Guest Post by Sister Meg Redner, blogger at >A Peculiar Girl<. She has recently been called to serve in the California San Fernando Mission.
A few nights ago, Dain asked me if I'd like to guest post here at OYSMF, and suggested I talk about my worries before I received my call. I thought about it, and realized that I had a few things I thought might be helpful to others in the same boat. This is a bit of a long story, but hopefully it will help someone.
A little about me – I was raised in the Methodist church until I was baptized in Connecticut when I was ten years old. My dad was a lay minister in the Methodist church while we lived in southern Pennsylvania (he didn't do it as his job, but he worked with the congregation the same ways that the pastor did and was a leader of the men in the church), and all of my extended family on his side identified with different denominations: my grandmother is Baptist, my papa is Methodist, my uncle and his family are Pentecostals (my uncle is also a minister), and my dad's twin brother doesn't talk about what he believes at all, short of expressing thanks to God for getting him out of Iraq alive during Desert Storm.
My mom's family isn't super religious either – they don't talk about it much at all. My stepmom's family is much the same.
So, I really should be studying/doing things for my Mark Twain final tomorrow, which is why I'm going to make this quick.
I've already let y'all know about my struggle about my mission call, and when I get stressed/vulnerable, Satan hits me with it again and it just darkens my day.
Funny thing, though. I'm slowly starting to clean out my desk drawers and do my laundry in prep for packing up everything and driving home from school for the last time, and in my art drawer (read: disorganized pack-rat drawer) I found a piece of scrap paper with a random email printed on the back.
The scrap paper that we use in printmaking is really that: random scraps from old lessons, art projects, and other professors' handouts. So, I have no idea who the person who printed out this email is, or who it's from, but I decided to read it after seeing it was a quote from Harold B. Lee.
Except for Stake Conference today, I basically haven't been out of my room since I opened my mission call Friday afternoon.
Life is good. I've been pretty quiet on the blogosphere lately, which is in part because of my impending call. I couldn't really focus on anything else, or say anything different than what I've already said, but now I've had some time to let it sink in and I think I'm ready to talk about it.
I have been called to serve in the California Carlsbad Mission, English speaking. I leave June 19th. (Read the 'before' or watch me open my mission call)
I never would have guessed or picked any of these things for myself, which is part of the reason why I know that it is perfect for me. When I read the call, I didn't have any thoughts, positive or negative. Instead I was filled with emotion, most of it excitement and built-up anxiety, and that happiness that sometimes signals the presence of the Spirit. I was happy. I was assigned. I belonged somewhere.
It took a few hours for it to start to sink in, that I had finally, finally received my call.
I'm starting this post at 11:30am. About four hours ago, I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. I tried for an hour, then got up.
I was a little disappointed that my mission call didn't come yesterday, but I knew that it was coming, and I've learned my lesson (for now) about God's timing. So I turned off my alarm, which hadn't even gone off yet, got on my knees and prayed a good morning to my Father in Heaven, asking him to let me feel His love for His children that I would soon be assigned to labor with. I stopped asking to love where I was called when I realized that it's not where, but who I serve that is important.
I had a dentist's appointment at 10, so I started to get dressed. I've been anxious, unable to sleep, since yesterday, so it took me longer than usual to wake up. I got dressed, making sure to be cute because there will be a PBS film crew on campus today.
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