Called to Serve: The What and Why of Me Serving a Mission

As some of you may know, I will be serving a mission in the Taipei Taiwan area.  I am entering the MTC (missionary training center) on Wednesday, where I will spend about 6-9 weeks studying the language, and learning how to be an effective missionary.  Now I'm sure there are many of you who are like, but what is this mission thing?  When I was talking about serving a mission, I actually had one person who thought I was in the Air Force.  But I'm not! I'm just serving my Lord.

What is a Mission?

Don't be a Grinch about mission work!

Well for a much longer, in depth explanation than I'll give, Our church's website has an awesome article explaining what a missionary does: Missionary Work (I highly recommend this if you have the time and the interest!) But for a condensed version, basically I will be teaching the people of Taiwan about my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [Mormons]), and serving these great people.  In our Church young men of 18, and girls of 19 can serve a mission.  If you have this desire, then you have to fill out the mission application, send it to the Church Headquarters in Salt Lake City, and through inspiration from God, an apostle (just like the ones in the bible) of our church assigns you to the mission where you will be serving for 1.5-2 years (Here's a link to a great talk about the assignment process: The Divine Call of a Missionary).   If you have seen the young men in suits and a name tag knocking on doors, that's probably us.  A lot of people don't understand why we would go around sharing this message with people, and some even see it as an invasion.  But it's not like that at all.  Imagine you have solved world hunger, would you want to share it with the world, or keep it to yourself?  Unless you're the Grinch I can imagine you'd be shouting it from the rooftops.  That is how I feel about this church.  It has brought me so much joy, and has gotten me through so much.  I want to share that with EVERYONE!  We aren't trying to sell anything, we only invite others to Christ.  If you're not interested in our message, That's OK! Just know we share this message with love. 

We believe we are Christ's church (That he founded when he was upon the earth) restored.  Missionary work is nothing new, we are doing the same thing Paul and others did in the bible.  

Why Am I Serving a Mission?

Well essentially I'm going because it's what God wants for me at this point in my life.  I'm a firm believer that God has a specific plan for each of us, and when you look back on your life sometimes it's crazy how everything lead you exactly to where you are now.  That is exactly how I feel about me serving a mission.  There's actually a lot of events that happened before I was even born.  In some ways it goes all the way back to the very beginning, but I won't go that far back.  I'll start with the Mormon Pioneers.  Back around the time of the restoration of the church, a lot of people were joining the church and moving out west to be with other members, some of those people were my ancestors.  Thanks to them, my dad, and later I was raised in this church.  

God's hand in my mission call became very evident about 20 years ago when my dad was called to the Taiwan Taipei mission.  The call came as a complete shock to my dad, he said that growing up he didn't like Chinese food at all.  But that mission call drastically shaped the rest of his life, and the life of his children.  It lead him to major in Chinese, working in China, and then eventually moving the whole family there in 2012.  

Moving to China is one most important things to happen in my life thus far, it's shaped my life in so many ways.  Like my dad, I had little interest in China before I moved there.  Any interest I had stemmed from my dad working there, but I never wanted to live there myself.  When we first moved there, we were only supposed to be there for a year.  That year was all I needed to have the desire to serve a mission, but that second year was crucial in my desire to serve the Chinese people.  

In  October 2012 General Conference, it was announced that the mission age would be changed from 19 for boys and 21 for girls to 18 and 19 respectively.  I didn't know what to think, I had always thought I'd serve if I wasn't married before 21, but I felt there was a good chance I'd meet my prince charming before then.  I had always bore the mantra that if a man can't be devoted to God for 2 years, how could I expect him to be devoted to me for eternity (that being said I do think there are honorable reasons why a man might not serve a mission).  I am also a strong believer of being the kind of person you want to marry, if I wanted to marry an RM, I needed to be an RM.  But it scared me, I didn't know if I was ready for that.  Luckily I had some amazing examples surrounding me.

When I got my mission call in the mail!

There was a group of girls teaching English in cities around Nanjing who would come by train every weekend for church.  Because of the long commute, they would often come in Saturday night and spend the night at our house.  Many of these girls were so excited when the mission age was announced.  They all began to fill out their mission papers, and coming in Friday so they could get doctors appointments and go shopping for things they would need.  We even had a few of them open their calls at our house.  They were all on this mission high, and made me so excited to serve a mission.  They showed me how important a mission was and how exciting it would be to serve.  

However, that year was also extremely hard.  There is no way to understand the culture shock someone goes through when moving somewhere with a culture as different as China's until you've actually done it.  Needless to say, it was the hardest year of my life.  I struggled adjusting to the new environment, and had some unpleasant experiences with some natives that painted a picture of how I viewed the whole nation.  

Towards the end of the first year, and definitely in the second year, I decided I needed an attitude change, and went from wanting to move back to the states ASAP to never wanting to leave.  I grew to love China, and the people so much.  It made me so sad that there's this country where it is illegal to preach the gospel.  I wanted to so badly for these people to know the truth about God, and you could see that some of them wanted to know the truth too, but had no way of finding it.  All of this growth that I had showed me how much I wanted to serve a mission in Taiwan. 

Over the summer I went on a church history/missionary tour, and I had a moment where I was like "I need to serve in the Taiwan Taipei mission!" and that desire only grew until the night before I opened my mission call.  That night I had this awful fear that because I wanted so badly to serve in this wonderful country that I would be called somewhere else.  You cannot even imagine my joy when I read the words "Taiwan Taipei Mission".  

I cannot wait until I report in 2 days, and I think Heavenly Father knows that, he has given me so many amazing experiences to help prepare me, the latest being me meeting a missionary from Taiwan, who was teaching a newly converted family from Mainland China.  I was able to go with him and his companion to teach them twice, and it was just wonderful.  It will be hard leaving everything behind for 18 months, but it will be so worth it.  I'm going to get so much out of it, and hopefully so will lots of other people, so I don't really see it as a sacrifice.  It is a blessing.  

-Sister Westover