Family Ties

This past week we have been savoring some special family time.  Our older son, Forest, came out from Michigan for a visit with his son, knowing we won't be seeing each other for a long time with the mission coming up.  It was great to watch our two sons interacting - they are so very different from each other.  As kids they used to fight like crazy and I often wondered if they would ever learn to be friends.  Fortunately, as adults, they have built a greater appreciation for one another.

We took all the grandkids and the dogs for a hike out to Jump Creek and had a blast climbing over the rocks and playing in the water there.  There were family dinners,  games, and lots of reminiscing. It was a very special time for all of us.

Leaving family is one of the biggest obstacles for many seniors who consider serving a full time mission. When I worry about leaving my family behind, I remember the words of our church leaders who have given key promises and wise council for mature couples who serve:

In an April 2001 Conference Talk titled "Couple Missionaries, A Time To Serve",  Robert Hale stated "As we serve in the mission field, our children and grandchildren will be blessed in ways that would not have been possible had we stayed at home. Talk to couples who have served missions and they will tell you of blessings poured out: inactive children activated, family members baptized, and testimonies strengthened because of their service."

In his October 2004 General Conference talk "Senior Missionaries and the Gospel",  Elder Russell M. Nelson said:  "No senior missionary finds it convenient to leave. Neither did Joseph or Brigham or John or Wilford. They had children and grandchildren too. They loved their families not one whit less, but they also loved the Lord and wanted to serve Him. Someday we may meet these stalwarts who helped to establish this dispensation. Then will we rejoice that we did not seek the shadows when a call to missionary service came from the prophet, even in the autumn years of our lives."

Then in his October 2011 talk "We are All Enlisted", Elder Jeffrey R. Holland addressed the concerns grandparents felt about leaving family behind by saying "Those little darlings will be just fine, and I promise you will do things for them in the service of the Lord that, worlds without end, you could never do if you stayed home to hover over them. What greater gift could grandparents give their posterity than to say by deed as well as word, “In this family we serve missions!”

I have wept at the thought of all I will miss in these key years of our grandchildrens' lives.  My heart is heavy as I recognize the huge gulf of time when I will not be there to share in family traditions or to build key memories.  

I have a deep and abiding faith that my family WILL be blessed in our absence.  That doesn't make it easier to leave them.  But it it does make it bearable.

Our Papers Are In!

Our missionary applications have now been officially submitted!   All the planning, praying, pondering leading up to this have been a powerful time for us.

I feel like I'm standing on the precipice of a great dividing line in my life.  In John Steinbeck's novel, The Pearl, he tells the story of a poor Mexican-Indian man named Kino who finds a giant pearl.  There is a line in the book about how Kino and his wife, Juana, would forever be changed by that pearl.  They would always think of their life as what happened before the pearl and what came after the pearl.  Sadly, in the book the pearl represents great tragedy.   This mission will be quite opposite from that.  But it will be a marker experience for us without a doubt.

I am reminded of when Larry and I built the pond in our backyard last year.

We started out with just an idea, thinking it would be nice to have a water feature up close to the house so we could hear the flowing water.  (For a long time we had the IDEA that at some point we would go on a mission together).

We happened to pick up a pre-formed liner from our neighbors at a yard sale. They had planned on building one in their yard but never quite got around to it.  (Larry's friend, Bruce Beckstrand, put in HIS papers to go on a mission - making us think more seriously about it ourselves).

The spot we had picked for putting the pond had a tree growing smack in the middle of it, so that had to be removed.   That was REALLY work.  (We had some barriers that needed to be rooted out - my attachment to my job, our fears about leaving our family and worry over the expense)

We found a place in where we could get the kind of rocks we were looking for and got a rock permit.
Then we set about the hard work of hauling a truck load of rocks.

When we got out to the spot where the rocks were my big strong man played billy goat and climbed the side of the hill to haul them over to where I was.  Then I would pick them up and take them the 100 yards or so to where the truck was parked.  Rock by rock by rock we had some great teamwork going on.

(All through the planning and preparations putting our applications together we have worked together as a team.  We have supported each other through each step of the process.  I'm sure we'll have lots more of that in days to come.)

After Larry carefully dug the hole for the pond, poured a layer of sand to support the liner, then leveled it carefully, we worked together to place the rocks .  There was more than a little second guessing as we moved them back and forth, this way and that, until we finally had them arranged in a way that was pleasing to both of us.

As we have explored options for this mission - should we say we needed to stateside or be open to an international assignment -   how long should we serve for?  What type of mission should we request?  All of that we had to carefully communicate with each other and with the Lord until everything settled in just right.   Like the pond you see pictured above, we ended up with something very special.

Now the count down begins, waiting for our official call.

Why This Is My Last Class

As of today, I am all done being a part-time college teacher.  Final exams are all over. Spring 2014 grades are now posted and all my administrative paperwork turned in. I am officially finished with my work as an adjunct instructor of Sociology.  

Over the past 20 years, I taught for 5 community colleges and 2 universities. Guessing I taught 3 terms each year with an average of 30 students per term, that means I worked with about 1,200 students over the course of my career.
 

Teaching has never been my primary job. I have held a variety of positions with different organizations as we have moved from state to state, ranging from exec director of non profits to coordinating grant programs. Still, it was the adjunct teaching I did one or two nights each week, or even the distance-learning classes I taught online, that gave me the most satisfaction.  

In many ways, it has been my role as a teacher that has shaped my sense of worth and personal identity.  When I was in the classroom, whether face-to-face or virtual, I would get into "flow" experiences and feel like I was truly doing what I was born to do.

So turning in grades for the very last time feels like something a lot bigger that simply quitting a job.  I feel as if I am giving up a core part of who I am. Even though I am absolutely certain that our decision to go on this mission is the right choice, this is one of the sacrifices I will make that feels really hard.

This is the lecture I posted on Blackbord in our unit on Religion and Society to explain to my students why I would not be back next term:

Why This is My Last Class

A few of you already know that this is going to be my last term teaching. In this learning unit I will explain why that is.  

At the end of the year, my husband and I are planning on moving to New Zealand for two years to serve a full time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   I’m quitting my job, putting everything I own in storage, and leaving behind dear friends, family, and my beloved basset hound, Morgan the Wonder Dog.  I am leaving everything that feels safe and familiar to go to a part of the world I know very little about.  I am doing this because of a deep spiritual commitment I feel to my faith, and a belief that this sacrifice will result in deeper meaning in my life.

In your text book it says: “religion is the way people make sense of their world” (Conley. 2013. P. 613.). Emile Durkheim called religion “a fundamental and permanent aspect of humanity”(Conley. 2013. P. 622.). Whether you personally agree or disagree with the tenants of any particular religion, it is clearly evident that matters of faith have been important to human beings in one fashion or another in nearly every society.

One of the challenges of American life is that we have so many different types of beliefs.  Even though half the population of this country rate God as very important in their life (Conley. 2013. P. 625.), how “God” is defined and what it means to follow one’s faith can be very different from one person to the next.

Humans are social beings. Rather than doing things based on instinct, we rely on social experience to teach us what is appropriate or important in how we think and behave. Some of the people I know have reacted to the news of my choice to go on a mission with praise and admiration.  Others think I am misguided and foolish to give up a good job to go volunteer for my church, especially since I will have to pay all my own living expenses to do so. 

We define who we are in relation to others. We are sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. We are members of clubs, employees of companies, neighbors and friends. How we experience our lives is very much shaped by who we feel connected to or apart from. One of the challenges we all face is how we cope when our opinions, beliefs, values or choices are very different from others we share close social bonds with. For those of us who feel deeply connected to deity or to a specific church family, those ties can have a strong influence on the choices we make in our lives. 

Right now, in many social circles, religion is considered taboo to talk openly about. Why do you think that is?  Does that custom serve us well?   How might our society be different if people in general were more inclined to ask “What is your faith?” instead of “What do you do for a living?” when they first meet? 

The American practice of asking “What do you do?” has everything to do with quickly summing up matters of status.  It gives us a shorthand way of knowing how much respect or deference we will be expected to show the other person. When meeting in a social situation does it really matter if the person you are talking with is a plumber or an attorney?  Generally not. But in a class based society, we tend to categorize people by profession. Their job title gives us clues about how much education they are likely to have and what their level of income is.  Those pieces of information carry a lot of weight about who gets what life chances in the way our world is arranged.

It is essential in a pluralistic culture to develop tolerance for those who have different religious views from our own.  But how we develop cultural norms around the way we express our beliefs related to faith could follow different paths.  

Increasingly, our society is becoming more secularized.  Rather than putting matters of faith and religion first in our lives, may people today put careers and material success at the top of their priorities.   When asked what is most important to them, the automatic answers may be things like family, good health,  core beliefs.  But if you look at how people actually spend the bulk of their time and energy,  it is quite often lopsided toward work and the accumulation of prestige or things.

I truly love my jobs (both teaching and what I do for the non-profit where I am employed). But at the end of the day, I do not want it to say on my tombstone that I was really good at my job. I want my life to have meaning and purpose beyond titles and accomplishments or gathering up more shiny things. It is because of my deeply held beliefs about the nature of God and what the real purpose of this life is that I am walking away from my life here in Boise to serve as a missionary for two years, where ever I may be sent.  


For your assigned work in this unit, you will need to understand the various terms and theories described in your text and the associated online lectures. I will never ask you to explain or defend your own personal beliefs.  You do not have to tell me anything about your own religious views.   That being said, I challenge you to think about whatever your beliefs are.  

You do not have to answer any of these questions for me, but here are a few things you may want to consider for yourself:

How do you integrate your ideas about religion into your daily life?  How do you assess what is true and important or what is not?  To what extent do you align your personal choices of what you do with what you say you believe?  

That, more than anything else, is what religion comes down to.   How human beings make meaning, and how that meaning shapes the way we lead our lives is at the very heart of sociology.

Dalton, Conley.  (2013).  You May Ask Yourself.  Third Edition. New York, NY.  W.W Norton.

The Downsizing Begins

Over the next few months I will need to sort through all of our STUFF and get rid of a lot of it.  Everything we own will be getting packed up and going into storage, so anything we don't actually use or truly love needs to find a new home.  Like a lot of Americans, we have collected an awful lot of things we don't really need.  What is it with this practice of surrounding ourselves with material things?  I welcome the opportunity to clear out a lot of it.

Some things, however, are more difficult than others to decide what to keep and what to part with.

One of the first things I'm trying to get sorted out is my collection of many books.  I have about six book cases of books that are a combination of novels, sociology books,  church books, some classics, some how-to, and a few totally random.   In this day and age where many folks are doing most of their reading on an electronic devise, some would say old fashioned bound books are too cumbersome to bother with.  I do have a Kindle reader and enjoy it for a lot of reasons.  However,  I will always be a lover of  real books.  I enjoy the feel of them.  I like turning their pages.  I appreciate the way they look all lined up on the shelves in my home.  Some are a bit ratty with lots of notes written in the margins and page corners turned here and there.  Others have been treated more gently, having been purchased or gifted to me as much for their beauty as for the words on the pages.

It's really rather silly to be so attached to some of these books that I know for certain I will never read again. Still, I'm finding it difficult to part with many of them. Some of these books feel like old friends.  I've spent many hours curled up with a book, getting lost in the stories and characters.

It's a very good thing we won't be leaving here for several months.  This downsizing / organizing task we have to do is going to be a challenge.

Our Mission Photos

We recently went to JC Penneys Portrait Studio to have our formal pictures taken for our mission application.  I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out.  In addition to using whichever one of these we pick for our mission application, it will also go on our plaque.  Our congregation here, called "Shamrock Ward" has a tradition of  making a plaque for every missionary who serves from there.  These are displayed in the foyer of the church the whole time the missionary is gone to help keep members thinking of them and remembering those serving in their prayers.  It will show our faces, where we are serving and have a favorite scripture which we will need to choose.  Since this is something we will always keep as a special memento of our mission I was glad I was having a rare good hair day when we had them done!

We also had our new passport pictures taken and have now sent off our application for those.  We have our old ones which are still valid right now, but they would expire before our mission was done so it's important we get this taken care of.  When the new ones arrive we will need to send them off to the mission travel department in Salt Lake City so they can apply for our visas.  It's easy to enter New Zealand for a short time as a tourist, but living there for over a year takes a whole different level of approval.

We have a whole list of things we need to do to complete our application and get ready to serve.  At times it feels a little bit overwhelming.  But we are on track, checking off each task one by one.

Trusting Personal Inspiration

(Huffington Post Article About New Zealand)

In addition to doing lots of reading about various aspects of serving a senior mission, I've also been doing my homework to learn all I can about living in New Zealand.  Some would say that is is very premature to begin getting so fascinated about a place I may not even be going to.  However, I feel very confident that is exactly where we will serve.  Here's why:  I believe in direct communication with my creator through prayer.  I have prayed mightily to understand His will for us at this time. Mind you, I have never one time said "Please can we go to New Zealand".   Instead, I've said "Please help us know where and how you would have us serve".

When we were given New Zealand as one of the possible options, I felt almost an electric jolt go through my entire body telling me that was the place where we needed to be.  Independent of my experience, my husband also had a strong impression that this was the mission for us.  Afterward, we again went to the Lord in prayer, asking for confirmation of the feelings we had.  Our prayers have been answered through distinct, personal impressions, feelings, and thoughts that are for us serve as very real evidence of  Heavenly Father knowing us personally and wanting what is best for us.  I have such a peaceful, confident certainty about this, that for me there is no doubt about where we will be going.  The Lord wants us in New Zealand.  I'm sure of that.  

I suspect that over the next two years we will have many experiences of being guided by the spirit and having prayers answered in deeply personal ways.   I look forward to growing more fluent in my ability to recognize the promptings of the spirit, to listen to - and more importantly FOLLOW the inspiration and answers that I receive.

Here are some of the resources on that topic that I've also been studying:

Nov 1989 - Elder Richard G. Scott - Learning to Recognize Answers to Prayer
Oct 2010 -  Elder D. Todd Christofferson - How Can I Make Daily Prayer More Meaningful?
Oct 2010 - Visiting Teaching Message - Seeking and Receiving Personal Revelation 
May 2011 - Elder Kevin Pearson - The Power of Personal Prayer

These are all good, but that last one is particularly dear to me since Elder Pearson is the Area President over the Pacific.  He lives and works in New Zealand.

I know that God lives and that He truly does hear and answer my prayers.

Doing My Research

From MormonNewsroom

I've been reading everything I can find about Senior Missions.  I've learned quite a bit.

I particularly enjoyed watching video clips of various senior missionaries around the world talking about their experiences which can be found HERE.

There is also some great information about Senior Missions over at a blog called Mormon Soprano.

I have spent hours going from one website to the next, picking up bits of information and encouragement along the way.   Taking the leap of faith to do this is a HUGE step for both Larry and I.  I'm excited.  I'm nervous.  I'm grateful we get this opportunity.  I'm scared about all we are leaving behind.  But most of all, I am absolutely certain that this is the right decision.  I know that serving a full time mission with my eternal companion for the next two years is exactly where the Lord wants me to be.

Even though our application is not yet submitted, now that the final decision is made it's all starting to feel more real.  It's not longer simply a conversation about possibilities.  We ARE going to do this.  I can't wait!