My Dad has this philosophy that life is full of hurry up and waits. Honestly, if that doesn't perfectly describe the mission process, I don't know what does!
In June of 2017 I spoke with my bishop about starting mission papers. After a summer of (not so patient) waiting for my 150 days before mark, I was able to start and finish my papers in August of 2017.
While I was on a family vacation, my dad got a text from our stake prez letting us know that he had officially submitted my papers to Church Headquarters. As you can probably tell, I'm not the most patient person in the world (I'm working on it haha), so by the time I had waited to start my papers and to submit my papers I was SO READY for my mission call to come.
Most of my friends who had received calls at that point had been living at home while they were waiting for their calls. They always told me how they would basically stake out their mail boxes, waiting for that white envelope to arrive. I wasn't so lucky. At the time I was attending college 2 hours away from home so as much as I wanted to camp out on my driveway until it arrived, I couldn't. Instead I spent the next few weeks constantly calling my mom and asking her to go and check to see if my call had come that day. Wednesday, September 13th I was emailing one of my missionary friends and he was pretty adamant that my call would come either that day or the next. I felt like I had already been waiting FOREVER but I was starting to loose hope that it would actually come that week. That next morning I woke up to a text from my singles ward bishop that said something along the lines of " Please let me know where you're called to serve this week". In my morning grog I texted back "If it comes this week, I will!" to which he replied with "I'm pretty sure it will ;)". In an instant, all of my morning fog cleared and I dialed my home phone number as fast as possible. My mom picked up and I told her to go check the mail RIGHT NOW!! She just laughed at my impatience and agreed to go check. When she got out to the mailbox she told me that it wasn't there and then she went on to talk about how sad she was that her package of crafting supplies wasn't there either. I was so sad!! After that we said our goodbyes and I literally just laid on the floor of my apartment for a minute trying to get over my disappointment. At about 6pm that night my dad called me. I picked up and asked what was up and he asked me if I had seen the text message from my mom. Confused I put my dad on speakerphone and saw this lovely gem from my mom:
After waiting for 3 months and 23 days, for me to say that I was excited is a gross understatement. Haha I literally jumped around my apartment for about 2 minutes screaming for joy before I realized my family was still on the phone. Whoops!! Apparently my mom HAD actually found my mission call earlier when I was on the phone with her but she wanted my dad to be able to hear my reaction too. :') Hahaha I love my mom lots!!
Because I had class Friday afternoon the earliest I could open it was Saturday. So
Saturday night I had a big mission call opening party at my house!
M
y mom
made a ton of food and we decorated my house with super cool trinkets from around the world. It was amazing to see all of the people that showed up to support me!!
There's this longstanding tradition that my friends and family have where we try and guess where the missionary will be going. Everyone got to make 1 stateside guess and 1 foreign guess including some of my friends who were currently on missions of their own at the time.
You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the New York, New York North Mission.
You should report to the Mexico Missionary Training Center on Tuesday, January 9, 2018. You will prepare to preach the gospel in the Spanish language."
Con Amor,
Hermana Taylor
