The question is why, and the answer is personal

Note: I originally meant to write something like this for my first post, and then my second, but they turned into completely different things.

I'm a firm believer that there are the right reasons for serving a mission, and there are the wrong reasons. I'll just start off by saying I'm one hundred percent confident mine are right.

My first reason is simple: I was prompted to. And one of the biggest lessons I've learned recently is you don't delay or ignore promptings. You act on them.

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, stay with me, I'm not crazy. A prompting is like a gut feeling, except it's in your heart. And it's not just you, it's God trying to tell you something. Something important. I promise you promptings are real. Try listening for one sometime. Then act on it.

The second reason I could go on forever about, and it's pretty personal to throw out there for everyone to see, but here goes nothing:

It's because Jesus Christ is my Savior, Redeemer, and best friend. I've used His Atonement to be forgiven of the times that I've screwed up, hurt myself, and hurt other people. No matter what I do, I'm still going to come up short. It's human nature. But He'll be there as my mediator to plead with God, because seriously, I've really screwed up in my 21 short years.

You know when something really horrible happens to you, or someone does something terrible to you, and there's that tightness in your chest? It hinders your breathing. And the whole world feels slanted and your vision's a little blurred. I've used Christ's Atonement to get rid of that awful feeling and heal from those emotional injuries. He's comforted me when I've been scared, alone, and beaten down. I've felt His embrace when I was at my lowest.

Because of the gift of the Atonement, I know God lives. What a great show of love to send His perfect, only begotten son to live among us, experience temptation and heartache, and then die for us so we can all be saved. God loves us. He loves us no matter what our weaknesses are.

He cares about me, and you, and everyone else. Literally everyone. He cares about our problems, from petty frustrations to the trials that we feel like we can never recover from. But we do.

I know these things. After the long, arduous process of studying, reading scriptures, crying, praying, and repenting, I found these things out for myself, and man, has life been good to me since then. Not easy, but so good.

And because I know God lives, and that Christ died for me, I have to tell as many people as I can. It's this undeniable thirst that's never going away. I have to tell people that we have Jesus Christ's restored gospel, right now, which has brought me joy and it will bring them joy like they've never seen.

I walk taller, smile bigger, and laugh harder because of this gospel. It makes me optimistic. It gives me peace. How can you not share something like that?

I can't even wait until I get to Singapore to share this message. I keep bugging the missionaries here to let me go to their lessons so I can tell people, soul-to-soul, how much my life has changed because of my faith in Jesus Christ. I won't shut up to my friends or strangers about my mission, and I'm disappointed when I don't have enough time to tell them why I'm going.

So here it is, in writing, in case I haven't talked to you yet.

Blog Banners and Photo Cred

Alright, some of you wanted to know how I made my little blog banner and I needed a place to cite where I got my pictures from, so here goes:

I made it in Picasa, which you can download here. It's super easy.

1. Gather the images you want in your banner, and import them into Picasa.
2. Once you can view the photos in Picasa, click the ones you want (hold "ctrl" to highlight multiple pictures).
3. Click "Create" at the top and then click "Picture Collage." Here you can reorganize your pictures, and change the aspect ratio. For me, I changed the aspect ratio to 800x200 to put all of the images in one row. I also put a little grid spacing between my pictures.
4. Click "Create Collage" when you like what you see. Click "Export" at the bottom and export your collage to your desktop or somewhere you can easily find it.
5. Re-import it into Picasa and double click on the image of your banner to edit it. Here, you can add text and other effects. Export it again and you're done!

Remember, simpler is better.

Also, cite where you got your pictures from, like I'm doing here.

I tried to capture how diverse Singapore/Malaysia are with my banner. I contrasted big cities with rural scenes and included the Batu Caves, which has a Hindu shrine, and the Crystal Mosque, where Muslims can worship.

Check out this site: http://sun-surfer.com/tag/malaysia
I teared up a little when I found it because I couldn't believe that I was going somewhere so beautiful for my mission. I pulled a lot of pictures from here for my banner.

Photo cred:

Batu Caves, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Source

Singapore (Can someone give me more information
on this tower? I've seen tons of pictures of it but no information).
Source

How cute are these kids? I need to get me a Malaysian flag.
Source

Rainforest on the island of Borneo, Malaysia
Source

Semporna, which is way, way east in Borneo, Malaysia
Source

Singapore
Source

Crystal Mosque, Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia
Source

Aren't these pictures breathtaking?

47 more days.

Visa Stuff

A funny thing happens when you decide to go on a mission, and that is that it seems like the entire universe is trying to keep you from going on your mission. One of the challenges we missionaries commonly run into is the issue of visas.

Visas are a pain in the butt. I know this because my parents are pros at visa stuff. My mom obviously has a green card, and occasionally my parents have to go to Portland and get interrogated about what kind of toothpaste the other one uses and stuff to prove their marriage isn't like...fake. I don't even know what kind of toothpaste I use so good job mom. When my dad was working in Tokyo/living the bachelor life, every once in a while he'd have to hop on over to Korea or Taiwan to renew his visa. He actually loved it. But visas are still a pain.

The Church Travel Office sends us future missionaries a handy little envelope explaining what we need to do to get visas specific to our mission country.

For Singapore/Malaysia, they wanted some pretty interesting things, like a copy of my mission call, high school diploma, and three certificates issued by my church. Also, passport stuff. Based on that, let's go ahead and infer Singapore has a very strict* religious/missionary type of visa that you can get. 

*It turns out every 3 months I need to fly back to Singapore if I'm in Malaysia to renew my visa. If I'm in Singapore, I need to go to Indonesia. I've heard sometimes customs doesn't let missionaries back in without  a hassle, so I'm counting on my [non-existent] language skills and the fact that I could pass for a south east Asian to take care of that issue for me. Then I can get my orang putih of a companion back into the country. You're welcome.

Back to the whole universe-is-against-you thing, the night I was getting my visa stuff together, I found out I had to go to Idaho for a while because, family stuff. So I put off my visa stuff thinking I could easily access my papers in a filing cabinet somewhere. Seriously, my parents are super organized with that stuff. I got back from Idaho with my visa issues on the back of my mind, and when it came to gather my papers from our handy little filing cabinet, they were nowhere to be found. 

That's alright, I thought. I graduated high school and seminary a long time ago. I was pretty sure I crammed those papers into a box somewhere. After tearing apart my entire house, I finally found everything I needed.

Just kidding. 

I couldn't find one single document.

After much frustration, impatience, and ripping open literally every box of stuff I've ever packed away* I finally came across my diploma and seminary certificate.

*your life is very nomadic when you get into your 20's.

After a couple uneasy weeks (the deadline for my visa stuff was getting too close), I eventually got my baptismal certificate re-issued along with my YW certificate. Of course, that week my bishop and executive secretary were vacationing. I went to my bishop's house 5 minutes after he got home from Alaska to sign them.

The lesson here is don't delay visa stuff.
Don't delay visa stuff.
Don't. Delay. Visa stuff.
You can procrastinate everything else in your life except for visa stuff.

Also, be annoying and persistent to get mission/visa stuff done.

This leads me to the question of what if you didn't graduate seminary? Or finish Personal Progress? Visas are  a delicate matter.