit my papers and I started to receive some serious doubts of going on a mission. I decided that it just  wasn't for me at that point. I thought that maybe I had been caught up in the hype of the missionary age change. I felt uneasy and I wasn't too happy with my decision. I prayed and fasted about the decision and finally I figured that I needed to go forward with faith and serve a mission (obviously).

Choosing faith over fear doesn't always have to do with a mission though. I believe this saying applies to any prompting the Lord gives us! I understand that it's hard to follow some promptings we receive. It may not be seen as the "cool" or "politically" correct thing to do but God knows what He's doing. If we trust in His plan and follow where He leads us, we will be blessed for it in the long run.

On a completely unrelated note... Check out my personalized

missionary map I had made for me! Pretty nifty, eh?

Three More Months...

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged… 13 days to be precise. So I decided I should blog today! Especially since today is my 3 month mark until I enter the MTC! Can I just tell you guys how excited I am for it? I’m so freaking pumped! I know there are a lot of people that think about their mission and feel a lot of anxiety but not this girl! I’m just excited to start on this new chapter in life. Sure, it’s a little scary thinking about leaving my friends and family for 18 months but I’m thinking about all the good that can come of it instead of the bad. I’m going to help people be with their families for eternity, I’ll be serving others, and most importantly I will become closer to my Heavenly Father. I don’t really see how there’s a downside to this.

After my last blog post, my mom pointed out that I didn’t talk about receiving my call. So let me tell you the tale of my mission call (And if you'd like you can click here to actually watch the opening of the call). I was home for Spring Break during the last week of March. I had turned in my mission papers two and a half weeks prior so unless something when wrong, I would be getting my mission called on March 27^th.

I was very anxious to get my call mostly because I was anxious to know where I’d be serving the Lord. I really wanted to speak a language, Spanish specifically, but I knew I would be sent where the Lord needed me to go. After all, He knows me and my needs better than I know myself.

To calm my nerves, I decided to go up to my room and just read my scriptures. At noon, my younger brother, Cody came in and told me that the mailman was there. I totally thought he was playing with me so I looked out the window to check… The mailman was there. He had my call. I ran down the stairs and out to the mailbox to grab that white envelope of mine and I had to get a bunch of pictures with if of course!

Back story time! Cody was in a “Glee” concert for his high school choir, where they performed A Cappella music of popular music. At the end of one of the songs, he was supposed to set off this confetti cannon but that didn’t end up happening so he kept it at home for a special occasion. That occasion happened to be my mission call. He set it off for a picture of mine and it actually turned out pretty cool!

I told you it turned out to be a pretty cool picture!

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t get to open it up right away. I waited six hours. You heard me right – six hours! I wanted to make sure my immediate family and my grandparents were all there for my call so we decided to have a party at 6 PM for the opening. It was torture! That mission call was all I could think about; especially since this life changing information was in my hands! But be impressed with me, I did not steam open my call. I waited with everyone else.

Part of the reason that we had to wait so long is because Cody and I had an orthodontist appointment at 4 PM. My appointment was really quick because I just had to pick up my retainer since I had recently broken it. It took the orthodontist an hour to get to Cody though. I was so impatient because it was 5:30 at this point in time and my family was already gathering to eat before I opened my mission call. Cody finally came out of the orthodontist so we rushed (while obeying all traffic laws) home.

We got back around 6:10 and I ran upstairs grabbed my call and my mom asked “You ready to open it?” Oh. Trust me, I was. I grabbed our envelope opener and started to open it up. I read through and saw South Carolina before reading the letter out loud and I felt this huge sense of relief! The Spirit confirmed to me that South Carolina is the place I need to be for 18 months of my life.

South Carolina baby!

I know there are a lot of returned missionaries that say that they think about their missions every day. I feel like I can kind of relate to that now because since then, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about my mission. I am so excited to serve the Lord and the people of South Carolina. I know that there are people there that need to hear about the gospel of Jesus Christ from me specifically. This will truly be one of my greatest adventures in this lifetime.