The Decision ...

What am I doing!  I knew Joe and I would go on a mission some day but was dead set against going for at least five more years. Missions! Before we were married this was one of the things that was a very big deal to him, extremely important, and needed to be negotiated.  I have four children, Joe has three and we both have several grandchildren. Not only that, my grandsons live close by and I get to be involved in a lot of their activities.

Cody, my youngest had recently returned from his mission and was enlisting in the Navy.  I was in transition. My kids were pretty much on their paths and doing well. My daughter Stefani was planning to have a baby pretty soon and there was no way I would even consider purposely leaving during this time. My head was full and my life was full of worthy things but I was unsettled.

I took it to the Lord, dead set against considering a mission right now. Way to be open, right?  "Tell me what you want me to do as long as it isn't A, B, C".  I went to the temple and remember sitting there and as CLEAR and quiet as a whisper, I heard, "Why don't you ask Stefani how she feels about (you going on) a mission now or a bit later."  I thought, What??  Really?  I have had enough spiritual experiences to know that this was not an arbitrary thought.

Later that day, I saw my daughter and said, Stef, I need to know how you feel about something and asked her the question.  She said, "Mom, Andrew and I decided to wait to have a baby.  If you are going to do it, now is way better than later.  Later there will be more grandchildren and more complications."

I thought, WHAT?  Seriously? I talked to another daughter and my son and the response was the same.  For different reasons the consensus was, now is much better than later. My heart started to change and I knew that this was the right direction at this time in my life.

Freaked out, I called Joe who was driving home from LA and told him all that had happened, and his response was, "WHAT? Seriously"? Keep in mind he was still working, traveling every week to LA, and in a very high stress corporate situation with massive responsibility. This was a dream come true for him and being an analytical he didn't know about the timing but was open. I didn't know the timing of everything either but the direction was crystal clear.

Within two weeks of this prompting and conversation, Joe was offered a retirement package to leave early and he took it and said adios! There were a couple other work issues that had to be resolved but my gut said keep moving forward.

Sure enough a month later, every issue was resolved and then in less than two weeks our paperwork was done, submitted and we are now waiting for the "call".  EEEK!

Jennifer