I hope they call you on a mission

"And now, behold, I say unto you, that the thing which will be of most worth unto you will be to preach repentance unto this people, that you may bring souls unto me, that you may rest with them in the kingdom of my Father. Amen." D&C 15:6

And again, "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Matthew 10:39

There were several reasons that I had for going on a mission. The most prominent was that I wanted to kill the natural man in myself, or discard my demons and leave them behind for something brighter. I am a better person than I was twenty months ago, and the path that I am now on is not the path that I was on before I left.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said that every good thing that happened to him in his post-mission life can be found to have originated, in one way or another, from his mission experience. I have not even finished my mission and, simply in the choices that I will be making as opposed to the choices that I would have made in a different life, already I can attest to the truthfulness of this. What sort of woman I will marry, what I will do with my life, what college I will be attending and what degrees I will be working toward, are only a few of the things that have been affected by this. Even my writing has been affected.

Spiritual retreats are undertaken in order to draw closer to God and recenter oneself on Him. The most example most compelling to me is seen in the "formation" of Jesuits, who more than once withdraw from the world to one degree or another in order to refine themselves in a kind of short-term monasticism. Going on a mission is sort of like my regency stage or perhaps the Spiritual Exercises, to liken it unto Jesuit formation.

Am I now remade wholly pure? Am I without spot at this moment? Certainly not. But when the journey is over even the slightest of errors can have lead to a great divergence between where one wished to be and where one is, and my mission was a course-correction. Moreover, I know the path like I did not know it before. Where I once had only heard of the Mountain, and had some intellectual acceptance of its existence, I had, I now realize, little will to follow the trail laid out for me no matter the obstacles.

And this is something that I want for more than just myself. If you're not sure about serving a mission, I implore you to get down on your knees tonight and ask your Father in Heaven what His will is- and I guarantee you that, if there is love for mankind in your heart, He will call you on a mission.