Ten Years Ago

It was around this time ten years ago that I made one of the most important decisions of my life. Honestly, it is hard not to call it the most important decision.

Mid February 2004, I finally pulled out the missionary papers that had been hiding in the bottom of my desk, and I finished filling them out. They'd been collecting dust since October. It was a Saturday night, and I had them all completed by Sunday morning. Which is a miraculous feat.

This was the early digital age, so getting a qualified picture -- you know, one an apostle of the Lord, Jesus Christ, would use to decide my final destination, yeah, that picture -- was a big task. It was surreal though. Once I told my roommates and friends (aka the guys downstairs) that it was a done deal, I was going to finally fill out and submit those papers, they all just got to work. Ryan, a boy who (I didn't know) had a developing crush on me (that did turn into something before I left for Singapore) took care of the picture. I thought that part was going to be impossible, but he did it all for me.

My roommates ran and found the ward clerk so we could figure out how soon I could set up a meeting with our Bishop, who we knew was out of town. By the end of the night he was on the phone with me, giving me my options. I could wait two weeks until he returned, or I could transfer my LDS Church records back home to my parents congregation and I could submit my papers from the Ward (congregation) and Stake (dioceses) I grew up in. He figured that would still take two weeks time.

But he didn't know Delta, Utah. I called my dad, who was the Stake Clerk (meaning he was in charge of membership records for over half a dozen congregations), and he set up all the interviews and meetings I was suppose to have. They were scheduled for the following morning. I think my dad had been waiting for that call and wasn't hesitant to act once it came.

The boys downstairs (mainly Ryan and his friend Nate) helped me comb through all the fine details of the papers, making sure everything was ready for submission. Early the next morning I drove the 3.5 hours to Sutherland, and I met with the current Bishop, a man who had been my family's home teacher all through my teen years. A couple hours later I met with the Stake President, and that evening my papers were sent to SLC, Church Headquarters.

It was really a decision I'd made many years earlier, since childhood I knew I wanted to serve a mission. But the final "I am doing this" decision was made in a simple moment on a Saturday night in an apartment in Logan, Utah, and less than 24 hours later it was done.

I've always loved Elder Oaks BYU devotional on timing. I remember studying it often as I waited for the timing of my missionary service to be right. "In all the important decisions in our lives, what is most important is to do the right thing. Second, and only slightly behind the first, is to do the right thing at the right time."

I'm so grateful I was listening to the Spirit that random Saturday evening, when it whispered "it's time."