I wanted to journal some of our experiences from this weekend. 

It's been really amazing! 

and humbling! 

and a great reminder that Heavenly Father is acutely aware of each one of us and knows what we need!

First, I was asked about 6 weeks ago if I would speak in Stake conference. I agreed to, and actually felt excited about it because I LOVED the topic.
The Honor of preparing and sending a child to serve the Lord

Grant turned his mission papers in the end of May, but the timing of getting the official call in the mail isn't ever guaranteed. I had been PRAYING hard that his call would come before we left for Utah and if possible if it could arrive before my talk 

(since I was talking about sending a child to serve the Lord)

When the call hadn't arrived by Friday night, I decided there wasn't anything I could do about it, so I changed that part of my talk to say we were still waiting for his call.

Then the mail arrived at 3pm Saturday.
THERE IT WAS, that big white envelope!

It arrived JUST as Christian was leaving for stake meetings. Grant was running out the door for 3 different graduation parties and I was going to be leaving shortly for the adult session of stake conference. 

Grant requested everyone gather at 10pm to open his call.

I wanted to skip the adult session, stay home clean and bake in preparation for all the guests we would be having over that night, but I reminded myself that a clean house wasn't as important as conference. So I went.
*pause here for a minute while I explain some other details*

For the last little while, I have been really praying that Grant will be happy with his mission assignment and that I would feel comfortable with it too. 

It has been a real concern for me!!!

If anyone would have said "where do you NOT want him to go" without hesitation, South America would have been my answer. And if they wanted me to be more specific, I would have said NO to Brazil or Chile or Argentina. Don't ask me why, I don't have a good reason, other than I just didn't want him to serve in those places.
Again, I don't know why, other than we had a good friend who served in Chile and have a really difficult experience.

As I was preparing for my talk over the last few weeks, I had a couple people tell me "You know there is going to be a general authority in the meeting?" This didn't make me more nervous about speaking, but it did sit in the back of my mind.
But, I had no idea WHO it was going to be.

Whenever I thought about the visiting authority, the only thought I had was...."what if the general authority is the one who was in the room when Grants mission was assigned" or thoughts like that.

I just kept feeling like whoever it was, would have some connection to Grants mission. 

Of course I dismissed it because I often have grande thoughts that aren't always reality. :-)

SO, the call arrived after many prayers that we will all know the call is from the Lord.

I meet up with Christian at the Stake center (he had gone earlier for priesthood meetings) and he had heard the visiting General authority speak.
Then, sitting in the adult session that night, HOT DANG I was smacked in the face with a thought as the General Authority guy and his wife spoke. 

It was Elder Jorge F. Zeballos and his wife Carmen Zeballos from CHILE.

As they spoke my heart was softened. 

It was unreal, I knew sitting there that if Grant were called to Chile it would be ok. And I knew this had been an answer to my prayers and an experience I needed for myself before Grant opened his call.

Christian and I got in the car to ride home from our meetings, and he had experienced a VERY similar feeling. We talked a lot about it on the ride home how sweet it was that we both had the same impression.

So you can imagine the tears when Grant opened his call and read Chile. 

Doesn't end there!

We go to our Sunday session of stake conference. Elder Zeballos and his wife were there to speak again and before the meeting starts, I asked our stake President to introduce Grant to the Zeballos.

Elder Z. spoke with Grant for a while before the meeting started, he is FROM Chili, served his mission in Grants same mission and then was mission president over Consumpcion South.
Then stake conference started.
I gave my talk along with the Hartford Temple President and his wife, a Young Woman in the stake, the Stake President, a counselor in the Boston mission presidency (President McKay and his wife) and Elder Z and his wife Carmen.
Cute Elder Zeballos mentioned Grant in his talk. 

Then after conference he spoke with Grant some more, and then I asked to take a picture of them together. He was funny, he was very concerned about the light behind them so he had me check to make sure the picture was ok before he left. 

As we were leaving Elder Zeballos talked to me and Chris for a second and promised us that Grant would be well loved in Chile, He said, "I just know this" and he told us he felt such a connection to Grant.

Heavenly Father arranged all this. This is all an answer to prayers. I have no doubt that Grant is 100% meant to serve in Chile. I don't know that I could have said that without some hesitation had you asked me two days ago.

This weekend has been one for the record books and I wanted to share it, because if you're reading this you probably know us and you love Grant and I know Heavenly Father loves each of us.

There's your spiritual message for the week :-) 

Hope this all makes sense...it's hard to put stuff like this into words, but I wanted to try and share some of it.
To sum it all up...
TENDER MERCIES!


now...to make a long email longer,
below is my talk from Stake Conference...
I ad-libbed a lot, but this is it.

My talk

Good morning Brothers and Sisters- I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak this morning, especially considering the topic of missionaries.

Some of you might remember missionary farewells of the 80’s and 90’s. 

Back then, a mission farewell usually involved the whole family. A younger sibling would give the opening prayer. All the sisters would sing In The Hollow of Thy Hand, the parents would speak and then at the end of the meeting, the missionary would speak and give his farewell address. 

It was always a big deal. The family would basically take over the whole meeting, with the focus on the missionary. 

I never thought much about it until April 1997.

Christian and I had been married a couple years and were about to welcome our first born. There we were in the delivery room, and the Dr. announced we had a healthy BOY. We were thrilled with the news of a son, yet my mind immediately flashed forward 19 years and panic set in. 

I had just given birth to a future missionary!

Knowing the mission farewell routine very well, and knowing the involvement of the family and the chance of me having to speak at one of these events, as his mother, I needed a back up plan. 

I'm here to confess....our tiny baby boy wasn't even an hour old when I looked at my husband and said "he is NOT going on a mission! I am not going to speak at his farewell."

Lucky for me, life changed in October 2002 , President Hinckley announced the change to mission farewells. 

He said, “departing missionary will be given opportunity to speak in a sacrament meeting for 15 or 20 minutes. But parents and siblings will NOT be invited to do so.”

Problem solved. I wasn’t going to have to speak at their farewells, so I lifted the mission ban in the Lewis home.

Now with that little background story, let me tell you the topic I was asked to speak about today… 

“The honor of preparing and sending children to serve the Lord”

I’m sure Heavenly Father smiled back when I announced I wasn’t going to speak at my childs farewell. He probably nodded and said, “Ok then, we will pencil you in here to speak in Stake Conference instead.”

I love the topic I have been asked to speak on today. 

The honor of preparing and sending a child to serve the Lord is dear to my heart because our first born, the one who’s birth I just mentioned, is now Elder McKay Lewis serving in the Seoul, South Korea mission and will return this August.

Our second son, Grant Lewis, has been assigned to serve….

We also have a third son, Carson who is 14 and a few years away from his time in the field and our daughter Jane, who is 12. She already has plans to serve a mission as soon as she turns 19. She has decided she will serve in Australia! she has life all figured out.

***

There was one word that really stood out to me, when President Cox extended the invitation to speak.

and that was 

HONOR.

The honor of preparing your children to serve the Lord. 

The honor of sending children to serve the Lord.

Two years ago, we had the honor of sending a child to serve the Lord. 

Let me tell you a little about that experience. 

Our oldest had just graduated High school. We were busy with activities, sports and every day life. We had a fun summer ahead of us, with plans to soak it all in.

Along with all of these activities and exciting plans, we were also working on mission prep and accepting the fact that life was about to change.

As the mission became more of a reality, my heart ached, unlike anything I had felt before. It physically HURT!

I was watching my first born pack two years of his life into 2 suitcases while trying to wrap my brain around it all.

I was being asked to hug my son and say goodbye to him for 2 years.

Nothing about this felt like an honor.

THIS felt like torture. 

In fact, since I’m confessing my true feelings, I will admit that for a while I felt a little bitter.

This was a lot to ask of a mom, and I thought it was quite rude. 

I had raised this boy. 

I put up with his rotten phase (and that rotten phase lasted a solid 15 years) and now just when I was enjoying him most, I had to hand him over to who knows where in the world, without any control over his life, his safety or the food he would eat. 

This did not feel like an honor, it felt like a painful sacrifice. 

It was during this heartache, I found a quote by Gordon B Hinckley, that changed my entire outlook. 

President Hinckley said, “You will come to know that what appears today to be a sacrifice will prove instead to be the greatest investment you will ever make.”

This sacrifice we were making, was an investment. 

We were investing in his future, we were investing in the future of his brothers and sister, and we were sacrificing for the investment of those he was preparing to teach in Korea.

With that change of heart, This sacrifice began to feel more like an honor.

We just celebrated Memorial Day a couple weeks ago, where we honor those who sacrificed their lives to secure our freedom.

Every year in May, we also honor mothers for their sacrifice.

Today we honor Fathers, we thank them, we show our love to them and we honor them, because of the sacrifice they make for us each day. 

There is a clear connection between sacrifice and honor. 

Honor often follows the sacrifice!

So when I read that quote, “what appears today to be a sacrifice, will be the greatest investment you will ever make.” I began to look back at the honor of raising future missionaries.

The honor of PREPARING a child to serve the Lord begins when they’re young, before we even recognize that we’re preparing them. 

We probably don’t recognize it as an honor because early on, it WILL be more of a sacrifice.

But if we take the word sacrifice and change it to honor, there is a different feeling associated with our responsibilities.

We have the honor of sitting through sacrament meeting with our little ones. 

The honor of assuring them they will be fine in nursery while you’re down the hall for two hours.

The honor of reminding them to take their scriptures to class each week.

The honor of preparing and seeing them baptized.

There is honor in working with them on their Faith in God, Personal progress or Duty to God.

The honor of reminding them to think of Jesus Christ and sit reverently through the sacrament. 

We have the honor as parents to see the YM receive the Priesthood and the honor of watching them pass, prepare and bless the sacrament. 

Preparing our children to serve the Lord is an honor and responsibility that we, as their parents, have been blessed with.

The Family: A Proclamation to the World reminds us that we, as Mother and Father, have a solemn responsibility to care for our children. 

Our sacred duty is to rear them in love and righteousness.

So the honor of preparing them to serve the Lord is ours!

While we spend years PREPARING them to serve, 

SENDING them to serve the Lord is more like ripping off a bandaid, it’s pretty quick but it can be painful. 

Yet it has been one of the greatest honors I have ever experienced! 

Our friends in town will often say, “I don’t know how you do it!” 

And then they want to know HOW these missionaries have been able to leave their life here at home and just go?

It reminds me of the Woman at the Well, from the New Testament. 

In John chapter 4

On this particular day, as Jesus was traveling he came to Jacob’s well. Probably hot and tired, He rested by the well. 

A Samaritan woman came to the well to gather water.

She had a special water pot that was used to gather water and keep is safe in their homes. These water pots were very important to the people, they made it possible for them to get the water they needed to survive.

Jesus told the woman at the well that He was the Messiah and that the water He offered her was the “living water” of eternal life.

Even though the woman was supposed to be gathering water from the well, she instead ran to the city to tell others she had met Christ, the Savior of the world. 

In verse 28 it says, The woman left her waterpot, and went her way into the city to tell others of Christ.

When she left the well, she left her valuable water pot, even though it was so important to her. 

These missionaries, The children we have the honor of preparing, have learned of Christ and His teachings, they are willing to leave their waterpots at the well, or their lives here at home, so they can help others come to know Jesus Christ, that they may never thirst again and have Eternal Life with our Father in Heaven. 

The honor of leaving behind the life they knew, the people they love, and the comfort of home, is theirs, because they love our Savior and have a testimony of the Plan of Salvation. And just like the Woman at the well, they want to share this good news with others. 

We have a message of HOPE. Happiness. and LOVE! 

A message that our Savior lived and died for. It is our honor to share this with others so they can experience the same joy by coming unto Christ.

As Grant prepares to leave in a couple months. The ache has returned. 

And obviously the emotions have resurfaced, 

but this time my perspective is more clear, I see the bigger picture.

Our Heavenly Father must have worried as He sent his son to this earth. He knew people would be unkind to him and harm him, yet he still allowed him to go knowing sacrifice would bring honor and would bless each of us and so He sent his son.

When you are able to see the bigger picture, with better perspective, things change. 

President Cox said something to me one day that has stuck with me. He said, “Don’t complain when blessings hit you on the head!” I think about that EVERY day.

The blessings will come, sometimes they hit you on the head and it hurts a little. But if we recognize our blessings, we will feel the honor associated with each sacrifice.

Twenty years ago, lying in a hospital bed, I couldn't think of anything worse than the idea of giving a 'farewell' talk at my son's departure into the mission field.

Looking back, when I declared our son couldn’t go on a mission. I was worried about my self, I was worried about my own comfort and the impact it would have on me. 

Missionary work isn’t about ME, It’s not even about the missionary. 

It’s about Jesus Christ, and the honor of representing Him. 

It is my testimony that, as promised in the scriptures,

We can do all things through Christ. 

Preparing and sending a child to serve the Lord has been an honor because I know the joy this gospel brings and the strength it provides and I know it is our responsibility to share that with others.

 I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.