Curve Ball

 On October 6th during the morning of General Conference I learned what it means when life throws you a curve ball. The Church made an announcement that from then on girls at the age of 19 would be able to serve a mission. When I first heard those words it felt like all the blood left my body, and then it felt like my body was trying to compensate, my heart was beating rapidly for at least the next hour as I was absolutely shocked. I was happy for my friends but scared for myself, what did this mean? What about my Study Abroad? Am I supposed to go? Is this for me? I knew immediately it was something to consider and I immediately started praying about it. After weeks of praying and watching my friends one by one make their decisions I knew myself and that decisions for me are just not that easy. This decision was especially hard because no one could make it for me, and I knew I couldn't let anyone influence it too much. After a couple weeks of praying and  discussing with close family and friends my Dad explained to me that I needed to start moving forward in one direction and the Lord would let me know if that was not the right direction. A couple days later I cancelled my Study Abroad, made an appointment with my bishop, and continued praying. My bishop sent me home and we scheduled another meeting, in that time I continued looking for confirmation and took my bishops advice to fast. At the end of my fast I prayed, began reading preach my gospel, prayed, read my scriptures, prayed, read a few paragraphs of my patriarchal blessing, prayed, read my scriptures, and so on. I was getting frustrated because for me I felt that I knew a mission was either for me or it wasn't, either I was supposed to go serve certain people being prepared to receive the gospel, or someone else was supposed to. After a very long prayer I turned to my patriarchal blessing and read a paragraph that was SO OBVIOUS, it was as if the words slapped me across the face, it so clearly was talking about a mission, I wasn't sure how I had never read it before. Then I turned to my scriptures and BOOM read a scripture that was exact to me and my situation. At that moment I was incredibly happy, I had made the right decision, this is something I am meant to do, Heavenly Father made that announcement or me! This was something I needed to do. That knowledge brought me so much joy. No more wondering. I have a path in this life, and going on a mission is along that path. Serving a mission is the least I can do for the Lord, I will be doing the best possible thing I can do with my life for those 18 months. What better way to spend it than doing pure service, the pure will of the Lord. For 18 months I am nothing, me and my needs and wants will not matter. What will matter is telling and showing people the love of Christ, that they are not alone, that they have a purpose on this earth. After all the Lord has done for me and given me how can I not go? How can I not take this opportunity to show my love and devotion? Do I not owe it to him? I do. I have never been more excited about something that I HAVE to do. The thought of the work I will be doing brings me so much joy, the fear I initially felt is gone, now I just feel Christ's love building up getting ready to explode all over wherever I get called. I found out what the saying "sometimes life throws you a curve-ball" means, I found out what people are talking about when they say your patriarchal blessing says different things to you at different moments in your life, and now on my mission I hope to find myself. That's what I wanted to find by going on a study abroad, I think in the end I hope to find truth to the saying that "you find yourself when you lose yourself in the service of others."

The picture taken for my papers!