The Adventure of a Life Time

I have always loved adventures. It began as a child when I discovered the Nancy Drew detective books. I imagined myself chasing villains, solving mysteries, and restoring justice to the planet - right along with Nancy Drew.  My 30 year "adventure" in the trenches of full-time motherhood also filled my adventure cup. One by one, however, our children left home, and with each departure, I had a bit more time on my hands to explore new horizons.  Although these "launching" years presented mixed emotions for our entire family 

Hiking Logan Peak (Utah)  2011 (LtoR):
 Julie, sons Jason & David, husband Wayne, daughter Ashley

(sadness when a child left home, but joy for their next phase of life), it also signaled that my life was changing. Therefore, I picked up some new hobbies to fill my time: running (yes, very slowly), and back packing (with no babies at home, I could hike with our teen-agers!).

USU's Old Main Hill in Spring
(photo credit:Nancy Potter)

The next adventure came when I returned to college. With only one child left in the family nest, I was practically smothering him with the attention I had previously divided among five children! So I enrolled part-time at Utah State University and began plugging away on the degree that I had started long ago in my "life before children." I loved learning so much that I continued on with graduate studies and recently finished a masters degree in Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT).

Little did I know at the time, how God was orchestrating the  various adventures that had been accumulating over the years into a much bigger plan than I had imagined. 
But I was soon to find out.... 

Elder David A. Bednar

About a year ago, and after a long day of conferences, my phone rang as I was relaxing in a restaurant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with my professors and classmates. I heard my husband's voice calmly say he had received a call that day from church headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. For the last month, I'd been feeling that something was about to change in our life; but little did I know that the phone call would forever change the course of  lives! He said  Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) wanted to meet with us the following Tuesday. That was certainly an experience I had never imagined would happen to us!

President Henry B. Eyring

Well, Elder Bednar  put as right at ease in our interview; but we received another call a couple weeks later to meet with President Henry B. Eyring, of the First Presidency of the Church. Even as I write this, it sometimes feels like a dream. What an honor it was to meet with a Prophet of God! Equally humbling, however, was the calling he extended to us to serve as a mission president and wife for our church. We still had to wait - just like the young missionaries do - for the specific location to be announced via the mail. When the white packet finally arrived in December, we were thrilled to read that Wayne would preside over the Washington, Spokane Mission, beginning July 1, 2015.

Opening the "Call"

Over the next six months, our lives were filled with a myriad of major decisions: arranging for our home, pets, personal belongings, and ALL that food storage! In addition, I finished my last semester of graduate school and two new grand babies joined our family (and yes, they are both adorable!). The biggest challenge of all was saying goodbye to our children and their families. However, we were promised by President Eyring that God knows our children much better than we do, and that He would care for them much better than we could have had we stayed home. And when a prophet speaks, I believe him! 


I will fast forward my story a bit. We arrived on July 1 to the beautiful Spokane area, and we have now had nearly four months of the adventure of a lifetime!  I never imagined that I could love 200 young people so instantly. They are energetic, devoted servants of God who have set aside their plans for education, sports, scholarships, cars and romances for up to two years, in order to teach people about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In my next blog, I'll tell you more about our adventure; but for now I'll close with this: In much of our preparation, we know not what it is that we are preparing for. So just be ready - for God will use you for something good. Every bit of learning and experience will come to bless someone else, so dare to dream. Then work to make that dream come true.  I challenge you to begin by having an adventure today!

Photo Credit & Permission Granted by http://www.befreetoday.com.au/resources/motivational-memes/

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

--H. Jackson Brown Jr