My Last Mission Email (:

Hello for the last time from the mission field! I want to share with you some of my thoughts before I get on the plane and head home. Thanks for everything, your support, love, and prayers. For those of you still out, keep doing work, it's the greatest work we'll ever do.

Coming down to the last few days of my mission, I've been thinking a lot about my feelings and a good way to describe the mission experience. What I've realized is that it's impossible to describe a mission, but rather, it's the moments.

 It's preparing for your whole life to serve. It's finally sending in your papers. It's anticipating your call for a few weeks. It's opening that call signed by the prophet with your family and friends, and having that confirmation that this is the place you need to go. It's the time before the MTC that feels like it will never end. Then all at once, it's hugging your parents, they go one way, and you go the other- into the biggest unknown of your life up to that point.

It's the MTC: the firesides and devotionals, the food, teaching in a new language, the testimonies, the cabin fever. It's then flight plans and goodbyes, wondering how people you've known for only 6 weeks have become some of your best friends ever. It's the airport- heading off into the field, an ocean of uncertainty. It's walking through the gates and seeing your mission president jumping and waving because he is so excited to finally meet you. 

Its then all of a sudden trainers and district members. It's realizing you learned almost nothing in the MTC and loving it all the same. It's new food, new people, new culture, new language, new forms of transportation, new routine, new everything.

 It's a world of firsts that change everything: first street contact, first lesson, first district meeting, first phone conversation in German (this one can be scary!), first email home, first encounter with a drunk man, first hole in pants, first Sunday at church, first day of total homesickness, first conversation where you realize you didn't really actually learn German in the MTC, first First Vision, first promising investigator, first baptism. It's all unforgettable, no matter how disorganized it all seems, or how fast it flies over your head. 

More changes come and it turns into a blur. It's being anxious for your companion to leave and then, to your surprise, missing him when he's gone. It's 99 slammed doors, shaking fingers, 'Keine Zeit's', lying children (my mom says she's not home), angry old people, and barking dogs. But it's the hope that the 100th will be the one.

The one who wants to change. The one who has been crying for help to a God that he or she wants to follow, but doesn't know where to find Him. It's that one who seems perfect: perfect questions, perfect kids who don't scream during lessons, and most importantly, a desire to make it work, even if everything isn't perfect. It's the hope of finding that one that gets you out of the apartment in the morning in 100 degree weather, when half the city is still sleeping. It's the hope of that one that gets you to open your mouth and speak, even if you don't speak well and don't like leaving your comfort zone.

It's finding the one, one covert, one future priesthood holder, or one future Relief Society president. It's making plans, working with members, and lots of prayers. It's realizing many are found, but few choose to be chosen. It's a thousand disappointments when things don't work out and they can find any excuse on Saturday night (weather, gossip, sport, doubts). It's finally bringing them to church and showing them the church. It's them meeting the members, and it's you chewing your fingernails GONE as the first testimony talks about baptisms for the dead. It's hoping they will feel the Spirit in spite of the bishop’s 2 year old running around on the stand, the old lady who yells out comments from the congregation, and the lame jokes the speakers tell. 

It's when that person gets baptized that the reality of what you're giving them hits you. It's the hope of an eternal family. It's the hope of a better life. It's the hope of their pain and suffering being taken away all at once. It's giving others that hope that brings you the greatest satisfaction you have ever experienced.

It's testing the water, (or often times boiling water on the stove and throwing it into the font), and hoping the person won't freak out and get cold feet. It's then leaving that person or that area, and realizing that they affected you much more than you affected them. It's crying until you reach that new area and realize the work moves right on. 

It's going back in memories and appreciating what you had at home. It's the firm declaration that you'll never complain about having to get up off the couch to go get something out of the food storage for mom (hear that Mom?). It's the same people you see everyday who smile and wave because one time, you brightened their day.

It's coming home soaked 75% of the time, either from rain or sweat. It's also sitting in front of all the fans in your apartment and wondering if you can last another day in the oven you're living in. It's bed bugs, spiders, and cockroaches that live in your apartment. It's that rainstorm that soaks you and your comp to the bone. It's walking through that rainstorm with no umbrella and having nothing to do but laugh as people look at you as if you're totally crazy (which isn't at all a misconception). It's going out into that weather because you convince each other that your wives will be hotter for going through the storm. (I've been through a lot of bad weather... just saying). 

It's P-Day, Transfer Day, Mother’s Day, Christmas Day, Birthday, Hump Day, and National Holidays. It's packages and letters from home. It's wedding announcements, dear Johns, pictures, friends leaving on missions, which confirms your realization that life does actually move on without you. It's good days, bad days, homesick days, days where you laugh so hard your stomach hurts, days where you just can't wait to write in your journal, days where you want to laugh, cry, smile, and sleep at the same time, and it's days you don't want to end. Those are the good old days. Days that can't be enjoyed unless they are bought with a price-- hard work, sweat, discouragement, frustration, and faith.

It's discovering that God hears and answers prayers. Sometimes He takes everyone else away just so you can really get to know Him. It’s coming to know in a small degree that the Atonement applies not only to vile sinners, but to each individual as well, including you. It's feeling that power and love and knowing you'll never be the same. It's knowing you have a testimony and nobody can shake it or take it from you. It's building it piece by piece and it's sharing that testimony dozens of times every day until it roots deeply into your soul. 

It's watching missionary after missionary give their final 'dying' testimony, while you are pretty certain the day will never arrive for you to give yours... and then it does. It's learning to live IN the moment and not FOR the moment because all too soon, it's gone.

It's the projects, the finding days, the study, the old historical streets, the little kids who you play soccer with, the tiny apartments, the poor people, and the love of all of them that you didn't know was possible.

It's soaking that all in, catching every single detail, because you won't get it back. It's looking up into the sky on your last night in the mission field and wondering about the effect of one mission. Does one mission really have eternal consequences? Does planting one seed, teaching one lesson, finding one person actually really matter at all? Then you feel your answer. Did the mission of The One make a difference? Did His ministry, His teaching, His seed planting have an effect on the eternities? Did His one infinite Atonement pay the price of justice and give mercy her claim?

As you fly back to a former life, you're convinced it was all a dream. It's then realizing that while you have been in the service of your fellow beings, you have only been in the service of your God. It's feeling your heart and soul overflow with gratitude for the once chance you had to show your worth, give your all, and return with honor.

It's becoming like the One, the Only Begotten, the Son of Man, the Prince of Peace, the Savior and Redeemer of all mankind, even Jesus Christ. It's those two years for which you will eternally praise the Lord, as the life that was converted more than any other was only one--yours. 

It's establishing those characteristics and setting goals for your life, because you never want your service to end. It's then turning to the passenger next to you and starting a conversation, because you NEVER know what difference one moment could make.