My Satisfaction

While I was on my mission I had very little baptisms. The United States is I think one of the hardest places to get baptisms. So our focus was mostly part member families and less active members.

In the area I spent most of my mission we were teaching this one less active named Shawn. How we met him was kind of the most amazing thing to think back on. Every single thing had to fall exactly into place how it did in order for us to meet him. My companion Sister Nolin and I were going to meet with a potential investigator with a member who had just recently gotten back from her mission to Argentina. We went to the potentials house and she wasn't there, but we decided that because the member was with us that we would go walk around the trailer park that we were at and try to street contact that way.

After we had been walking around for about 30 minutes we decided to go back to our cars. While we were on our way back to our car the member stopped and started talking to this guy. And she was talking to him about how we (my companion and myself) would come over to his house and teach him and his wife and we'd give them a family home evening lesson and that it'll bring their family closer together.

The only way we would have met Shawn was because the spirit guided us to a place we knew, the trailer park, and then the spirit guided us to the person that needed us most.

Sister Nolin and I taught him on and off for about 2 months. Because most of the time he seemed semi interested in what we were teaching but then other times he would just think that it was repetitious.

In October Sister Nolin was transferred and I got a new companion Sister Taliulu. And we kept on teaching Shawn. One night we were going over to his house and Sister Taliulu said "Lets invite him to go to church." At this point I had been teaching him for a while so I kind of knew that he wouldn't come to church because he had too many issues. But wanting a positive attitude I said "Okay, we can try, but just be warned that he probably wont say yes." But we said a prayer and then went into the appointment.

What happened in that appointment was nothing more than a miracle. We went into the appointment with the direction from the spirit that we needed to not leave that house until we got the answer that he was going to come to church with us.

When we got to the point in the lesson where we extended him the invitation to come to church with us. He, as I knew he would, declined, but we weren't leaving without a yes. So we said everything we could to get him to come to church with us. A couple of times I thought we were going to get kicked out of his house. The most significant things that were said when we weren't taking no for an answer was my comp saying, "Don't bull crap us Shawn! If you say you're going to come to church with us you have to, otherwise we'll come bang down your door and drag you to church."
Also I said "You don't go to church for other people Shawn (because he had said that he doesn't want to go because of all the hypocrites there) you go to church for YOU, you take the sacrament for YOU not anyone else. Everyone else is just there to do the exact same thing."
One more "Can I call you guys on Friday to let you know if I'm going to come or not?" -Shawn
"No because you're just going to call us and tell us you're not coming."

That Sunday we were sitting in the chapel waiting for church to start and then realized Shawn wasn't there so we ran out to the foyer and we saw Shawn walk up to the doors. I was jumping up and down. Because I was so happy. Shawn had such a hard time with church in general and I was just so happy that he had made the decision to come to church.
That was pretty much the best moment of my mission. That is my favorite story to tell because Shawn could be anyone you know. Your coworker, your neighbor, even a family member. And they might just need a little nudge.

My Story......The Reason I Came Home From My Mission

Going on a mission was never part of my plan that I had for my life. When I thought about it I always thought that I would be married by 21 and that it just wasn’t in the cards for me at all. That all changed when President Monson made the announcement. I was at work so I didn’t know anything about it until I went home and got onto Facebook and all of my friends who I’d graduated high school with said they were going on missions. I had no idea what was going on but I finally found out that President Monson had changed the age. I felt the Spirit so strongly, but I felt like at the time that I was just overcome with the emotion because of the big change.

In February I kept getting that same feeling, like I needed to go on a mission. I met with my bishop at that time just to see what it would take to start my papers, because I didn’t know, and I ended up starting them right then. Everything worked out so fast and amazingly that it seemed like the Lord wanted me to go really badly.

I got my call April 11^th. That was the longest day of my life because I had to wait till 10:30 pm to open my call. And I was called to serve in the Colorado Fort Collins Mission and I was to report on June 26^th 2013. That was the craziest moment of my life so far because I had no idea how I’d gotten there really, it all seems like such a blur.

After that two month wait into the MTC it was finally my turn to go into the big, scary, MTC. The first day was a big blur because so much has happened in a short amount of time. Now I’m not sure when it exactly started, but I know that my time in the MTC was not the best time because I had a migraine almost the entire time. At one point I had to go to the health center because I had a blinding migraine (something I’ve never experienced before) and I had to get shots in my hips and because of that I had to miss a whole day of classes. I felt like part of it was because I was going through caffeine withdrawals, but I didn’t think that it would be that bad.

When I left for my mission I still had a migraine, but for whatever reason I’m pretty sure that my first day in the field I had no migraine whatsoever. It was gone. That was the most amazing feeling. I thought that I would be able to continue, that I wouldn’t deal with it again for the rest of my mission.

That was very short lived. I got moved to another area my first three weeks out and so in my new area with my new companion I got a migraine one Sunday. I basically just slept that day because I thought that it would go away the next day. Because that’s how it was when I was home and I got a migraine. I’d get it, I’d sleep it off and then it’d be gone. Well this migraine I got on my mission has never gone away.

I dealt with the migraine on my mission from August until January. I did everything that I could on my mission. I tried to be the missionary that the Lord had called, but some days were harder than others. For months I had the question in the back of my mind about whether I should go home or not. I wanted to so I could just deal with all my medical stuff there, but at the same time I wanted to stay on my mission and serve. Finally I called my mission president and just kind of cried to him on the phone that I was sick of being on a mission because of how much pain I was in.

Then finally in January I had an interview with my mission president and I just basically was sobbing because I couldn’t take being there anymore. And he told me to make a decision and then pray about it and see if that’s what the Lord wants me to do.

I was lucky enough that my companion got a temple trip so I was able to pray about it there. And the feeling that I got in one of the rooms of the temple was the most powerful feeling I’ve gotten. I talked to the Lord that day and the Spirit let me know that going home was what I needed to do. So the next Monday I called my mission president and told him that I had prayed about it and I knew for a fact that going home was the right thing to do. I thought that he was going to have me wait till the end of the transfer, because it was a week later, but I went home on Thursday. So less than a week after I told my mission president I was on a plane home.

Yes being home is hard but I know that it’s the best thing that I could have done. I don’t know that I will return to my mission but I miss it every single day and I know that even if those amazing 7 months are all I serve I know that I was accomplishing my purpose.