Elder Stewart-Longhurst Mission to Santa Rosa, CA

At this point in our lives, getting the mail is a routine chore, not an exciting event.   Unless it is Christmas time and there is a good chance that the green mail box will be full of Greeting cards from long lost friends and family members, it really is just full of bills, annoying advertisements, and more bills.   So, our usual routine involves getting the mail once a week, on Monday morning, taking the pile of goods to work and there throwing out the numerous ads and paying the few bills we still get. But that all changed the day we expected we could have a chance of receiving our mission call. Suddenly we were hurrying home JUST to get the mail. With many hours of research on line where I found countless stories, mostly guesses, as to how the missionary call system works, along with a blog or two from people who claimed to have actually worked in the missionary department, plus lengthy discussions with the Full-time Elders, all four of them who served in our war...

I've had several friends ask if the church called us in and told us we needed to go on a mission.  No, that is not how it happened.  It doesn't work that way.  The Holy Spirit of God was the one that called us.  While we sat in that cool upper balcony in the Celestial room in the Portland temple.  The spirit clearly told both Hanna and me that we were to serve and that we were to serve right now. The first step in the official process is to tell our Bishop what had happened.  We did that within days of arriving home from Portland.  Our largest fear of this meeting with our Bishop is that he would tell us that our experience in the temple was not real and that the Lord really wanted us to continue to serve locally with the youth in our congregation.  They need a good Scoutmaster.  They need a good Seminary Teacher.  We expressed that fear to our wonderful Bishop right up front after we broke the news to him.  He just smiled and...