the call

My stake president told me to expect my call on April 30th. This worked perfectly for my plan to surprise my family because I started my last final that day at 9 in the morning and the mail truck came to my apartment building at 10. So I'd finish my final and be able to pack up and move home for the summer. Tuesday night (April 29th) I could not focus on anything. I'd sit down to study for my big final and my mind would immediately begin to wander and I'd start day dreaming about opening my call and where I'd go and so I got a solid 20 minutes of actual studying in for that test. I had been having several dreams about where I'd go since I submitted my papers and in the dream I would always be in Botswana Africa. I knew that was exactly where I would be serving my mission. I looked up the Botswana mission and found a sister missionary blog that was serving in that mission and began to read through it and got so excited to go to Africa. I went to bed that night at around midnight but had some trouble falling asleep, so I wasn't actually asleep until about 1 in the morning. Well, I started dreaming about my mission call again but this time the dream went like this:

I was standing in my living room at home and all my family and some of my friends were there and I pulled the letter out of the envelop and began to read, "Dear Sister Tuddenham, you are hereby called to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. You are called to serve in the..."

And that was the dream. It replayed several times and it would never say where I would be going. By 4 in the morning I was wide awake and my heart was racing so fast it felt like I had just sprinted a marathon. No matter how hard I tried to fall back asleep I couldn't. Every time I'd close my eyes the dream would start right back up. So I laid in bed and did the smart thing and instead of studying I played games on and looked at old pictures on my iPad until it was time for me to get up and go to my final. I went and took my final and ran home as fast as I possibly could and stood in the window of my apartment waiting for the mail lady to arrive. I didn't even wait for her to close the mailbox before I was sprinting outside with the mailbox key. I stuck the key in and turned it, holding my breath, waiting to see the most important letter I would ever get in my life...AND....the mailbox was empty. EMPTY. We didn't even get any of those newspaper coupons that you just throw away. My heart sank. It had been 3 1/2 weeks and I am not patient at all. I was so sad.

I called my dad and told him the devastating news. His response was,

"Oh well, it'll come next week. This will be good for you. It'll teach you some much needed patience."

I swear the next week was the longest week of my life. With packing and moving and unpacking and being at home around my mom and not being able to say anything about it to her was torture. I'm fairly sure that week lasted a good three years!