Well, today wasn't quite how I expected it to be. For one thing, the day dawned purple. No joke, the clouds were all dark grey but the sunrise was casting a pink light that made the entire sky and all the stucco reflecting it turn an eerie shade of dark purple. I wonder what Professor Trelawney would say that that means...
Then of course there was the part with waking up to have Amanda home again. She'd come in late the night before and while I'd dragged myself out of bed to greet her, I'd been too tired to fully remember her being home. It was kind of a surprise to wander into the kitchen and have her sprawled out on the family room couch. All throughout the day, too, I'd turn around and she'd be there with the rest of the family. It surprised me almost every time. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice surprise. I'm glad she could be here for me.
In sacrament meeting I gave my farewell talk. Public speaking is not new for me. I've been teaching Relief Society once a month since May and I bore my testimony publicly at stake conference last month. All those times, and all throughout my life really, I've been told that I did a great job. So when I was planning this talk last week I was pretty darn confident in my own abilities to come up with some good material. But then when--after three musical numbers and four other speakers--it was my turn to talk, I realized that I'd always done better when I wasn't reading straight off of a page. So I ditched my notes and tried to just go with a basic outline. That worked great right up until the very end when, overwhelmed by the importance of what I was trying to convey, added to the fact that everyone expected me to be this super-missionary figure today, added to the fact that when I started my talk sacrament meeting was already running five minutes over... I kind of blanked. For the first time ever.
It made me pretty darn depressed to botch that talk of all talks, but my wonderful family and friends insisted I did just fine. I hope they aren't lying. Sarah at least mentioned my blanking out, so I can bet she was being fairly honest, but still.
My sadness over that was quickly quelled when I was surrounded by good friends from my high school years--the Showalters who drove down just to be here for me, Jessie Bowyer who represented my entire single's ward, old young women's leaders, friends of all ages... It was really nice. My mouth hurt from grinning so much.
The rest of the day was fairly leisurely. We had a lovely ham dinner at the Andersons,' then came straight home and got to work making food for the open house. We had crispatts, wassail, toffee (made by me), fudge (also made by me), chips and dip, hand-frosted sugar cookies, and lemonade made from our backyard lemons. Dad also had a puzzle going, Amanda and Megan were singing at the piano, Ashley had a slideshow going on the computer, and I had a DVD of Paraguay pictures silently playing on the TV that my mission president sent me.
Sadly, not very many people showed up to enjoy it all (it is very near to Christmas, after all), but those who did had a good time and were very sweet to me. Amanda acted like I would run off bawling every time someone asked her about her ring, but I totally felt loved enough and besides, their turning their attention to her gave me room to breathe and load up on crispatts.
What I learned today is that I have some truly wonderful friends and family members. My parents went all out for a party today and had fun doing it. Everyone who showed up to the party was so sincere in wishing me the best and talking to me about how I feel. Even just at sacrament meeting as I looked over everyone in the congregation I realized that even though I may not be great friends with everyone, most of the people seated in front of me would be there for me in a heartbeat if I truly needed it.
Thanks to those of you who came to enjoy my day with me yesterday, and thanks to everyone else who has been there for me throughout the years. I love you all and I wish I could have seen you all last night to thank you in person. This will most likely be my last blog post from home so please keep checking this blog for my weekly mission letters. My contact information is a few posts below. Please keep in touch and have a wonderful Christmas!
EDIT: Here is my farewell talk if you wanted to read it. It probably reads better than I delivered it.
Farewell Talk
Intro
Good morning, brothers and sisters. I’m so grateful for this opportunity to speak to you this morning, the week of Christmas, on a topic that has come to mean so much to me this year.
Christmas is such an amazing time of year. It’s almost everyone’s favorite holiday, and they may think that that’s because they get a lot of presents and food, but I venture a guess that everyone loves December so much because despite all the differences between people throughout the world, Christmas is a time that has been so wonderfully preserved in its universal goal of drawing closer to Christ and giving gifts.
I was asked to speak about Christ today, but since, as primary kids can attest, every question you ever ask in a church setting can be answered with “Jesus Christ,” that kind of left me with a wide variety of options to base my talk on.
So I decided to focus on an aspect of Christmas that has everything to do with Christ but that often is overlooked as having spiritual importance. That is gift-giving.
Sincere Gift-Giving
There are two traditional Christmas stories about gift-giving that wouldn’t leave my mind as I tried to write this talk. They are “The Gifts of the Magi” and “The Fourth Wise Man.” Both used to horribly depress me as a child, but as I’ve grown older, I recognize them as beautiful tales of selfless sacrifice that we can all learn from.
I’m sure that most of us by now have become expert gift-givers at Christmastime. The presents were bought on sale in October and have been under the tree since it was put up in November, right? But I wonder how many people, myself included, have ever given gifts with the kind of self-sacrifice as in “The Gifts of the Magi” and “The Fourth Wise Man.”
For those of you who aren’t familiar with those stories, I’ll quickly recap them for you. “The Gifts of the Magi” is the story of a young married couple, poor as church mice, who try to find ways to give each other a gift when they don’t have two pennies to rub together. The man’s most prized possession is a pocket watch he inherited from his grandfather. The woman’s most prized possession is her long, beautiful hair. She wants more than anything to give her husband an expensive watch chain to go with his pocket watch, and so she decides to give up her own prized possession, her hair, to buy it for him. When Christmas day arrives, she gives the chain to her husband, but he no longer has the pocket watch. He sold it so that he could give her a set of expensive, beautiful combs to go in her now-non-existent hair.
“The Fourth Wise Man” is about just what the title says, a fourth wise man, who sold all that he possessed to buy three precious jewels which he hoped to give to the newborn Christ Child. Though he had planned to journey with the other three wise men to Bethlehem, he was delayed and failed to meet up with them. The fourth wise man spent his whole life searching for the Savior, and in his search he gave away one, then two, then finally all three of his jewels to help others in need. Finally, just at the time of the Crucifixion, he died and was rewarded with the vision of his Lord, who assured him that “inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Like I said, those stories seemed really depressing to me when I was younger, but I hope that you understand, as I do now, the great message that they carry about giving all that we have without regard for what we might get in return.
Giving the Gift of Christ
There are countless ways to give to others and show the Lord that we are grateful for all that He has blessed us with, but there one gift in particular that I know we can all give, no matter our resources--a gift that you can never go wrong with. That is the gift of the gospel--sharing the love of Christ with everyone. Last week I got the opportunity to tag along with a pair of sister missionaries as they went around visiting investigators and doing street contacts. They never once missed an opportunity to talk to someone. At first, when I was still in the mindset of a civilian, not a missionary, I thought they were being really pushy and kind of annoying--those people probably wouldn’t be interested in what a couple of young women had to teach about Christ. They were probably busy and didn’t care at all--why were the sisters wasting their time? But I quickly realized something, and I think Joseph B. Wirthlin said it best in an April 2003 conference talk. He said “the scriptures teach us taht [the Light of Christ] ‘lighteth every man that cometh into the world.’ The Light of Christ is the divine influence that allows every man, woman, and child to distinguish between good and evil. It encourages all to choose the right, to seek eternal truth, and to learn again the truths that we knew in our premortal existence but have forgotten in mortality.”
The gift of the gospel is something that every single person on the face of the earth, whether they know it or not, wants to receive this year. It is a gift that will always come in handy, a gift that never gets old, and a gift that keeps on giving. It is a gift that we should always be looking to share with our fellow men, not just at Christmas time, and everyone, no matter their station, has the Light of Christ whispering to them that they want to receive it. Christ wants everyone to know that He loves them enough to have Atoned for them, and it is our place, as those who have already received that knowledge, to gift others with it. It may seem like a daunting task, or you may think that your peers aren’t going to be interested, but I promise that the Light of Christ, as it shines in you as you testify, will be familiar to those you speak to. It is of course up to the recipient to appreciate the gift, but I know that those who are good recipients will never forget who gave them that gift. Furthermore, even if you fail, I know that the Lord blesses those who give their all to try and bring others to Him.
Giving Gifts to Christ
If there’s one thing I wish I could emphasize eloquently today, it’s that there is one person who we should never forget to give a gift to at Christmas time. Christmas is a celebration of our Savior’s birth. It is our way of showing how much we appreciate Him and His eternal sacrifice for us. So while giving gifts to others is what we mostly focus on, it ultimately should be Christ who were are giving our gift to.
Christ asks one thing of us--that we dedicate our lives to Him to show that we love Him for what He did for us. Keeping the commandments is a huge part of that, but the difference between following a commandment and is the difference between cleaning your room because you won't get dessert otherwise and doing the dishes for your mother because she's especially tired. Commandments in our minds seem to have a punishment-reward type relationship. We do it because we want to be exalted someday. But when Christ said "f honor Christ and give Him something that will show our appreciation and love, wouldn’t it be wonderful for us to give our lives to building the Kingdom not because He told us to but because out of love we want to serve Him?
Neil A. Maxwell once pointed out that our agency is the only thing that is really, truly ours. Everything else we’ve ever owned in this life--all our time, talents, and possessions-- has been a blessing directly from God. Everything we have is a gift from Him. Sharing those gifts with others shows our gratitude, but would you rather give Heavenly Father a thank-you note or a gift in return? The one way to give Christ a gift this Christmas is to sacrifice the only thing that we truly possess for ourselves--to turn our lives over to Him and say “thy will be done.”
This is not an over-night process. I’m by no means saying that I’ve accomplished this--not even in serving a mission. But that life-long effort, the daily, even hourly choices we make to act in accordance with God’s laws and Christ’s teachings, shows that above all we thank Christ for his sacrifice--He gave His life as a gift for us, and we in turn must give our lives as a gift for Him.
Conclusion
As someone going on a mission in only nine short days, I pray that I will be able to dedicate my agency to the Lord’s will for the next eighteen months and share the gift of His gospel with the people of Paraguay. And while a mission may not be for everyone, I know that every single person in this room and in this world has a divine purpose and can receive direction from God if they are willing to gift Him with their time and efforts. And I know that everyone has amazing potential to share their gifts with others. It is written in the Book of Mormon that “the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just--yea it had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else which had happened to them.” I testify that that is true--so many sorrows could be avoided, so much happiness attained, if we serve the Lord and strive to live and share His gospel. It is my prayer that we can all find ways to do so, find ways to give good gifts this year.
We've done a LOT today. It almost did feel like boot camp just because they kept throwing stuff at us and steering us in random directions with little to no explanations. After saying goodbye to dear Laurel at the curb, I was rushed to my dorm room where I dumped my stuff, then I was just chucked right into a Spanish classroom. I struggled a little bit, but it was nice because the teachers were totally understanding and they are so eager to help. I knew they wouldn't be trying to get us to fail, but it was still nice to see that it's actually true. Anyways, then we had a new missionary meeting with the MTC presidency, which was really informative and spiritual. I've been taking tons of notes already. I'm probably going to go through a lot of notebooks here.