Cure for the Common Cold?

This past week I had the opportunity to tag along with my ward's Girls Camp. Ha that made my 6th consecutive year of going ha, I was too old for the last 2 but somehow I end up being there anyways. :) But I was there for a reason this time ha, not to just look pretty. ;) I was asked to be a guest speaker on Missionary Night. I talked about why I wanted to serve a mission. This is what I said, and I want to share it with all of you. Please enjoy! The underlined names are a girl and a leader from my ward that I filled in.

Why have I decided to serve a mission?

How about I come up with a scenario that we can all relate to:

Lets imagine that we all have a cold, everyone in the world, and it just makes us feel not good, not so terrible that we can’t stand it, just not our best. Just blehhh. So we have this cold and it will just not go away, we try sleeping, we try the medicine we try everything and nothing seems to work. Then one day Emily goes to the doctor and asks for help and he tells her he’s found a way to get this cold to go away forever. He gives her a new medicine and she goes home to take it. Instantly she feels amazing! And the cold is completely gone! She finally feels her very best and is just bursting with energy and happiness. And instantly she runs to tell Sister Gerstch her great news! When she gets there she realizes that  Sister Gerstch still has the cold. And immediately she tells her to go to the same Doctor and he can give her the medicine to take it away. Seeing how happy Emily is and how much energy she has Sister Gerstch knows that she doesn’t want this cold anymore and she decides to take her husband and their children to the doctor as well to rid themselves of this pesky cold.  Once Sister Gerstch is cured she calls up her Mom and tells her all about this new cure she’s found and what Doctor to go to get the medicine. And the cycle continues on and on as more people share the name of the Doctor with people they know and meet. And eventually people start to get rid of this cold that makes them feel unhappy. And they start to feel amazing! And those people share it with more people, and those people share it with even more! Now people all over the world know about this doctor and the medicine and are beginning to be cured! Amazing right?!

I want you to think about this story, but now I’m going to switch some things around. I want you to replace the Doctor, with Heavenly Father. I want you to replace the “Medicine” with The Gospel. And I want you to think of the “cold” as the burdens of the world. Now remember the cold just makes us feel not so good, we’re not fully happy and we just don’t feel awesome at all. Sometimes the burdens of the world can make us feel that way too right? Un happy and just UnAwesome. But then when we go to the Doctor and we ask for help, that’s kind of like praying to Heavenly Father and seeking the truth. Then the Doctor gives us the medicine to make us feel our best again forever. And that’s our Gospel, once we find it, live it, and believe it to be true, we feel amazing inside and we’re happy and we no longer have that pesky cold. Now I want you to think about how Emily shared her discovery with Sister Gerstch. That’s like spreading the gospel right? She discovered this cure that made her feel incredible and she just had to let other people know about it so that they could feel it too.

Well that’s why I want to serve a mission, I want to help people go to The Doctor and find that cure that makes them feel spectacular on the inside. There are people out there in this world that have “The Cold” and no one has told them about “The Cure” yet! That they can be happier than they are right now! They have no idea. But missionaries, are like Emily, they don’t have the cold anymore and they want to tell people about the Doctor and the Medicine that helped take it away. I want to go out there and find those people that have the cold, I want them to feel the happiness that I have inside. And I want their families to feel it too. Because if I don’t go out there and find them, will anybody ever find them? What if they go through their whole life with this cold and have no idea that they don’t have to?! It makes me sad to think about it!  2 Nephi 32:2-3

You can be a missionary too even if you’re the only strong member in your family. Like me. I’m choosing to go on a mission and I come from a family with no missionaries, I will be the first to go out and serve. Im joining God’s Army for not only the people I meet on my mission but for my family as well.

I know serving a mission is going to be tough, and that 18 months is a long time. But if me giving up 18 months of my life to serve the “Doctor” helps me to find even one person with a “cold” and be able to help them take “The Medicine” to feel better for the rest of their lives, then it will all be worth it.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” –The Lorax

I added the Lorax quote at the end because the theme was "Oh the Places You'll Go" and I thought it fit just right :)