By Small and Simple Things - Mission

During my senior year of high school, I had enough credits to stop attending classes six months before graduation, in La Paz, Bolivia.  During those few months, I read, crocheted a quilt, and tried to keep myself busy.  My parents asked if I would like to return to the States ahead of them, and live with my older sisters, and maybe take a college course.  I told them I wanted to attend my high school graduation and return to the States with them, in six months.  I was a little afraid of the future.  I think if the time had been longer, I would have accepted the offer.

My father invited me to travel with him to a missionary zone meeting, along with other missionaries serving in the mission office.  This opportunity, to be with my father one on one was very precious.  We traveled through the night, by van, across a mostly uninhabited stretch of the Altiplano.  At one point, we made a brief rest stop, at what seemed like the only small building in the middle of no where.  It was cold, and the only light I saw was the headlights of the van.  But, as I stepped away from the van and looked up, I witnessed the most beautiful sight.  The Milky Way stretched across the heavens, along with myriads of other stars and planets.  It seemed to rise from all sides of the plain we were standing on, and travel across the whole sky.  It is the one and only time I have seen such a glorious sight.  I marveled at the heavens above and my small spot on earth.  I wondered who I was and what my purpose was.

High School Graduation

Soon after this event, my father asked if I would consider serving a mission for a few weeks.  He explained that he could ask permission to extend a calling for me to serve.  This was a great surprise to me, because I didn't know it was possible.  However, now that I was 18 and in the mission field while my father was serving as a mission president, an exception was made.  (Usually young women have to be 21 before they can serve missions)  As the time approached for me to leave home, I realized how dependent I was on my parents and how much strength I drew from them.  I realized that I needed to prepare myself for this service and repent of my sins.  I prayed and made promises to the Lord about changes I needed to make.  I pondered on my life and testimony.  I asked myself what I knew about receiving personal revelation, and whether I had a testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.  I asked my father for guidance in recognizing promptings from the Holy Ghost.  I began to read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover, for the first time, and pray with real intent to know if it was true.

I will always be grateful to the sister missionary I served with.  Surely I was not the ideal companion she had hoped to serve with for the last few weeks of her mission.  We studied and prayed in the cold morning hours together.  We walked up the cobble stone streets and dirt paths of La Paz, into humble adobe homes.  I experienced a different La Paz than the one I saw from within my family's comfortable home.  I remember the first time my companion turned and asked me what I thought about someone we had just met with.  I was tempted to panic, realizing she and the Lord really were counting on me to use inspiration, and that I couldn't just slide by and only do what I was told.  I was expected to contribute and help.

And so my real life's journey began from this point on.  I began to pray and live with real intent.  I began to put into practice the life skills my parents had taught me from the time I was an infant.  I began to study, question, search and testify.  I realize, in looking back, that I lacked the precious training most missionaries receive while attending a few weeks or months at the MTC (Missionary Training Center). I felt inadequate and mostly unprepared.  One day, my companion and I spoke for the first time with a woman living in very humble circumstances.  At the end of our visit, she asked if she could be baptized.  This was a "golden" moment, as some missionaries describe it.  I know now, that in spite of our weaknesses, the Lord carries on his work, answering the heart felt prayers of those searching for the truth.  By small and simple things, the Lord brings about his work and our salvation.

(In recent years, I met the wife of one of my husband's business partners.  She also served a similar mission, when she was 18 years old, while her father was serving as a mission president.)