DAY 66 -- Lessons Learned

It is interesting that we seldom talked about our mission the first two hundred days or so.  We talked once in a while about it.  Then the last 100 days, we have been talking about it perhaps once a day, still quite a distance away.  Now, with less than 70 days to our mission, (or at least our anniversary) we talk about it almost constantly. 

Now that we have our papers in, the frequency will diminish as we wait for our interviews.  But as we continue to count down the days, we are going to feel pressure because there is so much to do.  Besides the excitement to know where we are going, we feel pressure to get it all done.

Never left on a mission before, at least with my wife of forty years.  At least we can do these things together and not have to do them alone, as I once did long ago.

I feel a relief not worrying about all the things they ask for before submitting our papers.  It is now all recorded and in the hands of those with stewardship over us.  It was a large task to think of all those things we needed to do, but it is now behind us.

Isn't that true about any goal or dream?  I remember when we moved to Brigham and started to run a restaurant and snack bar.  I asked Bonnie to be the inventory lady.  She would count what we had, what we needed, order what we needed from suppliers.  I remember like it was this morning she approached me and said NO.  She felt she could not do it.  It was just too difficult and she knew she would get it wrong and then everyone would suffer.  Well, within about one week, she was a master at it.  I never had to worry about it and knew it was getting done.  She even did cost analysis of the prices we were paying.  She was perfect. But to start, it was ugly, scary, and she did NOT want to do it. 

The same things happened with our papers for our mission.  They are done and I would assume we could, would do them again.  Hopefully that won't be necessary.  But this is definitely a lesson learned about goals, dreams, insurmountable challenges, etc.  They are all surmountable.  But our inadequacies make us think there is NO WAY.  This is just one more small lessons learned in these days of preparation for our mission.