Week 24: Red Light, Green Light, Yellow Light
Dear Loved Ones,
My family (parents and two youngest brothers) are all in Lake Powell without me this week, the dirty traitors. We have gone every year since I was fourteen. They also bought jet skis without me. I was feeling bad about missing out on that, but then I remembered that for the past three summers, I was miserable to be still at home and not on a mission. It's not a good feeling, to hate being there to do the things you love. Lake Powell will be there for me when I get back, but for now, I finally get to leave it like I wanted.
I have two little wishes that I pray for to happen during my mission. I want to serve in the visitors' center or the Liberty Jail this year and I want to see sunflowers in Kansas. I love being able to pray for little wishes now instead of praying to get on a mission.
Way back in April, I met an Ethiopian lady and got an Amharic Book of Mormon for her, but she's never been home when I tried to drop it by. So this book has been riding around in the back of our car, doing nothing. On Monday, I went to get a much needed haircut and the stylist happened to be Ethiopian. She asked me if I was originally from the area, and when I told her I was here as a missionary, she asked me to tell her more. So I ended up teaching an impromptu lesson while she was washing my hair. Then her phone rang and she answered it in Amharic! She told me what the language was and I mentioned I was familiar with it and, in fact, had a book written in it out in the parking lot. She asked me to give it to her, so finally, this book has a good home!
The next day we had zone conference, which is usually tremendously boring (in Boise it was only five miserable hours, but here it's seven), but this time we had guest stars to salvage it. Rosalie Nelson Ringwood, President Nelson's daughter, came and spoke, bringing along her husband, whose fancy title is Assistant Executive Director of the Mission Committee.
He told us that when he became a general authority, multiple people asked him to create a post-mission MTC program to help newly finished missionaries stay active. He shot the idea down, saying missions themselves should teach you all you need to endure to the end.
I love that. It got me thinking about these ads
LDS Business College posts in church buildings for years that show a man divided in half. One half of him is in a suit and nametag. One half wears normal clothes and a backpack. The caption is "Now What?" The money-message it sends is that people who never bothered to plan out college and just went on missions should go to LDS Business College. But I think it also sends the message that people should never bother to plan out college (or life, really), looking ahead with myopic focus on missions. I worry a lot about missionaries who tell me they have no idea what they're majoring in because they only need to focus on their missions now.
I spent three and a half years at BYU. I've seen the end result of this mentality. Those people just dink around for a semester or two, whipping out "on my mission" stories as cover when people talk about their major classes and career goals.
We are a culture so thoroughly addicted to missions. And being addicted to missions does you no good after your mission is over. Leaving aside academics, your testimony can sputter and die when you're centered on your mission instead of Christ.
I simultaneously worry that I'm not mission-centric enough (I feel like an outlier whenever I talk to other missionaries and they seem more in love with their missions than I am with mine) and that I'm too mission-centric. My conversion story mostly consists of me holding my ground in face of naysayers and trusting in the grace of God to get me on a mission. But people I'm teaching aren't struggling with getting on a mission. They're struggling with mental illness and work stress and drugs and family difficulty and adoption and unemployment. And I can't tell much of a full version of my story because I don't want to put the church in a bad light while I'm trying to get people to join it. I don't have the most marketable conversion story, but it is mine. I am grateful for my mission call that was so long in coming and I want to help the people I'm teaching, even when I'm not a typical missionary and the story of how I got here isn't something I can share very freely.
Sister Ringwood also shared an analogy I love about feeling the Spirit. She compared it to a traffic light. Sometimes the Spirit can tell you to STOP or GO, but often we operate under a yellow light and can proceed as we are until directed otherwise. I like that because some missionaries think they need to be commanded in all things, and since the Spirit has better things to do, they invent promptings when there are no green lights to be had. I know I'm not qualified to say when other people are feeling the Spirit and when they're not, but some promptings sound invented to me. It's okay to operate in yellow mode and not look for signs all the time.
I love you all. No matter who you are. You wouldn't be on this mailing list if I didn't value you.
P.S.: I'm working on loving my mission. If you served a mission, send me a story about how you came to love yours.
My family (parents and two youngest brothers) are all in Lake Powell without me this week, the dirty traitors. We have gone every year since I was fourteen. They also bought jet skis without me. I was feeling bad about missing out on that, but then I remembered that for the past three summers, I was miserable to be still at home and not on a mission. It's not a good feeling, to hate being there to do the things you love. Lake Powell will be there for me when I get back, but for now, I finally get to leave it like I wanted.
I have two little wishes that I pray for to happen during my mission. I want to serve in the visitors' center or the Liberty Jail this year and I want to see sunflowers in Kansas. I love being able to pray for little wishes now instead of praying to get on a mission.
Way back in April, I met an Ethiopian lady and got an Amharic Book of Mormon for her, but she's never been home when I tried to drop it by. So this book has been riding around in the back of our car, doing nothing. On Monday, I went to get a much needed haircut and the stylist happened to be Ethiopian. She asked me if I was originally from the area, and when I told her I was here as a missionary, she asked me to tell her more. So I ended up teaching an impromptu lesson while she was washing my hair. Then her phone rang and she answered it in Amharic! She told me what the language was and I mentioned I was familiar with it and, in fact, had a book written in it out in the parking lot. She asked me to give it to her, so finally, this book has a good home!
The next day we had zone conference, which is usually tremendously boring (in Boise it was only five miserable hours, but here it's seven), but this time we had guest stars to salvage it. Rosalie Nelson Ringwood, President Nelson's daughter, came and spoke, bringing along her husband, whose fancy title is Assistant Executive Director of the Mission Committee.
He told us that when he became a general authority, multiple people asked him to create a post-mission MTC program to help newly finished missionaries stay active. He shot the idea down, saying missions themselves should teach you all you need to endure to the end.
I love that. It got me thinking about these ads
LDS Business College posts in church buildings for years that show a man divided in half. One half of him is in a suit and nametag. One half wears normal clothes and a backpack. The caption is "Now What?" The money-message it sends is that people who never bothered to plan out college and just went on missions should go to LDS Business College. But I think it also sends the message that people should never bother to plan out college (or life, really), looking ahead with myopic focus on missions. I worry a lot about missionaries who tell me they have no idea what they're majoring in because they only need to focus on their missions now.
I spent three and a half years at BYU. I've seen the end result of this mentality. Those people just dink around for a semester or two, whipping out "on my mission" stories as cover when people talk about their major classes and career goals.
We are a culture so thoroughly addicted to missions. And being addicted to missions does you no good after your mission is over. Leaving aside academics, your testimony can sputter and die when you're centered on your mission instead of Christ.
I simultaneously worry that I'm not mission-centric enough (I feel like an outlier whenever I talk to other missionaries and they seem more in love with their missions than I am with mine) and that I'm too mission-centric. My conversion story mostly consists of me holding my ground in face of naysayers and trusting in the grace of God to get me on a mission. But people I'm teaching aren't struggling with getting on a mission. They're struggling with mental illness and work stress and drugs and family difficulty and adoption and unemployment. And I can't tell much of a full version of my story because I don't want to put the church in a bad light while I'm trying to get people to join it. I don't have the most marketable conversion story, but it is mine. I am grateful for my mission call that was so long in coming and I want to help the people I'm teaching, even when I'm not a typical missionary and the story of how I got here isn't something I can share very freely.
Sister Ringwood also shared an analogy I love about feeling the Spirit. She compared it to a traffic light. Sometimes the Spirit can tell you to STOP or GO, but often we operate under a yellow light and can proceed as we are until directed otherwise. I like that because some missionaries think they need to be commanded in all things, and since the Spirit has better things to do, they invent promptings when there are no green lights to be had. I know I'm not qualified to say when other people are feeling the Spirit and when they're not, but some promptings sound invented to me. It's okay to operate in yellow mode and not look for signs all the time.
I love you all. No matter who you are. You wouldn't be on this mailing list if I didn't value you.
P.S.: I'm working on loving my mission. If you served a mission, send me a story about how you came to love yours.
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