Abe's Mission Call

Tuesday, March 19, at 11:09 am, just as I pulled into a grocery store parking lot (Summer, Mette and Hans all buckled in the backseat of the white truck we’ve been driving for nearly 15 years), I received one of the most exciting texts I’ve ever had. It was from Abe. To me and Mike. And simply said: “My mission call is here”

That was it! No further explanations or exclamations. He just sent the text and went into his next class.

Meanwhile, my mind and heart were shooting fireworks. And it felt rather ridiculous to be walking down a store isle — tossing Saltines and sandwich meat into my cart — when something so big was about to be unveiled! 

We knew the call for Abe’s two year proselyting mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was coming of course. He’d begun the process of filling out papers, getting doctors visits, and interviewing with our bishop and stake president months earlier. But somehow the end pieces had fallen together so suddenly! And we’d anticipated possibly waiting a month after his final interview. So this text from Abe — two short weeks after that interview — felt completely unexpected! 

(Mission calls now come electronically, but Abe had Mike — the only one who could be fully trusted not to look — print it off for him to open in front of friends and family.)

And when he opened it late that evening (an eternity of waiting — those hours!), I was as surprised as I’ve ever been by anything to hear where he would be going! 

In July he will be leaving us for two whole years to live, teach, and serve in the El Salvador San Salvador East mission. 

El Salvador! 

For a minute, as he started to read the name, I thought he was talking about some place in Texas! Haha! But truly, I’d never heard a thing about El Salvador! I wasn’t even sure where it was! Interestingly, Daisy had been assigned a small report on El Salvador in her Spanish class just the week before. So it was fun to have her immediately tell us a few details: right next to Honduras! (where Abe has a cousin serving), full of volcanoes! a tiny place with lots of people (it’s a tenth the size of UT with twice as many people as UT)! a beautiful coastline! often rated the murder capital of the world (I feel like we are suddenly back in Book of Mormon times — sending our son off to the Gadianton Robbers)!

Since then we’ve learned a good deal more of course. There are three separate missions in that small country (Abe’s takes in an area bigger than the other two combined so we hope that means he might get to serve in a few of the more rural areas). He’ll likely (as one former missionary told him) eat his weight in pupusas every day). Fireworks at Christmas. Tin-sided outdoor showers. Etc.

But nothing that we’ve learned actually makes it feel REAL yet. And nothing has yet allowed me to pull out and make sense of the complex emotions associated with this business! Despite it being, initially, so far off my radar, I believe this is where the Lord has been carving Abe’s path for his entire life. Well, actually, since before his mortal life. And I love reading things like this from President Eyring:

“I have had [many] experiences feeling of the Holy Ghost…But I’ve never felt what I have felt as I have…participated in the assigning of missionaries…Because of technology, it is possible for us to have your picture and the information about you displayed. And then quickly, on that same screen, all the missions of the Church with all of their needs are displayed. Within minutes, and sometimes less than a minute, the impression comes so powerfully that it would be, if it were a single instance, something that you would never forget. Can you imagine sitting there for hours at a time, having that happen time after time without interruption? I testify to you that it is real…[The Lord] somehow not only knows you but loves you enough to ensure that your call is where He needs you to go to teach the children of our Heavenly Father.” (Pres. Henry B. Eyring, “Called of God,” address delivered at the Missionary Training Center, Aug. 26, 1997).

But no matter how much this has been planned for eternities, or how much we might have been aware of before coming to earth, we are only just barely seeing it unfold here. And it’s a strange thing to me to I consider that the bits of the journey I do get to experience through Abe’s eyes as this two-year adventure plays out . . . will still only be the smallest part of what it will mean for the rest of his life, and for future generations, and the trajectories of countless other lives.

Here is what I wrote about it shortly after he opened his call:

Tuesday I received one of the most exciting texts of my life. It was from Abe. To me and Mike. It simply said: “My mission call is here” And that was it. Not even any punctuation (though a million exclamation marks were going off in my mind). And now? He’s LEAVING us! Which, of course, I don’t really quite believe. Just a few days ago he and a friend were up North Ogden Divide trying to gather enough snow to make a snowman (as part of a clever answer to an upcoming high school dance he’d been asked to). Wednesday he was off running hurdles in a track meet. Saturday he’ll be scooping ice cream at Farr’s. We are, in this moment, living every single routine and normal thing. He’s HERE — woven into the familiar and reliable of our everyday just like he has always been. And the thought of life without him? Only static. And yet, for the 18-plus years leading up to yesterday’s text, without any of us even knowing it, Abe’s path was winding towards . . . El Salvador. (A country whose name has never had any reason to cross my lips — much less my consciousness.) And even now — while he’s busy running hurdles, and studying for AP tests with eight younger siblings distracting him, and doing after-dinner dishes — actual people are going about lives that will soon intersect and intertwine significantly with his in ways we will only be able to shrug and admit can’t be defined as chance; and completely unknown streets and cities (that will become the backdrop to his days, and fill his future dreams, and strike chords of homesickness once he has left them) are existing. And all I have so far is a photo in my mind — one that doesn’t yet actually exist but somehow formed as clearly in my head (during a restless night after he’d opened his call) as if I were holding it in my hands. It’s an image of Abe. He’s wearing one of those white short-sleeve shirts and a tie. He’s clearly hot and a little sunburnt; and just about in need of another missionary haircut. And he looks . . . well, he looks . . . happy.