The End November 8, 2015

Well, this is it.  The end.  There were times I never thought it would come.  Even now, I still think that it won't but in the back of my mind is that small annoying thought buzzing around and tapping on the glass window of my subconscious and it says, "You are leaving."  My bags are packed, finally, after wrestling with the broken scale trying to figure out how in the world to know if my suitcases are under 50 pounds.  I have said goodbye to everyone I could think of, wrote letters to a few.  I gave my last testimony yesterday at the chapel in Panduri where a week from now will be an apostle of the Lord speaking to the people that I have taught, and loved, and care for.  The streets are filled with angry people.  Angry about dead loved ones, or dead heros, or a dead government.  
The night is chaos.  The streets are filled with the voice of freedom and the impatient desire of want.  The people are rising again, waving flags with a hole in the middle that echos the cries heard from 26 years ago.  Religion is torn and dragged out of its rightful place, trying to govern a ungovernable people.  The were a broken people a tamed people, a people who were satisfied with the "good enough" syndrome.  They fought once for their country, then once the freedom was granted and the boarders opened the best and brightest left to make a life leaving Romania to try and scrape together a democratic country with the left overs.  The new generation has grown up, those who had the courage to leave have left, and now the courage is back in the people. The youth will not let the dull corruption shape their future.  The voice of Romania has risen again and the people will be heard. I speak to them, "Revolution" the say with courage in their hearts, but fear in their eyes.  They are so young that the deaths at colectiv have enraged their minds and pricked their hearts, but so young to understand what their own deaths would mean to so many others. Romania is on the breaking point in so many ways. All the people need is courage, courage to break free from the tradition of their fathers, the courage to fight for true freedom and here it comes. I can hear it.  I can feel it.

What a time to leave, when Romania is at the verge of changing.  But it is my time I have completed what I needed.  The experience of a mission is one that I thought I knew, but it wasn't until now that I know what it is.  It is sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ everyday, every minute, but it is also endurance and diligence, obedience.  It is something that demands your whole strength and whole soul, but impossibly I cannot give it.  There were some days when I felt I gave my all, most even.  But to be a giver 100% to the Lord is when you find out just how short you fall of that expectation.  And when that happened to me is when I learned to grow.  There are two ways people can react when placed in hard situations. One is to default, to reach inside desperately and find the little switch to turn off the guilt and the turmoil and the desire to try and reach that expectation.  This is when you choose the fall below your potential.  I don't know if I ever thought of it in those terms before, but essentially that is what it condenses to.  The alterior choice was to rise to the challenge.  To try. To succeed.  But sometimes the feeling of failure crept into my heart anyways, that the infinitely high bar was just out of my reach, and getting higher. And this was the part where I grew.  As I reached for that everyday, trying to get to the point of being a perfect missionary, balancing what the world said about me as well as that of my teammates and trying to understand what god said about me. It was here, when I was lifted up.  I could grab the bar, and it was because of the grace of God. But it was still hard!!! And as I figured out little by little the secrets to fulfilling the work, my time grew shorter until I came to this point.  Where I humbly submit and recognize that I am still not the greatest missionary that ever lived, that my time in this arena is over, and that I have finally figured the mission out.  I can speak the language, even better I can understand the language.  I can teach the lessons with incredible power, when I say I, I do not mean me, but that I have discovered how to teach powerfully with my companion and the help of God. And now that I am a great missionary, it is time for me to leave.  

To continue my mission elsewhere.  The mission truly never stops, but I still feel an ending to something incredible.  Never again will I come back to Romania with the same power and authority to teach the gospel. Never again will I wear my cute little black name tag as a Sister missionary, maybe someday as a senior missionary, but it is not the same. But the work goes on. There are many other roles in the hastening, and this experience has solidified me.  I know that my Savior live, that Joseph Smith is a prophet and that this gospel is true.  What more could I ask for in return.  I love you my cute family, sorry if this e-mail sounded dramatic, the old writer in me that has be dormant for a year and a half is waking up again. I am sad to leave Romania, I don't think I will feel the full impact of that sadness until I actually get on the plane and fly away. But I will be so happy when I see your cute faces at the airport in Salt Lake City.  Just please, be patient with me, I am pretty awkward and I am coming out of a very different culture. 

SEE YOU IN 2 DAYS!