Decision to Serve

On 4 Dec 2021, I was working with Bishop Mills on some bishopric matters early in the morning. I texted him that we were also interested in serving in the Provo City Center Temple and that we were about a year out from being ready to embark on missions depending on how Abi's experience at college would be in 2022 as she became more independent. She was 18 years old and a month away from leaving the nest to attend BYU.

Pondering that morning, I had an impression that we could be ready to serve our first senior mission as early as 1 Jul 2022 after our second granddaughter would be born in June. I shared this impression with Bethany and she said, "Okay!" It was conveniently time for our monthly fasting so we made the timing and length of mission service a matter of prayer and the main purpose of our fast that we could receive the revelation we needed.

By 6:30 pm, that evening, we submitted our request online to Bishop Mills who opened our application so we could start medical and dental appointments. By the next Saturday (11 Dec) we had the dental forms signed and Bethany's medical exam was complete with mine scheduled for the next Thursday. By 16 Dec, my physical was completed, and we only had a required TB test for me. The application was now in the hands of Bishop Mills.

We did our interviews with Bishop Mills and then with President Waddell, our stake president. Once our medical papers were scanned into the system on Monday, 20 Dec, our papers were submitted to Church Headquarters. Serving as the 1st counselor to our bishop, I was able to track our application online.


Looking back, we can see the benefits of heeding the prompting to serve, without hesitation. The next month, we were able to receive our first mission call and assignment. Surprisingly, it was not one of the assignments on our preference list, but the adventure was about to begin. We know that Jesus Christ lives, and this is His work that we have the opportunity to help with.

Location: Provo, UT, USA

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