I Hope They Call Me on a Mission, Merry Christmas Wes!

So, what do you do to show service that parallels the guy who serves everyone around him? …… I guess you can start by serving everyone around you?  Man Wes, you set the bar really high!

Well, showing how I served everyone around me seemed a little too vague and a little too daunting.  So, I started by serving the man himself.  Yes, Wes now has instructions on how to become the bionic man he has always longed to be- using his brand new, pain-free knees!  Alright, so that really is a gross exaggeration.  But the intent was there….

With Wes in mind, the real search was to find a genuine need that could only be filled if I chose to go above and beyond in the name of Wes.  I thought of his missionary service in Brazil.  With that in mind, Laura found a charity in Orem that collects soccer shoes for boys and girls in Brazil.  However, Brazilian charities apparently are very good at advertising, but not so good at returning phone calls.

So the search continued. 

The genuine need finally did present itself in the form of a young missionary from our former ward.  Although we do not attend there any more, we had heard about a family we knew from that ward that was going through a divorce.  It deeply pained me to learn that one of the young men I knew as his Bishop had managed to find himself being dragged through the divorce of his parents literally about a month before he left on his mission.  I had hoped to attend his farewell to see how he was doing, but I had just received a new calling in our current ward and had Sunday commitments that conflicted with the farewell. 

I called his Bishop (a good friend of mine) and tried to get an email address to possibly reach out and see how he was doing.  The Bishop agreed to look into it, but then never found an email address.

As tender mercies would have it, a few days later, I decided to make a quick stop at Costco in West Valley on the way home from working in Tooele.  I rarely get out of work that early in the day, and even more rare was to go to that particular store.  I simply needed to get some light bulbs that happened to only be on sale in Salt Lake Costco stores and this store was on my way at 1:00 pm in the afternoon.  While approaching the light bulb isle, I came across this same young man and his father.  He was getting ready to go the MTC the very next day.  In our brief conversation, I was not able to get his email address, nor discuss the family’s tragedy, but I offered him my email address and asked him to write if he found a free moment. 

A few weeks later....   from the missionary training center in Mexico, I received an email.  In it, I found a very faithful, but openly discouraged young man.  He knows the gospel is true and that the Lord loves him, but is trying to find a way to forget about problems back at home and make sense of a world that is now drastically different in every way (new situation with his family, new situation on a mission, learning a new and difficult language, teaching people in a totally different country, etc.).

Though I am not a good letter writer, nor do I have much free time on Sundays to write, I decided in honor of Wes to make this a commitment to this Elder in need.  Based on the circumstances of how the Lord helped me get in contact with this young man, my guess is that the Lord also approves of this service project. 

Thanks Wes for giving me the opportunity to open my eyes and look for the opportunity to fill a need in your honor!