Mission Call!

Wow, Jed has not written here forever! Naughty on him! He returned from Southern Virginia University the first week of May, 2010. He drove across the country with a young man named Jordan from Las Vegas. Together they stopped in Nauvoo on their way visiting church sites there. Then they continued their journey back to Utah and then Nevada for Jordan.

Jed received his LDS Mission Call while in Pennsylvania at the National Basketball Championships back in March! He opened his call literally minutes before the Final Championship Game with all of his SVU Team gathered around! It was a day never to be forgotten! He will be serving in the Taiwan Taipei Mission speaking Mandarin Chinese. He reports to the Provo MTC on July 21st, 2010.

That day we invited friends and family from all over to add their guess of where Jed would serve to a map. We left the original map with him in Virginia after the event, but this is a picture of the one posted here at home so we could all be ready to figure out where he was going. Jed's dream mission was Taiwan Taipei! He has taken Mandarin Chinese in a class organized by our Stake President while here in St. George for the past two years. When I visited his apartment in Virginia in November, I found two of the four walls of his room covered with the missionary discussions in Chinese! He had the articles of faith in Chinese! He had simple words - testimony, family titles, etc. taped all over the walls right over his bed! While there at SVU, he was taking Spanish, and so the wall over his desk had words in Spanish, but his preference was the Chinese! He told me weeks before his call that he would love to serve in Taiwan, that he would be there ready to go into China when it opened! We teased him a bit about being so tall in a short country! He said he would start with the story of David and Goliath and lead right into Ammon the Missionary, sharing his testimony and love of the Lord with the people, converting them! He is ready, and this is exactly the mission he dreamed of!

The night he opened his call, we cheered the game on, which they ended up loosing by 7. They played great, and were thrilled to make it to that level of the competition! What a night we will remember forever! I recorded details on my blog on March 6th with follow-up details in the next post dated March 12th. That night, March 6th, 2010 as I dropped into bed, I opened my book in the wee hours of the morning, after the celebration party we facilitated, and I turned right to Helaman chapter 3 first reading:

3...in the which there were an exceedingly great many who departed out of the land of Zarahemla, and went forth unto the land northward to inherit the land.
4 And they did travel to an exceedingly great distance, insomuch that they came to large bodies of water and many rivers.
5 Yea, and even they did spread forth into all parts of the land, into whatever parts it had not been rendered desolate and without timber, because of the many inhabitants who had before inherited the land...
8 And it came to pass that they did multiply and spread, and did go forth from the land southward to the land northward, and did spread insomuch that they began to cover the face of the whole earth, from the sea south to the sea north, from the sea west to the sea east.

Then not really wanting to hear the they spread upon the entire face of the earth, I flipped a couple of pages, and my eyes landed on these verses in Helaman chapter 5. Helaman 5:17-19 which testified to my heart that my Father would give him the very words he should speak in this very foreign land! Those verses read:
17 And it came to pass that they did preach with great power, insomuch that they did confound many of those dissenters who had gone over from the Nephites, insomuch that they came forth and did confess their sins and were baptized unto repentance, and immediately returned to the Nephites to endeavor to repair unto them the wrongs which they had done.
18 And it came to pass that Nephi and Lehi did preach unto the Lamanites with such great power and authority, for they had power and authority given unto them that they might speak, and they also had what they should speak given unto them—
19 Therefore they did speak unto the great astonishment of the Lamanites, to the convincing them, insomuch that there were eight thousand of the Lamanites who were in the land of Zarahemla and round about baptized unto repentance, and were convinced of the wickedness of the traditions of their fathers.

It was in the LDS General Conference, Priesthood Session of April 2010 that Elder Rasband gave this touching talk about the process of calling Missionaries. As the boys came home and related the experience of hearing about this process, the spirit bore witness once again that this was indeed the right place for our Little Jed - I mean Elder Harr to be serving!