Going home soon

I recently received my "pink slip." Every missionary receives one about three months before they normally go home, just so that the necessary information is had, thus enabling travel arrangements to be made. One thing that the pink slip gives is your release date, which for me is July 31, 2012. For those who do not know, I started my mission on July 28, 2010. As of April 19, I have been a full-time missionary in the California Santa Rosa Mission for 21 months or so. I've known for a while that at some point in the future I was going to go home, but now that date is pretty much set. There's no denying or getting around it now, my days are numbered. I want to make these thee months that I still have my best. I want to finish out on a high note.

(My days as a full-time missionary are now numbered.)

Being a missionary is how I define myself now. Now, of course, anyone who talks to me for more than two minutes will realize, if I don't tell them sooner, that I am not anywhere near perfect. I'm still a flawed 21-year old young man. But, I am more than that. I am one who has been the receipient of many blessings from God. Those blessings, largely the result of my faith and living the gospel of Jesus Christ, have changed my worldview. Such blessings have come to me packaged in hard work and inconvience. Fact is, if any of us want to learn and/or grow, we are going to have to do something inconvient, and possible painful, eventually.

Before my mission, I was not very happy. I had very little hope for society, and I despised anything involving people at all. I'm happy to report now that my outlook is not the same anymore. I still think that many parts of society are less than ideal, but I have hope now for the future. Let's face it: you and I are not going to like everyone we come into contact with. But, like I mentioned in an earlier post (here it is) , when we are kind to people, we will receive more kindness from people in return. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Also, everyone has problems, whether they are minor or major. People are different, coming from different backgrounds and having different education and experiences. Everyone has a story. And of course, as this seems to happen to me a lot when I knock doors, you may have just caught someone at a bad time.

Staying happy is not easy with the world that way it is. Things beyond our control can devastate our lives, removing things and people that are dear to us. People that we thought were trustworthy betray us, offenses are received, and we aren't always able to have thenice things that others seem to have. Point is, if I felt so inclined, I could write a very long post on every reason not to be happy. I'm not going to subject anyone who reads this or myself to that.  But, in spite of all the bad things that exist in life, there are plenty of good reasons to be happy, or at least not dwelling on misery. Between human nature and the way society currently is, it is easier to seeon the bad than the good. But, once we see the good, we can find it in the middle of bad things and situations.

God wants us to be happy and progress. Everything that he asks us to do is ultimately for our good. If only we could have the perspective He has. We can understand (to some limited degree) why some things happen when we keep in mind two things: God is literally our Father in Heaven, and every individual, while imperfect, has the capability and the responsibility to understand the gospel of Jesus Christ for themselves. We may not be able to control what happens to us, but we always have the ability to control how we react.