My Anniversary

Today, November 7, is my anniversary...not ours...just mine. It was 6 years ago today that I entered the MTC as a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Just thinking of all that has happened as a result of that brings tears of joy to my eyes. There is nothing that I have experienced in life that is quite like being a full-time missionary. Being married in the temple and having children are also incredibly amazing experiences--but are very different from what you experience as you boldly wear that little black tag for a year and a half.

I remember that feeling of incredibly happy anticipation, yet being scared out of my mind at the prospect of giving up 18 months of my life to live and talk to everyone I met in unfamiliar places. If I had been able to see into the future and know how those experiences would change me for the better, how I would see those places as home, and that I would forever see my mission as an incredible blessing, I wonder what I would have felt that day? Maybe much the same as I do now.

I think about my mission experiences every day. Whether it's longing for an hour in the pillow room in the MTC or longing for the people I care so much about in the Baltics...something brings those pieces of my life to mind on a daily basis. They are all pieces that I will hold in my heart and celebrate forever.