Week 72: For Such A Time As This Feat. Goats
Dear Loved Ones,
Honestly, this week was hard. I left the house very little. Kansas City officially reopened on the 15th, but missionaries are still under lockdown and my companion still has a bad ankle. Some days we can go down to the parking lot to pick up a dropped-off meal or run an errand, but some days I wake up knowing I won't leave the house all day. We have a balcony, though, and I can watch cardinals and dumpster raccoons from there. That's my Netflix.
Is the non-missionary version of quarantine all that bad if you can still see all your friends? I feel like I usually spend large portions of my summers at home self-entertaining with my family and the Internet.
My one big outing this week was me getting to milk a goat! I called in another set of sisters 40 minutes away to exchange with us and make it happen. The goat owners were very gracious. They have eight kids and were more than capable of doing their own farm chores, but I told them I wanted to and the held the goat's milk all morning so I could get over there. My goat milking sensei was thirteen year old Brooke, boss farm girl in rubber boots and a short skirt. She showed us how it's done. First, we had to catch the goat. So I spent maybe ten minutes racing around the yard trying to help her oldest brother corner a little spotted one. And when we finally got it, she said, "We don' need it anymore." And I had to do the whole thing over again and collar-grab the mama one. BRooke was so cool and fearless, not caring when the milk splashed all over her bare legs, and eventually I got the hang of it do and we squeezed oh so much milk out of that udder. Until it got mad and kicked the jar over. Then she took us out to the pig shack to feed Mr. Ginger, biggest boar of my life, but she said 400 lbs is small.
I was my mission life was farm chores everyday! In actual practice, I sit inside all day every day and wonder: (sings) "When will my life begiiiiiiiinnnn?"
Side note: Though it's never spoken in the film, Rapunzel's kingdom is called Corona.
The other highlight of this week was being able to video-teach my own family on Sunday. Rather than do some awkward and stilted restoration rundown with people who already know full well what that is, I addressed my little brother going on a mission this summer.
I'm to the point now, with only 24 days left in the field, that almost the entirety of my mission is behind me and I know pretty well what comes next. I probably won't teach anybody new I haven't met yet. I might Skype into baptisms for people in other areas, but none will happen here.
The semester I was barred from serving a mission, I wrote the scripture Esther 4:14 on the metal of my desk. In pencil, so I wasn't vandalizing dorm property.
"For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"
I told myself that it would be worth the painful wait, worth ill treatment from church leaders, worth letting my clothes wear out and having to settle for bad classes and housing last minute since because I couldn't, practically speaking, make plans, big ones like buying a housing contract or small ones like buying seasonal clothing, if I didn't know how soon or long I'd be around, worth all that if, at the end of it, I went on a mission and taught someone who wouldn't have been ready in 2016.
I made up a name. Sonya. I told myself Sonya hadn't stopped drinking yet, or she wasn't eight years old yet, or she hadn't immigrated to the right country yet, and I was being made to wait because she had be ready.
I read an article once about a guy who was adopted and all of his adoptive siblings went on missions to foreign countries. He got called to Michigan. He thought Michigan wasn't all that great, but he went and dinked around for two years, doing whatever missionaries in Michigan do, probably baptizing or reactivating multiple people and this one guy in particular. Years later, he took an Ancestry DNA test and it turned up a match for his biological father in Michigan. He'd baptized his dad.
I believe that everyone goes to their specific mission for a Michigan dad. For their Sonya. Earlier in my mission, I was obsessed with this. I wanted to find the Sonya who was just meant for me to give meaning to all the time behind me.
But now I see things differently.
Fia was my Sonya. She would not have been in a good life situation to be taught three years ago. But I only needed to be here for her from June 10, 2019 to August 10, 2019. I needed other reasons to be in other areas, and I made one. Especially in Idaho. I had no problem with being in the state of Idaho. An 18 month call there would have been fine. But I didn't want to be a two transfer missionary and to be okay with it, I needed to find my purpose, fast.
I love all of you, my Idaho friends on my newsletter these many months. And I especially love three specific people. I know God has surrounded these people with other missionaries and other people-in-general, but I made it my purpose to be one of them.
I told my brother that I made those three people my priority. I've found a purpose to be in every area.
In the Independence YSA, where the work was about the same or worse as this normal area on quarantine, my purpose was Madison, the girl who couldn't go on a mission yet. In Raytown, it was a family of small and neglected girls whose mom had some substance abuse problems and didn't always take good care of them. One time, while the mom was asleep and wouldn't wake up to get the girls ready for church, we cleared out huge stacks of trash from in front of their garage to rummage through more trash in their garage until we found car seats to get the two little ones to church.
No one told me I had to do that. They were two and three, to little to get much out of church, but they and their nine year old newly baptized sister wanted everyone to come. So I chose to make them my purpose.
There's an opportunity cost to timing. If I had gone on a mission sooner, I would've taught other people I loved, and the people I've taught and loved here, like those little girls, could have been taken care of by someone else. "Then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place." And I have eighteen months worth of people I didn't love, companions I never got the chance to serve with. And I would've gotten in and out and back before covid and spent quarantine with my family and friends instead.
In the great scheme of eternity, my first question when I get to Heaven will be what would've happened if I'd gone in 2016. Sometimes I think I would have been a better missionary. I at least would have been happier. But I know everyone I would've met got taken care of by someone else. Enlargement and deliverance arose from another place.
But I'm here now. And I'm making my reasons to be here.
Every time I've left an area, there's been some eleventh hour miracle where I met someone or got in contact with someone who was hard to reach before. I trust in the pattern and in God. I really feel that, in the 24 days before I go, I'm going to have an opportunity come up that makes the three months in quarantine worth it for that one day.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
Honestly, this week was hard. I left the house very little. Kansas City officially reopened on the 15th, but missionaries are still under lockdown and my companion still has a bad ankle. Some days we can go down to the parking lot to pick up a dropped-off meal or run an errand, but some days I wake up knowing I won't leave the house all day. We have a balcony, though, and I can watch cardinals and dumpster raccoons from there. That's my Netflix.Is the non-missionary version of quarantine all that bad if you can still see all your friends? I feel like I usually spend large portions of my summers at home self-entertaining with my family and the Internet.
My one big outing this week was me getting to milk a goat! I called in another set of sisters 40 minutes away to exchange with us and make it happen. The goat owners were very gracious. They have eight kids and were more than capable of doing their own farm chores, but I told them I wanted to and the held the goat's milk all morning so I could get over there. My goat milking sensei was thirteen year old Brooke, boss farm girl in rubber boots and a short skirt. She showed us how it's done. First, we had to catch the goat. So I spent maybe ten minutes racing around the yard trying to help her oldest brother corner a little spotted one. And when we finally got it, she said, "We don' need it anymore." And I had to do the whole thing over again and collar-grab the mama one. BRooke was so cool and fearless, not caring when the milk splashed all over her bare legs, and eventually I got the hang of it do and we squeezed oh so much milk out of that udder. Until it got mad and kicked the jar over. Then she took us out to the pig shack to feed Mr. Ginger, biggest boar of my life, but she said 400 lbs is small.I was my mission life was farm chores everyday! In actual practice, I sit inside all day every day and wonder: (sings) "When will my life begiiiiiiiinnnn?"
Side note: Though it's never spoken in the film, Rapunzel's kingdom is called Corona.
The other highlight of this week was being able to video-teach my own family on Sunday. Rather than do some awkward and stilted restoration rundown with people who already know full well what that is, I addressed my little brother going on a mission this summer.
I'm to the point now, with only 24 days left in the field, that almost the entirety of my mission is behind me and I know pretty well what comes next. I probably won't teach anybody new I haven't met yet. I might Skype into baptisms for people in other areas, but none will happen here.
The semester I was barred from serving a mission, I wrote the scripture Esther 4:14 on the metal of my desk. In pencil, so I wasn't vandalizing dorm property.
"For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"
I told myself that it would be worth the painful wait, worth ill treatment from church leaders, worth letting my clothes wear out and having to settle for bad classes and housing last minute since because I couldn't, practically speaking, make plans, big ones like buying a housing contract or small ones like buying seasonal clothing, if I didn't know how soon or long I'd be around, worth all that if, at the end of it, I went on a mission and taught someone who wouldn't have been ready in 2016.
I made up a name. Sonya. I told myself Sonya hadn't stopped drinking yet, or she wasn't eight years old yet, or she hadn't immigrated to the right country yet, and I was being made to wait because she had be ready.
I read an article once about a guy who was adopted and all of his adoptive siblings went on missions to foreign countries. He got called to Michigan. He thought Michigan wasn't all that great, but he went and dinked around for two years, doing whatever missionaries in Michigan do, probably baptizing or reactivating multiple people and this one guy in particular. Years later, he took an Ancestry DNA test and it turned up a match for his biological father in Michigan. He'd baptized his dad.
I believe that everyone goes to their specific mission for a Michigan dad. For their Sonya. Earlier in my mission, I was obsessed with this. I wanted to find the Sonya who was just meant for me to give meaning to all the time behind me.
But now I see things differently.
Fia was my Sonya. She would not have been in a good life situation to be taught three years ago. But I only needed to be here for her from June 10, 2019 to August 10, 2019. I needed other reasons to be in other areas, and I made one. Especially in Idaho. I had no problem with being in the state of Idaho. An 18 month call there would have been fine. But I didn't want to be a two transfer missionary and to be okay with it, I needed to find my purpose, fast.
I love all of you, my Idaho friends on my newsletter these many months. And I especially love three specific people. I know God has surrounded these people with other missionaries and other people-in-general, but I made it my purpose to be one of them.
I told my brother that I made those three people my priority. I've found a purpose to be in every area.
In the Independence YSA, where the work was about the same or worse as this normal area on quarantine, my purpose was Madison, the girl who couldn't go on a mission yet. In Raytown, it was a family of small and neglected girls whose mom had some substance abuse problems and didn't always take good care of them. One time, while the mom was asleep and wouldn't wake up to get the girls ready for church, we cleared out huge stacks of trash from in front of their garage to rummage through more trash in their garage until we found car seats to get the two little ones to church.
No one told me I had to do that. They were two and three, to little to get much out of church, but they and their nine year old newly baptized sister wanted everyone to come. So I chose to make them my purpose.
There's an opportunity cost to timing. If I had gone on a mission sooner, I would've taught other people I loved, and the people I've taught and loved here, like those little girls, could have been taken care of by someone else. "Then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place." And I have eighteen months worth of people I didn't love, companions I never got the chance to serve with. And I would've gotten in and out and back before covid and spent quarantine with my family and friends instead.
In the great scheme of eternity, my first question when I get to Heaven will be what would've happened if I'd gone in 2016. Sometimes I think I would have been a better missionary. I at least would have been happier. But I know everyone I would've met got taken care of by someone else. Enlargement and deliverance arose from another place.
But I'm here now. And I'm making my reasons to be here.
Every time I've left an area, there's been some eleventh hour miracle where I met someone or got in contact with someone who was hard to reach before. I trust in the pattern and in God. I really feel that, in the 24 days before I go, I'm going to have an opportunity come up that makes the three months in quarantine worth it for that one day.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
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