Birthday Guest Post #3

October 21 - Guest Blogger: Courtney
    It's been hard trying to figure out what I wanted to share but the experience that has entered my mind more than any other is one that I didn't understand until months after I got home from my mission.  Over the course of my mission I had several fevers, many of them quite severe.  They never kept me from doing the work, even when I felt like I needed to be in bed.  2 months before ending my mission, I was called to train a new missionary.  There was another sister in a neighboring area that also was called as a trainer, but on her way to pick up her new missionary, she was in a car accident.  That entire first month, I acted as trainer for both new missionaries and we worked both areas.  The next month, my last month in the mission, I got very sick and had a fever that lasted 2 weeks.  I was in bed the majority of the time and too sick to go outside of our apartment.  We had to make arrangements with ward members to take my companion out and she, being 1 month out on the mission had to carry the majority of the burden of running an area.  I had never felt so frustrated in my life, knowing that not only was I putting great responsibility on my companion, but that I was missing out on the precious time I had left.  After my mission ended and I was in Utah out at school, I got a phone call from that companion.  I was shocked to hear from her as she was supposed to still be in Argentina.  She told me that she had 6 more weeks in that first area and then on her next transfer, she was sent to a new area and was made a trainer!  She was in that area about 4 weeks when she got very ill and it was discovered that a hole in her stomach was leaking stomach acid into her bloodstream, essentially poisoning her.  She was sent back home and needed to end her mission.  After speaking with her, it hit me hard that my trials at the end of my mission weren't so much for my benefit, but hers.  She needed to have a complete mission experience: serving in 3 different areas, running an area on her own, and training a new missionary.  She needed this complete experience but had only about 5 months total in the country to do it all.  She expressed to me that although she was frustrated to leave the mission early, she felt very at peace that she had the experience as the Lord had intended her to and she knew that her mission was complete.
   I do think it's a hard lesson to learn, but eventually we understand that not every experience we have is for our benefit... our Father in Heaven loves all of His children.  He gives us ALL opportunities for growth in this life in a variety of ways.  You may not understand the why of everything you experience, but He does.  It's up to us to do the best we can in any situation and trust that He will take care of the rest.