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 Mexico Oaxaca mission, Spanish speaking. You are expected to report to the Provo MTC on March 5, 2014.
Oh my goodness!! I can't believe that the time is here!! It has been 10 months since I received the strongest prompting I have ever felt. Then I knew I was supposed to go on a mission. Ever since then, I have done all I can to prepare.
I started my papers at the beginning of July, and I was able to get most of it done within two weeks. In the middle of that month, I had a bit of a hard time doing what was left due to certain things that happened. First, my mom and sister left for Ireland for two weeks. All I needed to do was get my physical and dental appointments done, but how could I do that without her there? But also, my boyfriend left for his mission at the same time. He is down in the Uruguay Montevideo West mission and has been gone for almost 4 months. I finally got my physical done by the first of August and a couple of dental appointments by the end of the month.
I had some really good interviews with my bishop and stake president. I am the first potential missionary that our new bishop has sent out, so we got to figure things out together. But he asked me questions and we had good conversation. It took a couple of weeks to get in with the stake president. I had only met him once for five minutes, so I didn't know what to expect. But he was a nice guy. He asked me a lot of questions to get to know me, and he wrote down a lot. Then he asked me the interview questions for missionaries for worthiness. After the interview we talked a lot about the temple and what I should do to prepare in that aspect. He then told me that I should expect my call in two and a half weeks.
All throughout this process, I have had the idea that I would be going either German speaking in Europe or state-side, or East Coast state-side. After all I did take German for 5-6 years! And there has been this trend that if you've learned at least a year of a language, you go to a mission of that language. Well, I only had to wait a week to figure that out.
I came home from work and I had a big huge envelope in the mail. Haha! It came fast:) We figured that we could have family and friends come over later to watch me open it, so I sent out a text and Facebook message out to those I wanted to come. And quite a few people came due to the short notice. But it was fun! We all talked and caught up with each other. We also pulled out our world map and everyone put sticky notes where they thought I was going. Most were in Europe and in the States, and then a few random scattered places. When it got quiet I finally opened it. I'll just say that this was one of the most spiritual experiences I've ever had. And when I read I was going to Mexico... First off I could not even pronounce the name, but the fact that it was Mexico... I was shocked. I paused for like ten seconds and everyone was freaking out. And I'm speaking Spanish!! I don't know any Spanish... After that I was crying all the way through reading the rest. This was completely unexpected. But I am very excited to go and teach the people of Oaxaca. It's going to be a hard experience, but something that will be beneficial for me, but also the people.
I am going to be using this blog through the course of preparing and serving my mission. It will be a place for me to record any thoughts, inspiration, missionary moments, and my e-mails and letters I'll be sending from the field.
