Week 29: A Royals Day
Dear Loved Ones,
This email starts off with a Happy Birthday shout out to Michelle Vance, my oldest friend, who turned 22 last week! Michelle, you have been at my side for seventeen years. Thank you.
This last Monday was the best day of my mission so far, besides the day in Idaho when I got my call. I got to go to the Kansas City Temple for the first time. I visited the grounds three years ago when I'd been barred from serving a mission and wasn't endowed yet. Now I get to go inside. As a missionary. There's a special kind of victory in going to a place I've been before during my miserable times. I felt the Spirit there just as I walked in and started up the stairs to the second floor. My eyes blurred in moments just from the "finally" feeling.
I brought with me a stack of ordinance cards I've had since 2017, when I could only do the baptisms and confirmations. Looking through them a while back, I realized that lots of them are from Kansas and Missouri. I picked Kansas names out of the stack for me and my companion. i love finding little things like that, things buried in the past that seem like hints now to where I would ultimately end up serving.
Mission-centricess really makes people overlook the temple. Receiving your temple endowment ought to be a much bigger deal than opening a mission call. In Boise, when I'd only been a missionary for five days, some other missionaries and I were invited to speak at a fireside on temple and mission prep. Every other speaker just talked about their mission, completely overlooking the temple half of the night. So I focused in on that. When I was in my phase where I wasn't sure if I believed anymore, after all that has been done to within the church, temples are what pulled me back. I had a temple worker be rude and reduce me to tears once a few months after I was first barred from serving, but other than that, my experience with temples has been entirely positive. And when I finally got my endowment, I looked around he room at everyone and thought, "I am on the same level as everyone else. I am not a second class citizen." The temple is my place of belonging.
After the temple, I got to have actual FUN a year (and once a mission for me), the missionaries get to go to a Royals game and sing the national anthem. It was kind of unnerving for a second, but then I got caught up in the song and went into a daze until it was over. There's a really solid echo when you have 120 people singing in a huge stadium. I'm told I got on the jumbotron, but the REALLY important thing is that my brother is serving in Chicago and we beat the Chicago White Sox 5 to 2 and YOUR TEAM SUCKS, BABY BROTHER. MWAHAHAHA. I've never prayed for a professional sports team to win before. BYU, yes, but MLB, no. Apparently it worked.
Quick question: I'm trying to put together a mission-themed activity for the youth of our ward. I'm thinking of a relay race where they have to do activities like learning to say a phrase in a language. Has anyone done a similar activity or have any ideas? If so, shoot them at me.
This email starts off with a Happy Birthday shout out to Michelle Vance, my oldest friend, who turned 22 last week! Michelle, you have been at my side for seventeen years. Thank you.
This last Monday was the best day of my mission so far, besides the day in Idaho when I got my call. I got to go to the Kansas City Temple for the first time. I visited the grounds three years ago when I'd been barred from serving a mission and wasn't endowed yet. Now I get to go inside. As a missionary. There's a special kind of victory in going to a place I've been before during my miserable times. I felt the Spirit there just as I walked in and started up the stairs to the second floor. My eyes blurred in moments just from the "finally" feeling.
I brought with me a stack of ordinance cards I've had since 2017, when I could only do the baptisms and confirmations. Looking through them a while back, I realized that lots of them are from Kansas and Missouri. I picked Kansas names out of the stack for me and my companion. i love finding little things like that, things buried in the past that seem like hints now to where I would ultimately end up serving.
Mission-centricess really makes people overlook the temple. Receiving your temple endowment ought to be a much bigger deal than opening a mission call. In Boise, when I'd only been a missionary for five days, some other missionaries and I were invited to speak at a fireside on temple and mission prep. Every other speaker just talked about their mission, completely overlooking the temple half of the night. So I focused in on that. When I was in my phase where I wasn't sure if I believed anymore, after all that has been done to within the church, temples are what pulled me back. I had a temple worker be rude and reduce me to tears once a few months after I was first barred from serving, but other than that, my experience with temples has been entirely positive. And when I finally got my endowment, I looked around he room at everyone and thought, "I am on the same level as everyone else. I am not a second class citizen." The temple is my place of belonging.
After the temple, I got to have actual FUN a year (and once a mission for me), the missionaries get to go to a Royals game and sing the national anthem. It was kind of unnerving for a second, but then I got caught up in the song and went into a daze until it was over. There's a really solid echo when you have 120 people singing in a huge stadium. I'm told I got on the jumbotron, but the REALLY important thing is that my brother is serving in Chicago and we beat the Chicago White Sox 5 to 2 and YOUR TEAM SUCKS, BABY BROTHER. MWAHAHAHA. I've never prayed for a professional sports team to win before. BYU, yes, but MLB, no. Apparently it worked.
Quick question: I'm trying to put together a mission-themed activity for the youth of our ward. I'm thinking of a relay race where they have to do activities like learning to say a phrase in a language. Has anyone done a similar activity or have any ideas? If so, shoot them at me.
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