The Grand Decision

Rather than starting off with an awkward hello post I'm going to jump right in. The purpose of this blog is to organize my thoughts and my process as I prepare myself to serve a full time mission and to help myself get more comfortable with talking on a spiritual level. Because, as I said, I'm going to serve a mission.

I still get butterflies thinking about it!

My name is Janine De Jesus, I'm twenty years old, and I've decided to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In the October session of General Conference the mission age change was lowered both for males and females. It was an answer to a prayer.

Prior to General Conference, in fact prior to last year's General Conference is really where my mission journey began. I received a call from the sister missionaries in my ward to come teach with them since they needed a female adult to teach a certain investigator. I agreed and ended up going with the missionaries almost every week for a year. Yup. A year.

So you can guess they brought up serving a mission several times. I think every single sister missionary at least brought it up once. My answer was always the same: Well if I'm at the age when I can serve a mission and I have the chance to then why not? It depends on where I am when I'm old enough.

Now around November and December of last year something... big happened. My father lost his job. It's long and complicated and honestly I hate talking about it. I just remember when I found out, and when he sat us down and we discussed it. I was 18 at the time and I knew, as my father did, that this would be a huge trial for our family. It still is. But it's also been a blessing.

To clarify, my dad, who from this moment forth shall be called Herby, was able to get a new job rather quickly. He was very blessed. WE were very blessed. And so we had to move, and that's how I ended up in Utah.

Okay there's more to it than that. If I went on to explain everything I would be sitting here for hours, and this isn't about how I got to live in Utah at age twenty where I experiment with making smoothies and try to understand why everyone keeps talking about this Charley. This is about my mission and how I got to that decision.

I became pretty close to the missionaries. I wasn't in Young Womens and I wasn't in the singles ward so I was kind of in what we liked to call "No Man's Land." So the missionaries came to eat every week, I went to teach with them every week, and I went to Gospel Principles with them every week. And it was great. I loved the missionaries and having them in my life. In being around them I was able to come closer to my Heavenly Father than ever before and I learned so much.

In August, when we moved, I said goodbye. I remember going to a transfer meeting to say goodbye to a sister who was being transferred to New Jersey when I ran into a missionary who I met early into his mission. He was part of the reason I gained a testimony and knowledge that the Book of Mormon was true, so I was so excited to bare my testimony to him.

Then came Utah. We came not knowing why we were going to be in Utah. Literally. We had no idea. I told Herby I prayed about it and received a witness that I would be in Utah in the fall but that didn't mean he would be there. And I was right. I wasn't going to school. I certainly wasn't in a rush to marry. I had no idea what I was doing in Utah.

Before conference I remembered something a lovely missionary told me the year prior. She told me if I prayed with a question before General Conference I would receive my answer. I of course decided to really test Heavenly Father and I would ask the night before or the morning before conference started just to see how well it worked. Naturally he shut me up.

I prayed to know what it is I need to do while I'm here and during this time in my life. I knew I would received an answer. Heavenly Father always answers our prayers, we just don't always recognize his answers. I didn't expect the answer I received.

When they announced the mission age change I knew it was for me. It's almost ironic because a few months prior I whined to Herby, "Why can't girls serve missions at 19 too?" Got it Heavenly Father. You listen. I'll never doubt that again.

The decision was unanimous. I simply had to wait until we moved into our ward and I got to meet with the bishop before I made it official. I didn't tell my family until about a month later, but in a sense they already knew. In fact they all knew I was going to serve a mission as soon as they heard the news. (thankfully I wasn't in the same room as them when watching conference or they would have seen me bawling)

I've taken this preparation slowly. I announced it and began the process in November and am almost done my papers. My availability date is set for May. It seems so close yet so far away. So I've yet to finish my papers (sooooo close!) and get my calling but it's all really hitting me. Once those papers are in I'm going to be floating on clouds until my call comes in. (the biggest guesses so far are Philadelphia [where I'm from] and South America [where my mom is from])

The purpose of this blog is for me to lay out my thoughts and spiritual discoveries leading up to my mission. And eventually it'll turn into my mission blog in which I'll hand it to a family member (I nominate Herby for the position) to share my emails. So here begins the journey towards the best 18 months of my life.

Yup, I've still got butterflies.