mission decision

Tomorrow, I'll turn twenty-one. 

For me this age has always meant -- not drinking -- but serving a full-time mission for the church of Jesus Christ.

And as of two days ago, the age requirement for young women wishing to serve a mission has been lowered to 19.

& I'm so grateful.

I'm grateful to be here, now, preparing to serve a mission, and not earlier. When I look back at my 19- and 20-year old self (okay, I'm still technically twenty), I see a lot of naivete... which isn't to say that I'm completely grown up now, but the past two years have been years of immeasurable growth for me, and for that I'm so grateful.

I'm grateful to be going now and not then.

I'm grateful for the lessons I've learned about living on my own

& feeling alone

& finding joy

& coming closer to God

& forgiveness

& loving others

& I know that I still have many more lessons to learn, and that my mission will be a time of incredible growth for me. 

But I'm just so grateful for the time that God has given me to grow up unto Him

I'm grateful that I got to attend BYU for two years - what a growing experience that was! 

I'm grateful for the opportunities I've already had to share the gospel with people I love, & for the opportunity I had to work at efy

And I'm so eternally grateful for the people He has put in my life, who have taught me to love & trust & forgive & be happy.

I feel very confident that this is the time for me to be serving. not earlier, and not any later. 

That being said, I'm absolutely ecstatic for all of the 19- and 20- year-old girls who will now have the opportunity to serve that much sooner, who might not otherwise have had the chance to serve at all. God works through our weakness, and he'll work with these teenage boys & girls just as He will work with me. God is a God of miracles :) 

As a woman, I have never felt less than absolutely loved & respected in my church & in my faith. Full-time missionary service is a priesthood responsibility, and something that I've always felt passionate about and known I wanted to do. I'm glad I get to serve now, and I'm excited for the teenagers & young adults I will be privileged to work with in bringing about God's purposes :) 

I believe that God still speaks through prophets & apostles today.

I believe that this decision was reached by men who speak with God.

& I'm so excited to watch His purposes unfold :)

--

~ from the press conference {which i highly recommend watching if you're interested} ~

"God is hastening his work, and he needs more and more willing and worthy missionaries to spread the light, and the truth, and the hope, and the salvation of the gospel of Jesus Christ to an often dark and fearful world... This announcement... is not about you [young people]. It's about the sweet & pure message you are being asked to bear and the ever greater numbers God needs to bear it. ” –Jeffrey R. Holland

:)

10/13/12 EDIT: my friend Joyce Tran wrote this post about the same thing and it describes me perfectly so go read it, amen. :)

#LDSconf

Today I decided to try joining the #TwitterStake and tweeting my conference notes. I kinda liked it. It probably looked like I was texting during conference, but really, I was taking notes and posting them online in a more permanent {for me} space than a notebook. I always lose my notebooks haha. Plus it was fun to see what other people were getting out of conference. & so here, is a picture of my twitter profile today. for your viewing enjoyment. :)

Can you read that? I hope it's not too small.... anyways, happy conference weekend! tomorrow I get to go and watch it in the Conference Center - yay! the tickets finally came! :) #sohappy

:)

forget me not

1) I love general conference. 

2) Tonight was the Relief Society General Broadcast, and it was SO GOOD. Just exactly what I needed right now. :)) 

3) My favourite talk (though I really did love them all,) was by President Uchtdorf, about forget-me-nots.   It was just.... so, so amazing. :) He gave 5 things for us to "forget not," which I loved, but my favourite was the ending paragraphs. I hope they make a Mormon Message about it!! 

I have to wait four days for the full text to come out..... so sad..... but I did get a few lovely quotes from this LDS Church News article... and then I went back and watched it again at home :) And I wrote down the 5 things to forget not:

• forget not to be patient with yourself
• forget not that difference between good sacrifice and foolish sacrifice
• forget not to be happy now
• forget not the why of the gospel
• forget not that the lord loves you

God is {not was}, and He speaks {not spake}

In 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson pled with the students of Harvard Divinity School to teach "that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake." Weekend before last my testimony of this truth was re-emphasized as I had the opportunity to listen for myself to modern-day prophets and apostles share some of God's words for us during the annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which happens to be the church I belong to :) Going into the conference, I had prepared ahead for an excellent weekend of inspiration and learning from God. I was excited to hear God's word for today, and since I have a friend preparing to join the church, I was primed to look for messages that would be helpful to him and his situation.

Jeffrey R. Holland was the last second-to-last speaker during the two-day conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah. He entitled his remarks "An Ensign to the Nations," and was a very effective concluding* speaker for several reasons. First, before he even said anything, I was psyched to hear from him. I will even admit that when he got up to speak I made the "rock on" sign with my hands  (\m/ >.< \m/), much to my father's dismay. Elder Holland always gives really exceptional talks, so I was excited to hear what this one would be. He also has a great deal of credibility as an Apostle of the Church, serving in that capacity for nearly seventeen years. I'm nineteen years old so for as long as I can remember Elder Holland has been in a position to inspire and uplift me by teaching me the words of God, and I've had a long time to learn for myself that his calling as a special witness of Christ is indeed authentic. His remarks also came at the end of a fabulous conference, and the Spirit was already strongly testifying to me that what I had previously heard was true and of God.

weekend that was wonderful :)

My wonderful family came down to visit me and to come to conference and see some other various family members. It was lovely :) 

We had a few extra tickets so my roommates joined us for a session.

This was our view

Clearly sitting next to my brother in the Conference Center was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. And yes we are aware of the myspace-style-ness of the second picture. That was on purpose :)