Keep Pressing Forward

So Ive been looking at this blank white space for minutes..hours.. well actually days. hah. I have loved writing letters that were put on this blog and I loved making it happy and cheerful during my mission.. well wanna know the secret..? Its all TRUE. Believe it, don't believe it. It doesn't matter. Its cheerful and happy because I was so extremely happy. A mission has changed my life for the better.. AND it will continue to change my life every single day. Thats one thing I really learned on the mission.. We are evolving beings.. we are ALWAYS changing and our FAITH is always growing. It is not a one time event. Its important to remember that.. especially in times when our faith is tried.. We have the CHOICE to either let our faith dim or to continue and get through the trial though our body physically or mentally is just about to break, our faith actually has so much room in those times to grow stronger than it ever has been!

I guess you could say that I have had a trial of faith these past few weeks.. a choice to either believe that it will get better, or to just let it slip. If there is one thing I have learned in LIFE it is that our lives never goes exactly as we want, planned, expect.. hmm wonder why! Its BECAUSE there is a heavenly loving creator in all things that ALWAYS has a better plan than our own.. ALWAYS.. not usually. Always.

I have a huge testimony about P-days on the mish.. They always come right when you are just about to scream you are so dang tired.. Then you get a day to just be uplifted by emails, clean, get organized, and just relax.. WELL this day was a little different. We had a super fun pday with President and my mission mom and everyone was there so it was super fun. But I didn't feel right. I hid it during the whole thing.. My body just felt weird and I had so much pain in my back for about a month but that day it seemed to be elevated. I finally got the nerve to talk to my mission mom because I was actually with her so I just said, " I just don't feel right.. Its the strangest thing! My whole body feels weak like I am about to get a fever.. and the big red bumps on my arm came back" ( I had big red bumps on my arms for about 6 months of the mission which were EXTREMELY painful.. but always went away after a few days.) I just told her that and said maybe I would call the nurse.. which I hated to do because I felt embarrassed. Then the day went on.. I even talked to a sister who was having a hard day and I was telling her that it would all be okay and we talked about how excited we were to go through the mission with the same time frame. I then teased with some missionaries who were talking about how long they had in the mission..I said.." might as well be on a plane home!! The mission goes SO fast!"...oh little did I know. Thats what kills me the most.

Later that day the pain got worse and I started feeling extremely weak. We wrote our families but I could hardly focus... We got home and I fell on the bed and couldn't get back up. Literally.. It wasn't just not wanting to work or something.. We had an awesome FHE planned with one of the most amazing families in the world.. But I couldn't get up. Then our pensionista came in and she said that we should take my temperature. I had a high fever so we stayed in. I didn't sleep all that night because I would go lay in the bathroom wanting to throw up or I would have to sit up because I couldn't feel like I could breathe. We went to the doctor and he said that he wanted to hospitalize me.. We thought he was crazy and just got pills and went back home. I wasn't getting better at all. Then about Friday we were laying down and I couldn't breathe.. We decided OK.. its time to go to the hospital. I was put in a room and put on IVS. Im not going to talk about the hospital because it is a little too private to be put on a blog. It was a hard experience. There was one night where I asked God if I was going to die.. Because I truly felt like I was. I talked to God a lot those nights.. But it was hard for me.. Sometimes I felt like I was just crazy and that nobody could hear me.. Well I want to share an experience that I had because I want to write it down and share it with the family. It was right after they put me to sleep to take a sample from my lungs.. I woke up from the anesthesia and I couldn't catch my breathe.. I coughed so much that I was coughing up blood. I would just gasp for air any time I could but I still couldn't get my breathing steady. They put me on oxygen and kept talking to me telling me that I needed to calm my breathing down. It wasn't until randomly I got the thought of my Grandma Chamberlains voice in my head.. Which is crazy because she passed away when I was 4.. But I KNOW without a doubt that it was her voice. I could recognize it anywhere now. . It just told me to breathe in..breathe out.. My breathing started to calm down and I started to catch it again as I heard the words over and over again in my head to breathe in and breathe out. Then I felt another presence on the left side of the bed. It was so strong that I turned expecting to see Grandpa Springer. I knew in that moment that God had not forsaken me... That I had 2 very loved guardian angels on the right and left side of my hospital bed.

At the beginning of the week my mission president and I were teasing about me training or going up to the mountains in Catamarca once I was better... And at the end of the week he was telling me fight information to get me back to the states.. I don't understand why some things happen. I have pneumonia, the doctors here say I have parasites, and I might have to get surgery on my back.. Why ALL AT ONCE. My mission president, the doctor in Lima, one of the general authorities of the church prayed and said that they all felt the impression that I needed to go home. I was released from the mission that I worked SO HARD ON.. And that I absolutely loved. I am at home.. Some days are better than others.. Im dealing with more than I even dare put on this blog.

People say that the first 6 months of the mission you feel like you are drowning.. well I felt like I was walking on water. I LOVED waking up every day knowing my purpose.. You could say I have always had a little identity crisis sometimes in life.. So waking up knowing that you have nothing else to worry about except for the savior and bringing families together was an incredible feeling. I don't think I have ever laughed more in my life with a best friend/ wonderful companions. ( And again you think " Hah there is no way..companions ALWAYS get on your nerves!" well.. the times that we did were fixed immediately and we stayed united. I love my companions. I learned SO MUCH.. I will never forget the feeling of looking into someones eyes that you are teaching the gospel and SEE the light growing inside of them.. And then the incredible joy of seeing them come up from being buried in Water following Jesus Christs example to be baptized. I keep praying every single day to know what to do... I am trying to listen to the spirit.. but sometimes I worry about being a failure.. That maybe I am just deciding that I am suppose to be home because I am so scared of failing again.. or leaving my family all over again.. Well thats very true too.. But I also do know that this is Gods work.. This wouldn't have happened, if we wanted me in Peru I would have been healed there..I wouldn't be sitting in my room in Utah writing this if it wasn't suppose to have happened.  I have been so awkward about the situation.. I have been in-between of deciding to just fall off the face of the earth like I did in high school, move away and get all new friends, not use social media etc.. or the choice of moving on with life and enjoying the present HERE. I know other people have had to deal with this..Or they have even bigger trials than this.. Elder Holland really helped me with one of his talks.. He talked about missionaries who are released early. He told us that when someone asks if you served a mission, you say YES.. You don't have to tell them BUT, I got sent home early. A mission is a mission.. Sometimes I wonder if God was seeing if I would sacrifice everything to go.. Maybe its like Abraham and his son when he was told he would have to sacrifice his son.. Maybe God needs to see where our priorities lie.. Or maybe not I don't know honestly. But I KNOW he wanted me to serve a mission. It is a feeling I would never dare deny.. I felt so strongly about going.. Im just rambling now.. But I wanted to say that I love my mission.. and I love this beautiful gospel.. Thats how I'm hanging on right now.. When thoughts creep in my head that I am a failure, which I know will continue for a while, I just remember the BIG picture.. the plan of this life. Every member is a missionary.. It does not end once you are home. Sometimes its hard to remember that we weren't just sent here to tread upon this land.. Theres a much bigger reason.. So that we can ALL get back home.

I have faith that things will get better.. Doubting is nothing. If I chose to doubt it is just rejecting the wonderful teachings and beautiful people I met in Peru... And I won't do that in a million years. I have a lot of fears that rob my perspective some days and overtake moments..but not doubts. Under this whole mess everything is marvelous in this life. There are so many reasons to have JOY. Im sure of it. Some things are always just going to be between me and God..and people may judge or not understand..ever. But thats ok.. Because God is my friend.. He's your friend too.. and he is ALWAYS ready to reach his hand out to you when you are drowning in the storm. I am so grateful for missionaries who are uniting families and showing people the greatest Joy of WHY we are here on this earth.. I am grateful for every single one of them.. Especially the ones in Trujillo Peru. Im grateful to have the gospel in my life.. and such incredible family and friends! I love our Heavenly Father so much.. I love our brother Jesus Christ. I am excited to see what they have in store.