I never really planned on going on a mission. I’d say things like, “If I ever go on a mission, it would be cool to go to Russia,” and things like that, but it really wasn’t a goal in my life. I just didn’t see how it would be financially possible, and I didn’t spend any time figuring out how to get over or around that obstacle. And I was fine with that.
I was in college and things were going well. My spiritual life, though it could always be better, was in good shape. So I was where I should have been, doing what I should have been doing.
And then when I was 22, the Lord hit me over the head with a 2 by 4.
It didn’t hurt, but it did stun me. An event with a roommate who departed on her mission suddenly, out of nowhere, gave me this sudden desire to go on a mission. And that desire didn’t fade. Unfortunately, after spending some time actually thinking about my financial obstacles, I couldn’t figure out how to deal with them. Then, two months later, on the same weekend, both obstacles suddenly vanished. The option of going on a mission was right there. In front of me. No obstacles. And that evening when the last obstacle was removed, I felt that 2 by 4. It was the excitement of realizing this was meant to be mixed with the Spirit saying, “Hello! I’ve been as clear as I can be.”
And so I went, and I’m so glad I did. It was where I was supposed to be, when I was supposed to be there.
In the MTC and on my mission we studied the talk “The Candle of the Lord” by Boyd K. Packer. (Did everyone else’s mission push this talk all the time? It was this one, “Lock Your Heart” and “Beware of Pride”.) The first time I read it, I came across this passage:
We are expected to use the light and knowledge we already possess to work out our lives. We should not need a revelation to instruct us to be up and about our duty, for we have been told to do that already in the scriptures; nor should we expect revelation to replace the spiritual or temporal intelligence which we have already received—only to extend it. We must go about our life in an ordinary, workaday way, following the routines and rules and regulations that govern life.
Rules and regulations and commandments are valuable protection. Should we stand in need of revealed instruction to alter our course, it will be waiting along the way as we arrive at the point of need. The counsel to be “anxiously engaged” is wise counsel indeed.
That was it! That was what happened to me! I was going about my life “in an ordinary, workaday way, following the routines and rules and regulations that govern life”, and when it was time for a course correction, there it was.
This is comforting. It is good to know that if I’m doing what I should be doing, if ever there needs to be a change – not necessarily because I’m on a wrong path, but because another path is where the Lord knows I need to be at that time – I will somehow have a course correction.