Farwell Talk

Hello Brothers and Sisters as many of you know I have been called to serve in the Omaha Nebraska mission. I am beyond excited to serve the Lord for 18 months and still can’t believe that I enter the MTC in just 3 days. When my dad told me that my farewell talk would be on Father’s Day and my topic would be fathers my first reactions was “really of coarse my dad gave me this topic, and why couldn’t I have gotten a topic like service or faith?” But the more I thought about it the more I realized that this is the topic that I needed to study.

            First let me talk about my dad. He is loves to scare people, is funny, unpredictable, sarcastic, and quick witted, he has a genuine love for service and will drop everything if someone needs his help, he loves problem solving and decision making, my dad loves people but hates crowds, he loves getting to know others by hearing their stories. He loves every person in this ward and gets excited and sad when you guys go through happy times like when the seniors graduate or sad times like when you lose a family member. But the most important thing is that my dad loves this gospel he always tries to keep the spirit in our house whether it be by blasting church music or leaving his scriptures on the table. He has been an example to me of someone with a strong testimony with the trials he has been facing I have never seen him rely more on our Father in Heaven than now.

Now I would like to talk about our Father in Heaven. He may not hate big crowd or like to scare people but he does love serving others. He is caring patient, understanding, and he loves all of his children Writing this talk I got to thinking more about our loving Heavenly Father and the different ways that he has taught me. I have identified 4.

 The first way I would like to talk about is through our Families. In our family, we are taught from a very small age how to sit up, how to talk, how to eat, and how to share. As we grow up we get to learn more and more by watching our parents or older siblings example and by listening to what they tell us to do. I have personally learned many things from my family. I’ve learned how to be sarcastic, how to feed a crowd, how to make the best chocolate Chip cookies, and how to love guacamole. I have also learned how to always serve others, I’ve learned how I should always be a shoulder to cry on. I’ve learned how to work hard. I’ve learned that family should always come first. I have learned how to love the scriptures even if they are sometimes hard to read. And I have learned to always rely on our Father in Heaven.

The 2^nd way Heavenly Father has taught me is through leaders. Each member of the church has the privilege of having leaders that they can look up to for guidance, support and spiritual uplifting lessons on Sundays. I have had some amazing teachers in this ward from nursery through young Women’s and relief society. I am so grateful for all of them and although I may not remember every of the lessons I was taught I do remember every Sunday them being there. I am also grateful for the leaders that I have had who put their heart and soul into making sure that we have learned while feeling the spirit in the experiences we would have in activity days at mutual and at camps. Going to girls Camp up in Zion this week as a leader has made me appreciate everything that leaders did for me when I was younger way more. Every one of these experiences helped me become who I am today and helped me learn more about who I am -  A daughter of our Heavenly Father.

The 3rd way is through the scriptures. We are so blessed to have the Book of Mormon in this church that has many stories and parables. We can learn so much through all of these and can turn to them when we need guidance. I love the story in the Book of Mormon of Nephi Building a ship. Nephi is commanded by God to build a ship to take him and his family to the promised land. Nephi did not know how to build a ship or where to find the tools and material to do it, but the Lord said that he would show him and he did. Laman and Lemuel, Nephi’s rebellious brothers did not believe that the Lord told him to do this so they didn’t help, they were angry at Nephi and wanted to throw him in the Sea. But the power of God was so strong in Nephi that when he touched them the Lord shocked them and at that point they knew that God was with their brother. They repented and helped Nephi build the ship. I have learned from Nephi in this story. I have learned to trust and rely on the Savior, D&C 68: 6.

The 4^th and last way that I would like to share with you is through prayer. Sometimes I think we can all take praying for granted. We get into this routine during our prayers of saying maybe the same things over again and not really thinking about it, I think that it is good to remind ourselves that when we pray we are having a 2-way conversation with our Heavenly Father, and we can receive blessings and answers through them. When I was up at school at BYU-Idaho I had some of the best roommates. From the start of the semester to the last day we would try as hard as we could to do roommate prayer. We would all gather usually around 12 or 1 at night and we would kneel together for a nightly prayer. The end of my first semester we were all planning roommates and figuring out who was staying for the following semester, we all got along so well that we wanted to stay together. The only problem was that 2 of us were not on track for that semester. My other roommate changed her track so she could stay and I was the only one who was off track that semester. Every night we would kneel down and pray together in that roommate prayer and in our individual prayers we were all praying that I would get the override so we could all stay together. Through lots of prayers and doing all that I could to talk to the admissions office I got the override and we all got to stay together. Every one of my roommates has blessed my life so much and I am so grateful for their loving faithful examples to me. And I know that the power of prayer works.

I have learned so much in my 19 short years of life and I am grateful to for all of the experiences that have shaped me into the person I am today. Each of these 4 things has blessed my life so much and has played a roll into my decision to go on a mission.

I would now like to share with you how I came to my decision of going on a mission.

In primary and Young Women’s, we would always have missionary lessons, and sometimes in those lessons the teachers would ask us to raise our hand if we were planning to or wanted to serve a mission. I was never the one to raise my hand. Yet here I am.  My decision to serve a mission came rather quickly, yet during that decision-making process took an eternity. Ever since the first time I got to school, there was always something telling me that a mission was an option and that I should pray about it. But being the stubborn person that I am I put it off. Finally, last semester I decided to pray about this decision. The next Sunday I was at church and the spirit had been so strong during the sacrament I looked up and read scriptures on missionary work and the thought of a mission would not get out of my head all through church. Before relief Society began I was talking to my roommate Lexi and I mentioned how I was feeling overwhelmed after her asking me what was up and me again being stubborn and not wanting to admit it I whispered to her the word mission and we immediately of coarse started crying. This is when the thought started to get real. But if you know me you know that I am a very indecisive person so for me this wasn’t the end of my decision making only the beginning.

Later that day I facetimed my dad and asked him a very hypothetical question that if someone came into his office and was thinking about a mission what would he do or what conference talks he would tell people to read. He was pretty shocked and excited we talked for a few hours that night about missions and how I still wasn’t sure. He said to me Sarah, no one is going to make this decision for you, there is not going to be a conference talk that says, “Sarah Owsley needs to go on a mission.” And your bishop isn’t going to call you in and say, “hey Sarah go on a mission”. Sadly, I knew he was right. He encouraged me to do 2 things from that talk the first was to go and pray specifically in the temple and the second thing was that I need to make this decision with faith, hope, charity and love.

So that is what I did. The next day Lexi and I decided to go to the temple together. I brought my scriptures and a journal and was also prepared to do baptisms. As we were walking we ran into one of our friends who asked where we were going when we answered the temple, all you adults have been going to the temple for many years can probably guess what he told us… that the temple is usually closed on Mondays. But determined we continued walking. Once finding a bench on temple grounds in the probably 35-40-degree windy weather I opened my scriptures and began to read in what is now my favorite chapter in the Book of Mormon: Alma 32. I was prompted to read this chapter and absolutely loved every verse I read but I will share with you just two. The first is verse 21 that says (READ) I love the hope that this verse gives that you do not have to know everything to have faith, but you do have to have hope. The second verse is 41 which says (READ). I took this verse personally that if i have faith with great diligence and patience then I will find my answer. This day at the temple sitting outside the door in the freezing cold is one day that I will remember forever because of how close I felt my Father in Heaven and knew that he is rooting for me to make this decision.

With patience and diligence and more patience I did all that I could to live in line with what my Father in Heaven would want me to do. A couple weeks had gone by and there were many times where I drew complete blanks, and would go back and forth thinking about this decision and trying to figure out what I should do. After talking with my sister, she told me to start recognizing when I would have the doubts and when I would be excited and egger to serve. I noticed that the doubts came when I was alone, maybe on my phone not doing anything great and the eagerness came when I would be reading my scriptures, and hanging out with my roommates, and doing uplifting things. To me this was the answer that I needed when I was doing the things that my loving heavenly Father wanted me to do I knew that I should go and serve and when I felt doubts it was when I was alone and easily tempted by Satan.

once I recognized this I knew that going on a mission is what my Father in Heaven wanted me to do. Within the next week I had completed all of my paperwork and within the next week after that I had completed all of my interviews and my papers were submitted.

As you can tell this decision was not an easy one to make but through the help of my Father in Heaven and my Dad I was able to constantly be reminded on the things necessary to make this decision wisely. I am grateful for my dad who is such a sarcastic, funny, thinks he’s cool, dad. Who has always taught me to turn to Christ in times of troubles and that 1 Nephi 3:7 which says (READ) will always be our family verse, and it happens to also my missionary scripture. I am also grateful for my Heavenly Father and the love and patience that he has for me and all of his children, that he wants us to return to him again someday.

I am so grateful to have grown up in this amazing ward and be surrounded by so much love and support. I am thankful to my family and for always making me laugh and cry and for always knowing that they are there for me, I am going to miss them so much. I would like to close with my testimony that I know that this Church is true, God lives and he is real. If we turn to him we can be guided through our trials because he has a plan for us, it may not be what we ever expected to do but his plan is great and it is the right way. I would like to close with this poem that I found at Deseret up at school when I was going through a rough time, I try to either start or end my scripture study with this:(READ)  In the name of Jesus Christ Amen.