Mistakes

I served for 18 months as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Kiev, Ukraine.  Every mission is led by a mission president and his wife who oversee all of the missionaries both spiritually and physically.  I was lucky enough to enter the country with President Frank Trythall and his wife, Nancy, there to greet me, ready to teach me and to make sure I was taken care of while serving as a missionary.  I immediately liked President Trythall.  Every week I wrote him a letter letting him know how things were going and every eight weeks, we sat down for an interview.  Those interviews were some of the most profound learning experiences of my  service and I came to respect President Trythall as a leader and love him like a dad.   Even with 150 missionaries in his care, somehow I felt like I was his favorite.  He has a gift for listening and understanding and saying just the right thing to make everything clear.  He is reserved but full of love; a somewhat quiet man but a bold leader who wasn’t afraid to say what needed to be said.  He had high expectations and loved people into being their best.

I had in my mind that I had to be a perfect missionary if I was to receive any heavenly help in the work of teaching the people of Kiev about the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I struggled learning the language because I was constantly frustrated that I was not more proficient and able to say what I wanted to without mistake.  I let my desire to be perfect keep me from trying as hard as I could, which stunted my ability to learn.  With every little mistake in the language, or when I walked by someone I could have talked with, or argued with my companion, or was embarrassed that someone was staring at my name tag, I could imagine my bank of heavenly help draining to the point where sometimes it seemed fruitless to pray because I figured I was not worthy of any blessings; I had messed up too much that day.  

President Trythall taught me otherwise.  In a time of great challenge President Trythall asked me to instead of focusing on my mistakes to make a list of all the reasons he didn’t have to worry about me.  There are lots of rules for missionaries and it was very rewarding to sit down and realize how many of them I was keeping perfectly every day.  I still do this sometimes as a mom because yes, maybe today I yelled at my kids but I also fed them three nutritious meals, bathed them, kept them safe at the park, told them I loved them, cleaned their bathroom for them and read them stories.  What a gift it is to be able to recognize all of the things we’re doing right instead of always focusing on where we messed up.

Sitting in an interview with him one day, he opened up my vision even further.  He told me that whatever success I had in Ukraine as far as teaching people the gospel and having them get baptized into the church was wonderful but not as important as what I was going to be doing in 20 years.  He said the greatest success of a mission is if my children and grandchildren live the gospel and make righteous choices.  Here I was living day to day, mistake to mistake and he asked me to step back and take a look at how this was going to affect my whole future.  Serving a mission is about loving, teaching, baptizing, and bringing others to Christ and when you do that selflessly, the Lord blesses you with the most amazing gift, the gift of testimony.  With that testimony, you choose how to live and what to teach your children and the legacy that you will leave to them of faith and devotion.  While watching others receive the gospel and make righteous choices is a wonderful blessing, the greatest joy comes from experiencing it yourself with your family.  Thankfully an insightful leader helped me lift up my head from daily discouragement to see a bright eternal future, as long as I kept doing my best.

One evening my companion and I had had a very challenging meeting.  We were having a meeting for the very first time with a friend, Tanya, whom we loved from our English class.  We brought along a girl from church that was her same age, hoping they could be friends.  Somehow the discussion got going in the wrong direction and we kept trying to make it right but finally it was just getting late and while frustrated and unsuccessful, we had to go.  Missionaries are supposed to be home by 9:30pm so we dashed out of there, made sure the girl who had come with us got to her home safely, then rushed to the metro stop where we just missed our train.  We had to wait a long time for the next one and decided to run from the metro stop to our apartment so as not to be late.  As it was, we ran around the corner of our building about 9:40pm only to see President Trythall’s van sitting in the parking lot.  He and Sister Trythall were waiting for us and my heart plummeted.  Now they knew that we had broken the rule and were witness to our mistake; I was crushed.  

President Trythall got out of the car and asked, “Why are  you running?”   I assumed that he asked the question meaning that we should have been home earlier and not put ourselves in that situation; I felt condemned.  But thenl he said he knew we were having a hard time so he had brought us milk and cookies and it was then that my heart stopped pounding.  They came up to our apartment, we ate some cookies, they gave us hugs and handshakes and left.  Here I thought they would think we were bad for being late but in reality, I think his question was asked in great love.  Why are you running?  Was he worried we weren’t safe or just curious what we were doing or trying to tell us that he knew we were doing our best and it was okay to slow down?  I’m not exactly sure but it was a powerful lesson to me of love and understanding.  We had done our best that evening and while we hadn’t kept the rules perfectly, we perfectly tried and he knew that and loved us for it.

I’m still not good with making mistakes.  I stew about things I said to people, I worry how people react to me and what they think of my parenting, I feel so terrible when I hurt someone that I can hardly admit it or talk about it because I dislike myself so much for doing it.  But President Trythall taught me that love can overcome mistakes and that we can’t let them keep us from moving forward or being happy.  So, I keep trying to look for the good, accept my own humanity and do my best without feeling like a failure.  To do anything less would be a mistake.