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. :)

wouldn't you know it...

this is me at my high school graduation, circa ten months ago.

this is me when I first started here at the university

and this is me, just a couple of days ago.

Wow. Weird to think that it's already been that long, and that in a couple of days I will be done with my first year of college. A year out of high school. A year of college complete. And where has it brought me? 

Umm...... gimme a minute. :)

not over yet

A little over a year ago I had an experience that I really learned from. It was a wonderful lesson. And since my natural tendency is to wrap up my life stories and put a nice little moral at the end {and then maybe tie a cute little bow on them and store them in my "life lessons learned" file cabinet}, that's what I did. But then a few months later.... I wasn't done learning from this experience. I was still experiencing! So I revised and added onto my moral and went to put it back when - oh. Still learning from this? Okay...
Many months later, I'm still experiencing and still learning from this person and this story of my life. And I keep having to revise my "moral of the story" – every other day it seems! So I'm thinking... maybe I'm never done learning. Maybe I don't get to wrap up my experiences and tie my bow on them and store them away. Could it be that life is about evolving, continually learning, and that we're never done?!? {If this sounds familiar, I wrote about continual learning almost two months ago... apparently I really need to relearn this lesson of relearning.}
So that's the lesson I am learning, along with many others: I'm not done. I'm going to learn, and relearn, and this story is going to keep evolving and teaching, and it doesn't get an ending! {As much as I would like it to... learning can be exhausting sometimes. But it's always good stuff.... and it's the story of my life! So I am thankful.} :)

if there's one thing i've learned, it's that I have so much more to learn....

I am 19 years old. I go to a really great university with excellent professors and wonderful classes and I learn a lot of really great stuff. And the crazy thing is, the more I learn, the more I see how much more there is to learn. If that makes sense.

Sometimes when things are going really well, or when I feel like I've grasped a certain concept, I get this attitude like, "Wow, this is great! I have now Learned. I am now Mature. I Understand. I'm practically Finished, like, 60 years ahead of schedule! Must be because I'm part of that chosen generation."

And I think God must really think this is hilarious! I think He sort of laughs and says, "Oh honey. You're nineteen. You're a freshman. You might think you're an Adult, but you are still My Child, and I have so much more in store for you."

And then in His infinite love and wisdom something happens to put me back in my place. To humiliate me, literally! to make me humble. And He shows me how infinitely more there is for me to learn, and how far I have to go.

That's how life is I guess. We learn line upon line, precept upon precept. I have all these thoughts today, and experiences are going to happen tomorrow that will change me and teach me more, and they'll build on each other, and I'm never done! There is always more for me to learn. That's the beautiful thing about it :)

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. 

Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. 

This is a kind of death. ~Anaïs Nin