Deep Breath and Prayer

Dear Sister Blew,  You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Argentina Salta Mission. It is anticipated that you will serve for a period of 18 months. You should report to the Mission Training Center at Provo, Utah on Wednesday, 19 July 1995. You will prepare to teach the gospel in the Spanish language. I still laugh as when we left the MTC, we thought we could speak like the natives! We were going to go preach salvation and never stumble over a word. Yah, it took about 3 seconds after getting off the plane to not only realize you could hardly speak the language, but also that you could not understand a word. Thank goodness my trainer was American! In the mission you change companions and areas every few months. My second companion, Hermana Farias, was from Uruguay and did not speak one word of English. I will never forget the first day we were out together and were talking to someone on the...

Missionary Monday....I am a happy little camper. By noon I had heard from 7 of my little ones. I love reading their mail. Most of them just include me on their mass emails that go to families and friends, some actually take a moment and shoot off a personal note. I remember how precious p-day time was so I am always happy to get a message no matter how it comes in. It is wonderful to read of their experiences and see how they are growing and maturing. Most of them I hear from started their missions in Danville, so it really is getting to see them grow and change. One of my Elders had this line in his message today, "So I have a problem, the harder I try to be better, the more I realize I do wrong." Now, it went on to end well in his letter, yet it sure had me thinking once again. Ok, maybe not once again, yet a good expression of what I seem to continually feel like I run into. I really do have a recurring feeling that the more I work to get healthier, the more I find wrong w...

I am being haunted by missionaries. Ok, so I say that with this huge grin on my face. I tell you, Heavenly Father is not going to let me off the hook for nothing and apparently He will use the missionaries in any way He can to keep me from giving up or running away. I had made the decision last night that I was not going to go to church today. Although it was the one place I really needed to be after these past few days, it was also the last place I wanted to be (hello, willfulness!). I was tired, physically and emotionally, and still had some lingering "things" (for lack of a better word) from Friday night that just left me not really wanting to go commune, feel, rejoice, or otherwise. Sure, there were new missionaries to meet today, yet I could just find them later this week. Note to self - quit challenging God, you never are going to win. Sometime prior to 9:10 am, I was dreaming peacefully, happy, non-guilty. Then, my dream shifted to this huge house (ok, we all know how ...

I sometimes wonder if I will ever quit making stupid choices. Oh wait, I would get called out for putting it that way. Let's see....I wonder if I will ever quit making "less effective" choices. Nope, did not say stupid even though that is pretty much what I mean. Our companionship study was done from the "libro gris" or the grey book, which was literally, grey. It wasn't that big and you went through it several times during your mission and thankfully they don't use it anymore. Although it had great teaching information in it, it was pretty cheesy - and even more so in Spanish. By the end of your mission it was more of a joke than a learning tool. With that, it would give you different scenarios and you would have two columns - mas eficaz (more effective) and menos eficaz (less effective) - in regards to how you might answer a question or handle a situation. It made sense, it was a concept that the choice to handle/answer something may not always be righ...

Everybody needs a hero in their life. Mine just happens to be my brother. The story goes that when he was told he was going to have a baby sister, he was asked what he wanted to name her. He responded that he wanted to name her "Spot." Apparently, when I arrived instead of a new puppy, he was ok with that. He has always been my "big bubby" yet I have always had a hard time thinking of myself as his "baby sister." He did not help that any when he turned 40 and started telling people I was his big sister. From the beginning, life was us against the world. Each other was all we had, for me it was the only person I could always count on. When no one else was there, Joey was. Sure, I was totally the annoying little sister who wanted to tag along everywhere. Joe's best lived across the road and I always wanted to go be one of the boys too. Sometimes I got to go too, most times I had to stay home. Joe wasn't well as a kid. His severe asthma bought him mor...

As a general rule, most missionaries do not like transfers. You get attached to companions, families in the congregation, areas. Even if it an area you struggle in, you always find some sadness to leave. When I was a missionary we did not work as closely with the members as they do now. Sadly, there are only a handful of families I remember from Argentina even though I can recall almost every missionary I served with and around. In Orlando, I can recall more of the members, yet the focus of our work was different there. Now, on the other end of things, I hate it when my missionaries leave. Transfers happen every six weeks. We lost two this round. Last transfers we lost Elders Brooks and Jones, this one I lose Harrington and Erickson. I referred to that group as my "four horsemen" and now they have all moved on. These were the Elders who were by my side as I continued to pick up pieces of my broken soul. They watched me stumble, fall, get up, and keep fighting. They were the o...

Had the thought this morning (then discussed it later) of how, for someone who really does not like to deal with emotions, I have sat with an awful lot of them this week. There's been a lot of learning, accepting, and healing happen over this past week. I am happy. Yes, at this moment, I am happy. For the most part I survived last week's class with the mastery stuff. Luckily the question was not posed as "what are you good at" which took a huge anxiety load off. I cannot fully remember how it was posed yet it was still in a manner that I really did not want to try and answer it. Of course, the luck of the draw fell on me to be the first to answer. I was able to pass and go last...whew, disaster averted. We committed to something to do this week that would bring us joy or benefit us. Ok, so I think that is what I committed to. Can't lie, the self-imposed pressure to think of something totally took my focus off of what was being said. It happens. One of the other cl...