Posted by:
karin
(
)
Date: April 16, 2019 09:50AM
- the ward, the neighbors etc. want you to.
Unless you are ward 'royalty' ie, have lots of your family in important positions, doing what everyone wants is not the way to go. Why? Because as soon as you can't do it all anymore, then you are spit out and thrown upon the heap anyway. If you have lots of family/mentorship going on in the ward, you might be 'allowed' to go thru this little phase b/c you'll be back and they make allowances for that.
Personal example: dh was asked to be ward mission leader.They talked to me and they talked to him. I told them that he is working 2 jobs and these jobs will finished by winter as they were seasonal jobs. He was officially unemployed, but 2 members in the ward had some summer jobs - working at a golf club and some gopher work at construction sites. So he couldn't really give any of his time til those jobs were done. Seriously. Our family needed the money! This was in the 90s when there were few jobs in our area.
They asked him anyway and he tried to do what he could between time at his jobs. Missionaries were hounding him to have meetings with them. They would call me asking for dh until i was afraid to pick up the phone. Finally dh said that he was quitting.
Do you think they understood? That they commended him for trying the calling? How awesome it was that he was working 60-80 hrs a week at joe jobs to keep off welfare and support his family? No. He was blackballed. In the decade or more we were still there he never got a job higher than ward clerk. Almost all the other guys in his circle became bishops or counsellors. Not him.
So don't care about what the ward will think. This is your choice and your 2 years. If they insist, and you want to see how far you can take it, tell them you'll go if you get to go to Europe, esp. to learn another language. Esp. if they pay for it. You go, they look good, you learn a language and get 2 years of being a tourist. If that's not your cup of tea (not everyone is good at learning languages) keep firm.
At 17 our son came and told us he wasn't going to church anymore. I was not TBM by then, barely coming myself and it still 'hurt'. He wasn't following in his dad's footsteps, he wasn't going on a mission. blah blah blah. I had to talk down the critical voice too and until he actually said it, i didn't care if he went on a mission! So your parents first words may not be their last ones.
If you don't have a path for your own life, there are many others who would love to have you help fulfill their goals. TAke some time and think what you want and how you might be able to get it. Good luck.
-karin