New Year Nostalgia

Four months left of my mission, and sometimes I wonder what God is preparing for my future. Serving a mission is hard--the hardest thing I've ever done--but it is beautiful when I look ahead. I hope that I will look back in 30 years and see how knocking doors and teaching lessons and training missionaries prepared me to serve in powerful ways and in new places.

President Monson says that "the future is as bright as your faith."

Consider the bright faith of my mother. Thirty years ago, she did not have a husband or children or grandchildren. I was not even a thought. But she had faith, and God was preparing her.

My mom is in Logan, Utah, today, but she must be afflicted with the same New Year's nostalgia that is infecting me in Oklahoma City. Here I deliver her words as my own, hoping that my path will become a reflection of hers one day:

May I take a moment to get nostalgic? As we were gathered for Christmas Eve, I surveyed our little gathering and marveled. Thirty Christmases ago, I was with my birth family for the annual celebration. Little did I know that would be the last Christmas with my family of origin, as a child, in my parent's home. That was 1983. Now in 2013, I have spent this Christmas with my own family, multiple generations. I could not have even imagined all of these wonderful people in my life 30 years ago: my sweet  husband (whom was serving his mission in 1983), my incredible children (each of them such a welcomed blessing), my children's spouses, and tender grandchildren (all five!). None of them were present in my 1983 life, and now they are the soul focus of my earthly life. As we hung up those 13 stockings on Christmas Eve (knowing that one more is in Oklahoma, plus one more on the way,), I marveled at my life, my family, my miracle. I remember very distinctly one thought that came to me on the day your dad and I were married. We were in the sealing room, filled to the brim with loved ones. I wondered if my children were witnessing our marriage, the beginning of our family. I love my family! I love living as a family! I want all of my family to be sealed  forever. I am so grateful that we are sealed together.

I am so grateful to serve a full-time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! I want to share the gift of eternal families with the world! Lasting family units are founded upon the teachings of Jesus Christ, including the living words of God given through prophets and ordinances available only in His holy temples.

Let us have faith in the future. The Savior came, and He will come again. His role in my life is not limited by the number of pages of the Bible or by the length of my life. His Atonement is infinite.

Excuse the rampaging, ranging testimony of a missionary. It is a weakness of mine to wax tangential with truth. But it's true, you know, however poorly I express it. It's all true.

Happy New Year!

*Mormon Message of the week: Look Not Behind Thee

http://www.mormonchannel.org/video/mormon-messages?v=910930409001&cid=HPTH122613304&im=true

*Conference talk of the week: Look Ahead and Believe by Elder Dube

http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/look-ahead-and-believe?lang=eng

Christmas Video for Y'all

This is what happens when the ward mission leader is a professional photographer! Thank you, thank you, Brother Randy Lusk of Alpha-Omega Productions. Please click on the link and then click "play."

http://www.aopro.com/vimeo/okc2/

Christmas Chuckles or "Ode to Sister Ott"

Sister Ott's finest offering to our companionship was her daily joke. She abandoned me for another area six weeks ago, but the dear soul sent a Christmas gift of witticisms. For your laughing pleasure--the puny genius of Sister Sara Ott:

1) Britney Spears is meeting with Mormon missionaries and they teach her about the Word of Wisdom. She promises to live it even though she likes her coffee. Later, when they call her and ask how it's going, she sings, "Oops! I did it again!"

2) Justin Timberlake converts and he opens up a shop for missionaries; when you walk in you hear, "Here I come in my suit and tie/suit and tie."

3) Christina Agilara meets some Mormon missionaries on the street and when they ask if they can teach her she starts singing, "Come on over, come on over, baby."

4) Two Mormon missionaries knock on Nicolas Cage's door and he says to them, "I was knowing you'd come."

5) Ace of Base walks into a bar and the bartender refuses to serve them so they pray about which way to go. Immediately they meet some Mormon missionaries and want to meet with them. The missionaries are surprised and ask why. Ace of Base starts singing, "I saw the sign."

6) Why did Sister Stewart cross the road? She had an appointment on the other side. Why did Sister Ott cross the road? She was Sister Stewart's companion.

7) There were two young men dressed up in suits that walk to a bar and the bartender asks what they want and then they are so frightened and yelled, "We're not supposed to be in here! We're Mormon!"

8) All the members of Nsync convert and decide to go on missions. They all have their farewells in the same ward and for their musical number they all sing, "Bye Bye, Bye."

9) One Direction begins investigating the church and they're trying to keep their thoughts clean. As their mantra they're always singing, "Get out, get out, get out of my head."

10) The members of Nsync are out on their missions and there's one investigator deciding who will baptize him. Nsync breaks out into, "It's gonna be me."

11) Mormon missionaries teach Johnny Depp a lesson and he won't agree to baptism. The missionaries ask him about it and he says that he would end up cutting of someone's wrist and nose because of his scissor hands.

12) Carrie Underwood doesn't know how to pray so some missionaries teach her in a lesson. Later she almost ends up in a car wreck and starts praying for Jesus to take the wheel.

13) All the members of Backstreet Boys convert and find out that they're all in the same ward one Sunday and afterwards starting singing, "Everybody...Backstreet's Back."

14) How many missionaries have graduated from BYU? None! No missionaries go there; they're all RMs.

15) Zachary Levi is given a Book of Mormon and starts to read it and when he meets with the missionaries they ask him what he thought about it and he starts singing, "At last I see the light, and is't like the fog has lifted."

16) Two Mormon missionaries knock on a preacher's house and ask if they can teach him a lesson. He says no, but asks why they knocked on his door. Their reply was, "We thought you were a devil worshiper because your house number is 666."

17) Sleeping Beauty converted to the church because she needed to be married to someone forever--100 years is an awfully long time to sleep!

And my personal favorite-not included in her Christmas e-mail, but once mentioned to a frazzled, less-active woman:
"If you're having a terrible day, don't worry about it. Even Moses was once a basket-case."

Merry Christmas, dear friends and family!!

Creation, Fall, Atonement

I think I have writer's block. I've never had it before, so I can't be sure. The problem is, there is so much loveliness that I can't sort it out into a thesis, main idea, or topic sentences. My sentence structure has been hijacked by happiness!

Forgive the poor writing. Just feel the spirit of God's love, if you will. Pretty sure that's what Moroni requested (Ether 12), and God granted his wish. Perhaps He'll do the same for me.

Creation, Fall, Atonement. The pattern relives itself each day of my life. Everyday becomes a redemptive tale, my very own book of Genesis. Yesterday, for example:

Creation
Sunday. A perfect day, as every day is at first. I wake up at 6:22 am, turn on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and shower. Rush to ward council. Rush back. Study. Microwave leftover butternut squash soup. Go to church. Make copies, talk, counsel, drive. The day continues, and as it progresses, I begin to fall.

Fall
First Fall? Getting snappy with my companion. She's having a bad morning, I can tell. She's not one to self-disclose, but I push for details. Thoughtless of me. Second fall? Under-prepared for ward council. I didn't know they'd want copies of our Family Mission Plans! If only I had planned better! Third fall? My control-freak took over Sisters Best's* project. That was five days ago, actually. But the fall takes life again when a member unknowingly jokes about it. I fell the first time, and I fall again when I feel the fresh guilt of having hurt a friend. I continue to fall all day long.

Atonement
If not for a daily Atonement (yes, even hourly), I would be a wretched creature. The prophet Jacob says that the first judgment that comes upon me "must needs remain to an endless duration" (2Nephi 9:7). So I would be forever fallen: a mean companion, an under-prepared missionary, a controlling friend. But that is not who I am, and it is not who God intends me to be.

The simple gifts of Jesus Christ helped me all day long. I apologized to my companion. I will not push next time. I'll study her needs and desires and pray to know how to communicate better. We ran out of the room and made copies. Next time we'll be better prepared. And Sister Best if forgiving.

I am forever grateful for the eternal gift of Jesus Christ. Because He lives, I will continue to create good things in myself and in the world around me, even when I sometimes fall.

Quarter Centurian

Happy birthday to me! "Grandma Stewart", that's me: the oldest sister of the mission!

Restoration-Twinkie Metaphor

My comp Sister Ellis and her amazing Restoration-Twinkie metaphor (read the boxes!!)

Thanksgiving 2013

Twelve missionaries, the mission president and his wife, our office couple, and one very cute family from the ward. Sister Walkenhorst makes apple pie just like my mom. And they seated us with the children! Yesss!

Thirds Cousins

Sisters Stewart (distantly related, but we call ourselves cousins...if only we didn't have nearly identical names too, then our mail wouldn't be such a debacle!) 

Thanks-Giving Indeed

Holidays on the mission are lovely. God can't provide what you love most (your family), but He makes up for it in the details.

We received a good-morning text from one of our investigators that read, "Please enjoy today as though you were Joseph Smith on the day the church was restored."

I'm not sure that we accomplished this per say, but we came as close as we could.

Our first dinner appointment was with the Galandra family. She makes potatoes and stuffing just like my mom. And he is a nut about Jewish mysticism. Three hour conversation about the gospel from a Jewish perspective? Yes, please. Their daughter sat on the couch with her nose in a book the entire meal; how very Stewart of her.

Our second dinner appointment - distanced three hours apart from the first, just in time for the stomach to crave gravy again - was a missionary smorgasbord. Twelve missionaries, the mission president and his wife, our office couple, and one very cute family from the ward. Sister Walkenhorst makes apple pie just like my mom. And they seated us with the children! Yessss. For the oldest unmarried grandchild, the kid's table has always been my appointed place. The company was perfect. The five year-old exclaimed over and over about the bits of sausage in the stuffing. The twelve year-old was thrilled to tell the sister missionaries about her upcoming musical. And the grumpy seven year-old kept sneaking food onto his sister's plate. These are the details that make Thanksgiving sweet.

We filled the hours remaining by visiting a widow (forty-five minutes looking at family photos) and singing in the Alzheimer's ward at a local care facility (amazing how they forget their own families and yet remember Christmas songs).

Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Christmas! Happy life, dear friends.
God is the author of all this good.