And the answer is.....

I am going to accept the call to the Employment Resources Center in American Fork. As I thought about it, I became more and more convinced that this was the place the Lord wanted me to serve. Plus, I asked the Lord if it wasn't His will that I serve this mission, that I would continue to feel the dark unhappy feelings I was feeling just anticipating having to do this mission. Lo and behold, the next day I went to try it out for a month and, what do you know, I felt good that whole day, the dark feeling was gone. But I still wanted to feel really good about it.

Well, I have been feeling really good about it but was still not convinced until talked it over with Joe. In his unfailingly common sense way of stating things he said he thought I had received an answer and that I should go ahead and accept it. Also, I had been thinking that there are no coincidences with the Lord, that those mission papers had not been sent to the employment center by accident. I also thought of the song that says "I'll go where you want me to go dear Lord, I'll be what you want me to be."

Where was my faith in all this? It was that the Lord would give me an answer. My problem was that when the answer came I was still so unsure of my qualifications for this mission that I almost missed it. I had little faith in my abilities but since then I remembered someones comment that there is nothing too hard for the Lord.

Jonathan came to visit the other day and as we talked of this, he said he read that we should all do something that challenged us every three years or so to keep our brains young so we wouldn't get dementia or Alzheimer's or something like that. The idea was to keep exercising our brains with problems to solve, challenging problems that we think we can't do.

Well this mission will be a challenge for me but I continue to feel good about it. So I told Sis. Jones to go ahead and send in my papers. I still won't get the formal call for a few weeks but I'll continue to work there until it comes.

There is one thing I still hate about it all. I have to wear dresses every day. Still it is a small sacrifice. I'm sure I'll get used to it but I'll be going through a lot of nylons along the way as my heels are so rough that they snag them so badly that they run on the first or second wearing. Oh well, as I said, it is a small price to pay to serve the Lord.

{{{hugs}}}to you all,

Mither

To Mission or Not to Mission, That is the Question

Today was the first day Sister Jones, the managing director of the employment resource center, asked me to do some of the actual work I would be doing everyday. Wouldn't you know it involved computers. I distinctly said on my missionary form that I was not willing to learn new computer skills (because of my poor memory). I got very nervous but thankfully we got interrupted and I was given other work to do. So far its just been paper pushing, not really that helpful to Sis. Jones.

If I were to go to the employment center for a job, my skills definately wouldn't be in office work. Why can't Sister Jones see this? I think she is just so excited to have some one come, she is overlooking my poor abilities.

She is so bound and determined that I'm sent as a gift from heaven that she got me an official missionary badge, A black one that looks just like the ones the real missionaries wear. And today she talked about what I would be doing two and three months from now. HMMMMM! How can I get her to remember and understand that this thing was supposed to be for a trial of one month!

OK, I can't get the bold to go off so the rest will be in bold, Sorry.

I am missing being on vacation now. Yesterday I spent the whole day watching TV. Yes, I know, a total waste of a whole day! My OA friend said she thought it was a well deserved rest from the many things I been doing for the last several days. Nice thought but I have had pleanty of rest as well lately. At least I'm not beating myself up for it, which I would have done in years past. I found that doing that just paralyzes me and I get nothing done for days at a time. Better one bad day without guilt than two weeks of nothing getting done with huge guilt and paralysis. This friend is a jewel!

Well I'm going back to bed now. I hope I can sleep this time.

Love and Hugs

Mither

New News

I got a call from a Sister Missionary at the Church Employment Center in Am. Fork last week (we were on vacation) telling me that they had been sent my mission papers as a possible missionary for them and would I call her. I was caught completely off guard but was interested in what she had to say so I called back yesterday morning and she wanted me to come in and talk about serving a mission there. I went in at 10:30 a.m. and we talked until 12:30. I wasn't very interested in working in an office as a mission, especially compared to the way I absolutely loved serving at the MTC. As I have prayed about it I am trying to tell whether I have a bad feeling about it just because I don't want to do it or if the Lord is saying it is not the right thing to do. I have thought of the song "I'll Go Where You Want Me To Go" and wondered if this is one of those times when I should just do it whether I want to or not.

I finally agreed to try it for a month and see how I felt about it but now I'm thinking I don't even want to do that. My thought is that I really loved my MTC mission and was really good at it, so wouldn't it be better to do something I'm good at rather than trying to learn something that I'm not good at? It's not as if the Church is calling me to that mission. They just sent the papers there as an option since they rejected my initial application to serve in the 12 step program. There are more details to all of this but I don't want to go in to it all right now (this post is long enough already) Suffice it to say I am in a quandary. I wish I could know what the will of the Lord is in all this. Then again maybe He doesn't care where I serve, just that I DO serve. I will have to pray about this more.

Our vacation with Joe and Eileen was great. It went way too fast. They were so much fun to go with and we saw an incredible show, the Cirque De Soliel - O. We also did a LOT of walking around the at the Belaggio and the motel where we were staying (can't remember the name of it.... my memory is so bad sometimes) We ate some really good meals, some expensive and some at the local Denny's and Ihop to save money. I love eating out! We also visited my Uncle John and Aunt Alta and also Uncle Dick and Aunt Marilyn who were overjoyed to have us come. I'm sorry we haven't visited them when we went to St. George before. They were very happy to have some company. Their children all live away from Utah so they are lonely, I guess. Anyway, the whole vacation was wonderful (and no fibro pain at all)

Well that's all for now.