The Prelude
On some subconscious level, one of man's natural instincts is to gather as much as possible. Non-satiation put simply. So instead of taking over the world, I wanted to just amass as much money as possible while helping bring Africa out of the poverty cycle. Not a bad aspiration. But close to unattainable. Outliers convinced me that unknown forces are reliable for success rather than pure desire. Success, in other words, is a mix of talent, desire, and luck. Extreme success, or the luck that I was looking for, is based off of almost complete luck for successful people. Will I be successful? Probably? Will I get lucky? Espero que si.
Missions change people. But more than the mission, the preparation to serve a mission changes people. Missions are much more memorable than the preparation, just like a game is much more memorable than practice. That being said, at the end of my mission I was still unaware of how successful I had been, but I did have a clear vision of what I was to do be successful from then on out. Finding and teaching people the Gospel made me more and more aware of the need to help people be successful. The close correlation between the success of the parents and the success of the children lent the grave realization that to change the course of a country, it had to start on the individual level - with education.
I returned from my mission and started to get going with plans. Executing the plan never seems to be as easy as it seems to be, however. Going to Jerusalem didn't seem to be a way to further that goal, but it felt right so I went ahead with it.
The semester before Jerusalem was exciting, but kind of like the few months before going on a mission. I knew forming a relationship probably wouldn't last, and the missionary announcement help with that. Classes seemed important, but kind of boring. And Christmas break felt like I was stuck in a cell with nothing but a clock. Like some sort of weird torture.
The Calling
In Jerusalem I enjoyed the sites, learned too much about the Old Testament, and most importantly I made alot of friends. There was an enormous amount of people that received their mission calls while we were there. Somewhere in the ballpark of 20, with another 4 or 5 working on their papers right now.
I didn't realize it until the last Sunday we were there. The whole time it was kind of in the back of my head - what was I doing there? It was right after we had the Upper Room talk with Elder Uchdorf. I was sitting on a couch and trying to blog so I could remember everything, but it wasn't coming. And I don't know how, but it just came. It wasn't like a light bulb went off, but rather I realized the light bulb had been shining pretty bright the whole time and I didn't realize it was on. My goal in life is to help as many young men and women serve missions as possible.
Postlude
I don't know exactly what role I played or how much influence I had in my mission on others, nor do I know how much influence I had on the individuals in Jerusalem who are going on missions. I have come to accept that I may not know until after the fact how successful I was. I may never know at all. What I do know is that I should be concerned about following the Spirit and everything will play itself out in THE AFTERMATH
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