You can take the missionary out of the mission but you can't take the mission out of the missionary

Hey Everyone!! Here it is.... the blog post. I'm sorry for all of the freak outs and questions and concerns I have not been able to address since getting home on Tuesday. I find it so much easier to just make mass announcements instead of explaining something over and over and over again. So here it is.... how am I doing??

To be honest. Not so great right now. I fee like my whole life has flipped upside down within a week and on top of that I have been dealing with feeling almost constantly sick. But here is what I'm learning from this whole experience and here is what we are doing so that I can get better and get back on my mission :)

My medical issues....
I think if I were to sum it all up- I have gastrointestinal issues. For some reason my stomach enzymes have quit working which leaves me feeling very nauseous if I eat anything. Or even when I haven't eaten anything I will have random spurts of extreme stomach pain. And I'm also dealing with some bad dizzy spells. Not sure if those are related. This isn't really anything super new to me. I dealt with Gastritis (inflammation of the stomach lining) a few years in high school and I have always had a sensitive stomach since. Its especially hard for me to eat gluten and dairy.... well its hard for me to eat much of anything right now.... but anyways! We are finding that the actual physical ailments are just a manifestation of anxiety... which was naturally heightened on my mission from the daily stresses of missionary life. My wonderful mission president and his wife were so supportive and willing to work with me and help me in any way possible so that I could stay on my mission (what I wanted more than anything). So I started the doctors appointments and got on an anxiety medication to hopefully help and President Bernhisel was more than willing to find me gastroenterologists in the area to help me physically. But instead of decreasing the stress on my body, I think being sick and trying to take some time for me to get better and go see doctors just amplified my stress because I kept worrying about not getting the work done that needed to be done and taking my companion out of the work. Through a lot of prayer and studying I came to the decision that it was right for me to come home to get help. I realized that I only had 6 months left of this mission that I so dearly love and I didn't want to spend that time going to doctors appointments and resting up. I want to spend those 6 months serving the Lord with EVERYTHING I have. And I felt really led to the decision that I needed to go home and focus 100% on taking care of myself so that I can go back soon and focus 100% on serving the Lord and His children. So on Thursday (yes just one week ago today) I expressed these feelings to President Bernhisel- fully expecting that I would still at least be able to finish out the transfer. But he felt that it was necessary to send my directly home and not wait on me getting medical attention. And so through a crazy swing of events I quickly said goodbye and came home... less than a week later.

I think having my mission taken from me so quickly was the hardest part. I have never loved anything like I love being a missionary. I love the satisfaction it brings. I love how close I feel to the Lord. I love the love that I feel for those I serve. I love sharing the incredible news of the restored church of Jesus Christ with anyone that will talk to me. But at the same time, I feel an immense amount of peace that I am now in the right place at the right time. Even in the past couple of days I have felt my body start to deteriorate more quickly and it is comforting to have the love and help of family and parents that are bound and determined to help me get the best medical care I can possible get. It has also been nice to not have to have the stress of feeling like I am in someway failing because I have to cancel appointments or take breaks because I'm not feeling well. I also feel that for whatever reason this is something I need to go through and there are lessons for me to be learned in this experience that are for some reason more important than me being a full time missionary (for now).

Here are some things I have learned through this So far....
1. I have learned how much Heavenly Father loves me. I always feel that others are more important than myself and as a missionary I felt a great love for others and a desire to help Heavenly Father's children but I never really consciously counted myself apart of that group. But I am... I am a daughter of Heavenly Father and He wants His children in North Carolina to be taken care of and loved...but He also wants ME to be taken care of and loved.
2. I have learned that Heavenly Father's timing is perfect and that it is no coincidence that I am home at the time that I am home.
3. Through experiences in my past I have learned that I can't question God. He is truly perfect and all knowing and there are times where it may seem like He is taking away what we love and care about most. I think during these times we always wonder "why? why is this happening to me right now?" But I have seen it in other experiences in my life that have strengthened my faith in the fact that when Heavenly Father takes something away from us, it is only because He loves us and has something better in mind. He is perfect. His plan is perfect. Its hard to have faith in the unknown.... but that's exactly what faith is. In the Book of Mormon in Alma 32 verse 21 it says "And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true." Well that's exactly what I am doing. I have hope that there is a reason for all of this and faith that the Savior will be beside to help me through this and help me get better.

So there's my life in a nutshell right now. Physically my parents and I are very confident in the doctors and medical routes we have looked into and are now just waiting for more knowledge so that we can choose where we want to go from here. And for now I am happy to be surrounded by such a great support network but I am ANXIOUSLY waiting until I get to strap on that name tag and be Sister Spiel again :)

Saying Goodbyes...

Saying Hellos....