I guess I should start out by telling you all that I NEVER had the desire to serve a mission. I remember being in primary and sining "I hope they call me on a mission" and thinking to myself 'ha! i dont have to serve a mission, im a girl!' It was just never something I wanted to do, and I didnt really like the fact that once I hit 21 and I wasn't married that all of a sudden everyone in the church was asking me why I wasn't serving a mission or doing something with my life. I WAS doing something with my life! I had been to Europe! I had worked for Disney! I was getting an education! Who were these people to tell me that my life was pointless because I wasn't married or on a mission?! I was so frustrated!
I do have a slight rebellious side, and my form of rebellion was to prove to these people that I didnt have to be married or go on a mission to be happy or to have a meaningful life, so going on a mission was definitely NOT in the plans. I created a nice looking 10 year plan for myself and then started working towards those goals [I am a HUGE planner...I like to know EXACTLY what I will be doing a year from now and how I will be doing that].
Well...the Lord really did(does) have different plans for my life, and part of His plan for me was to serve a mission, whether I liked it or not. I remember I started feeling prompted to serve a mission at the beginning of the summer in 2011 but I pushed those feelings away faster than you can say fast...there was NO way I was going to serve a mission, I had been planning on Grad school, I was about to graduate, I was going to do an internship for a museum back east, etc. The feeling would NOT go away, no matter how much I tried to not think about it. I remember I was interning at the Springville Museum of Art and half of the women there were returned missionaries and they would tell me about their missions and I thought that was so cool for them, but it just made those promptings so much stronger! It was kind of frustrating. I am pretty sure one of those wonderful women that I worked with told me to go home and read my patriarchal blessing and to read it from the perspective that I was going to serve a mission, so I did. I remember reading that blessing and being overpowered with the spirit, there were things in my blessing that seemed to look better and that seemed to make a little more sense, but I REFUSED! I was NOT going to serve a mission. I remember saying that out loud, "I am NOT serving a mission Heavenly Father!" Well, I talked with my friend Nate and asked him if he thought I would be a good missionary, he told me I would be a great missionary...we talked about it for like two hours but still in my head I was pushing away the thoughts and the impressions.
WELLL, the Lord knew that I needed a "slap in the face", if you will, experience. Later in the summer I went on a hike with two of my old roommates, Rebecca and Allison. Rebecca had just been married in the Temple and Allison had just gone through for herself and they were both relating to me their wonderful experiences and how spiritual they felt and I was so envious of them! I wanted to go through the temple, I wanted to feel that close to the spirit, and so I decided to tell them about the promptings I had been feeling regarding the mission and Allison turned to me and put her finger right up in my face and said "Alyssa, you are ignoring the spirit and I dont feel sorry for you one bit" and then turned away and continued on the hike. Those words stung. I had been ignoring the spirit and I almost didnt feel worthy to even receive promptings from him. But once again, I just kind of dropped it and went on with my day.
Rewind a little bit. I was going to the singles ward and a member of the bishopric called me in about June to give a talk in August on guess what? MISSIONARY WORK! He told me it was open to whatever I wanted to talk about but that the overall topic would be missionary work. He also told me I would be speaking with all returned missionaries from the ward so that wasn't intimidating at all. I couldn't believe he had called me two months in advance, but I was kind of grateful because I had a ton of time to prepare. This ended up being one of the reasons that missionary work was always on my mind. I had been preparing for this talk in my head and of course the Lord had already been prompting me, so it was just kind of a double whammy!
So the Sunday rolls around that I am speaking in the ward and I am speaking with three guys I went to high school with. One of those guys was Brady Carpenter. Now there is something that you need to know about Brady, he was like really cool in high school, and even though we knew each other from church, he never talked to me because I was a nerd and he was cool. So when I get to church that Sunday and we sit next to each other I was expecting the same Brady, but he had matured and was really nice to me and all talkative and stuff, which totally threw me off guard! But anyways, during his talk he said something that really hit me, he said "before my mission I remember something was just always off and even though I was doing all these things that made me happy I wasn't really feeling happy inside and I didnt know why. I didnt want to serve a mission and that idea hadn't even crossed my mind, until one day it did and it all made sense. My mission has changed me and I am so happy I decided to serve. If you are even contemplating serving a mission, just go. Just do it. It will bring you happiness." When he said all of that, I started to get really emotional because it rang true to me. That was exactly how I had been feeling.
I went home after church that Sunday and went into my room and prayed to Heavenly Father and said to Him, "I dont want to serve a mission, but I will go if that is what you really want me to do" and I just got the answer that I already knew that was what he wanted me to do and that I needed to act now. I cried. I dont know how to explain the feeling but I just knew that if I was to serve a mission it wasn't going to be easy, I was going to be sacrificing a lot, there were things that I wanted in my life at that time and I knew if I left I would be losing those things, but at the same time I felt this overwhelming responsibility to now serve a mission and I didnt want to let the Lord down...[man being a girl is awesome isn't it?!] So I went upstairs for Sunday Dinner with my family and I told them I was going to serve a mission. I wish I could have captured their reactions on camera! My whole family has known forever that I didnt want to serve a mission and their reactions were priceless! They all asked me if I was sure, and I said yes, but we have to do it right now. I can't wait even a day to start my papers! They were all excited and overjoyed and we did, we started my papers and finished them in about three days! Everything was completed!
The only setback from turning in my papers right away was that I still was going to go to Fall Semester of school and so I couldn't put my start date until January 1st and they wont let you submit them until 5 months before. So I had to sit around and wait to turn in my papers for a couple of weeks until September 1st, but they went in and then a couple of weeks later I got my mission call! The Washington Everett Mission...I dont think they knew what they were getting when they got me! haha!
It was all insane. I just remember it all seeming like a blur and it wasn't easy. Satan works so unbelievably hard on people working towards serving a mission. I had so many doubts, I had so many temptations, I wanted to just give up, I doubted my testimony of the gospel. I cried a lot. I was overemotional and snappy all the time. My poor family and roommates were probably so fed up with me! But it is just so hard! Prepping for a mission is the worst! All I can say is that IT IS WORTH IT.
I will write an unbelievably long post about the actual physical mission soon I am sure...But let me just say that I am so grateful that Heavenly Father wanted me to serve a mission. Even though that 18 months was ridiculously hard at times and I ached to be home whenever I started to think about my family or what I could be doing instead, those 18 months were some of the best spiritually boosting months of my life. Never in my life have I felt so close to Jesus Christ, never in my life have I seen the hand of the Lord so clearly in my life and in the lives of others, never in my life have I cared so much about the salvation of so many other people and lost myself in the process. I am so happy that I was able to let go of those worldly things and of my old self and really become a true disciple of Jesus Christ. That is what He needed me to do. He needed me to capture a glimpse of how he feels about all of the children here on the Earth. He needed me to forget and become the best woman I can be, and I am so eternally grateful that He allowed me to do that. I know that that isn't why you go on a mission, but I really did learn a lot more about myself and I grew a lot more for myself, I just hope I was able to influence others along the way. I KNOW that Christ lives, that He loves us, that He wants what is best for us, that His hands are stretched out still to receive all who turn to Him. I know that He will never take away our choice to believe in Him, but that is all He wants is for us to trust in Him and in His everlasting power and mercy. I love Him. I am grateful for Him. I dont know what I would do without His influencing power in my life, I really am so grateful to Him and for Him. If there is one thing you take away from this I want you all to take away that Alyssa knows Jesus Christ and that she loves and respects Him with her whole heart and knows that He knows her too. I know that He knows all of you and loves you all as well.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
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