Getting Ready

It's almost that time.  Tomorrow night I will be set apart as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Wednesday morning I will give my family a few last hugs and board a plane to Salt Lake and enter the MTC.  A few weeks after that, I will get on another plane to my final destination of Washington DC.  Sitting here, I'm a jumble of emotions. I am so excited to be a missionary! I've been waiting five months for the day to come, but now that's it's almost here I'm also so nervous.  I'm nervous to leave my family for a whole 18 months, nervous to become Hermana Simpson, and nervous to go somewhere completely new, because let's face it, to a West Coast girl like me, Washington DC is basically a foreign country. Sometimes I can't help the thoughts that come in, "Am I going to be a good enough missionary? Have I prepared enough to go?" And the clincher, "What am I going to do when I can't call my mom every time I have a problem?"
The thing is, regardless of all these nagging thoughts in the back of my mind (or more recently the front), I know going on a mission is what I'm supposed to be doing about it.  It was a hard and terrifying decision to make, but once I made it, I was overwhelmed with peace.  And even now, when what I'm about to do has finally sunk in and I can feel a little bit of apprehension, that peace is still there.  Why?  Because I know that my prayers were answered.  That the answer I received to go on a mission is still the right answer.  I don't know why it's the right answer, but I know that Heavenly Father needs me to be in Washington DC right now.  And that's reason enough for me to go.  I have felt his love and I know that he is there.  It's through his power and his love that I know, regardless of the trials and challenges I'm about to face, that I'll be all right.  In fact, I'll be more than all right.  I can repeat the words of Paul said to the Romans with the same conviction he wrote them: "What shall we then say to these things?  If God be for us, who can be against us...Nay in all things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us."
The next eighteen months are months that I have dedicated to the Lord.  Not because I have to, but because I want to.  I'm excited to learn and serve and love and Jesus Christ does.  And I'm proud to be able to wear his name next to mine.


*If you're interested in reading my letters, my mom and sister will be posting them here.   So stay a while, and maybe even write me a letter!