As his mission draws to a close I miss him more and more. People always say to me “Ethan’s mission is going so fast! I’m sure it’s not to you but for me it seems so crazy that he’s been gone four months, six months, a year, or whatever amount of time it’s been. Up until now I’ve agreed that it has gone fast. Now that the end is nearing I’m really looking forward to his return.
I think at the beginning it was so surreal. I have always wanted to be a missionary. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t serve a mission as a youth. I wanted to but got side tracked and while I do not regret at all my beautiful children or being a mom, that is my greatest joy. I do often think of that mission that I didn’t go on, and I am deeply regretful. So I look forward to Rob and I serving and when I had a son I looked forward to him serving. Like Hannah of old when I held my baby boy in my arms I promised I would do all I could to help him grow into a godly man, a disciple of Jesus Christ, and a missionary. We were very focused on that during his growing up. When he went it was a huge “huzzah!” and I was way more happy than I was sad about him leaving me.
The whole time he’s been happily serving and I’ve been happily reading his weekly emails and of course I’ve missed him, and of course it’s been hard for him and not all rainbows and puppies but it’s been good. Really good.
Now he’s almost done, now we almost get him back, now the wait is a little harder and the anticipation is a little stronger.
We have 2 1/2 months left (and I really mean “we”, it is his mission but any mom or dad of a missionary knows it’s a we mission too) and I can hardly wait!
These awesome letters help though💕
In zone conference me and my companion worked with some missionaries from the other zone in Madrid to make a 40 minute presentation on charity, the pure love of Christ. Our "training" went pretty well but in the prep time that we put in I learned so much. One quote I just loved from a talk titled 'Missionaries Are a Treasure of the Church' reads:
"Your message is a message of love, a message of hope, and a message of faith. Your attitude and your actions invite the Spirit, and the Spirit enables us to understand the things that are important. What I want to convey to you is that through your love, you are imparting the love of God."
What greater joy can we have the feeling the Love of God for other people and helping them feel it. It reminds me of christmas when I was maybe 8 or 9. I was running errands with my mom and we were at bath and body works. I found this monstrously gaudy, pink, light up, bedazzled, eifel tower shaped hand sanitizer case. My sister at the time was studying french in school and we must have been in that stage of life where having cool hand sanitizer bottles was really quite important in day to day life. I immediately knew I wanted to get this for my sister for Christmas. I told my mom and I'm pretty sure I didn't even end up paying for it. This ugly $7 piece of rubber is the first gift I remember "buying" for someone else totally on my own accord. I remember being so excited to give it to her that I almost coudn't wait til Christmas but I wrapped it up, and I'm sure that probably meant I stopped bouncing off the walls for 30 seconds to give my mom a piece of tape while I watched her wrap it up, and then it made it's way under the tree. Christmas morning my greatest motivator to wake up and get down to the presents was that my sister could open this awesome gift I had gotten her. I wasn't worried about anything I got or even other stuff she or any of my other sisters got. I just wanted her to open that darned hand sanitizer case. And I was soooo happy when she did. Probably more than she was. Now I don't remember perfect, but I'm sure I ran right over and told her to press the button so the LED lights could test whether or not you had epilepsy, and to show my sister how cool her present was. I have no idea if she liked the case or even remembers this but I experienced the joy of giving for the first time here. Giving>>>>>>>>
What I want to convey to you is that as we do things motivated by a love for others we can help them feel both our love and the love of God for them and that nothing else will enfuse quite as much joy into the world as that.
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