March 1, 2014 I returned from a mission to Mexico. I was supposed to return July 21. I came home with blurry vision, headaches, a flushed face, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I was trying to work hard and wait it out, but I reached a point in which I could no longer satisfy my mission needs. I couldn't help my companion, the members, the investigators and realized it would be in my best interest as well as everyone else's if I came back to my big ol' house in Arizona (compared to the tiny little concrete houses in Mexico. My house is pretty average for Gilbert, Arizona).
So away I went. Everything I had done, the food, the people, even the very language I spoke were whisked away from me because of something I had ate, or picked up, or touched.
And it was miserable...
A missionary always dreams of that last month, week, day. He thinks about the people he will teach, the young greenies he will train (new, inexperienced missionaries). He yearns for the moment in which he can tell the mission president with no remorse and with a clear conscience that he has served God 100% and is ready to move on to the next step in his life be-it marriage, or college, or work, or whatever. For a missionary, the 2 years marks completion; it marks the next step into manhood. And if for any reason (medical problems, obedience problems, or other cause) that gets taken away, it shatters that dream.
Now this isn't to say that all that hopy, wishy, dreamy 2 year thing is righteous or even desirable. Obviously a mission to God should be served in order to help others, to build God's kingdom, to obey his commandments. When Jesus Christ served the people that he taught, there was no big party when he came home in his dwelling on earth. There were no balloons as the Jews celebrated him for his wonderful, world-changing experience. He served with more diligence and love than anyone else could have or did, due to the nature of his perfection, and yet received a gruesome death on the cross, not a big fancy party.
But I am not perfect, and neither are you. I came home with a thud. A cold dark thud in the middle of a foreign strange world. I had to realize why I had served. I had to remember that it was God's mission, and not mine. One thing that the people in Mexico love to say is "Si Dios quiere." If God wishes. This means that everything happens due to the desires of an Eternal Creator above, somebody that knows more than we do, someone that understands exactly what each of us needs, individually. It was in the plan of God that I came home early. And obviously, I did not understand that that sad 1st of March 2013. I was not, and am not perfect.
And then life went on.
