You are hereby called...

...To serve in the TEXAS FORT WORTH MISSION. You will prepare to preach the gospel in the Spanish language.

Wow.

Who would have thought...? Even now, it seems so surreal. I have to keep rereading the letter and when I made my phone calls for FIVE HOURS tonight, I had to look at that 2nd line every time so I made sure that I got it right. ( How awkward would that be if I told someone the wrong place...? )

I'm not sure how I should feel about the laughs, sometimes straight up guffaws, that I received when I told people I was going to Texas...my favorite response was from my cousin, Jaden. "Oh...you're going home, huh?"

For those of you who don't know...my parents decided to move to Houston, Texas my freshman year of college. Houston is about 4 hours south of Dallas...from what I can tell using my awesome judgement of distance on the map of my mission, our home could reside a mere 2 hours south of the southern most tip of my mission.... luckily my parents actually finished packing the house this very day and are in the process of relocating. Where you ask? Honestly, I'm not even sure they know at this point...

The next question would then be...are you excited?

I'm just going to be honest here...even if it makes me look like a horrible person...hang with me to the end and think the entire while, how would you feel if you were in the same situation? (Let me also throw in the tidbit that I lived in Houston for 4 months. (Jan-April 2008))

When I was reading my call, I'm not going to lie, I read the destination before I actually read it outloud. For a second I thought it had to be some kind of joke. I'm not going to go as far as saying I was disappointed, I can honestly say that the only time I felt that emotion today was this morning when I checked the mailbox before class and it was empty. I guess the best way to put it would be to say that I ... don't know how to put it. I learned something though...It's almost worst when people ask you where you want to go because then you start believing you might actually go there. You build up this image in your mind and with 4 or 5 words the image is shattered. For a second I thought, "Wait...wait. They spelled Alaska wrong."

Alas, this was not the case. I was called to serve in the Texas Fort Worth Mission, Spanish speaking. Every time I say it, it still doesn't seem like it's me. I'm not old enough to go on a mission...I'm not even old enough to be in college.

The more and more I talked to people and the more and more I thought about serving the people of the Fort Worth area, the more excited I got. It helped a lot that my dad pointed out that Houston and Fort Worth/Dallas are different places. And that Fort Worth is cooler. Looking at the mission map, it seems like most of the mission is small, rural towns. My sister, Jill, also found a way cool website that might be a little outdated, but still cool. http://www.tfwm.org/

I report to the MTC on December 30, 2009. I am already excited to get out into the field and to serve the people in Texas. I know that there is a reason that I was called to this specific mission and that my Heavenly Father is aware of me and the things that I am doing. I have never been more sure of anything in my life and I know, probably for the first time ever, that I am 100% on the road that my Father in Heaven wants me to be on. I am grateful for the opportunity I will have to serve Him for 18 months and look forward to when my time comes.