On 14 March 2013, I woke up thinking that my mission call would be coming that day. My goal was to have the Italian Book of Mormon finished before I get my call. However, I still had 20 pages left of it. I had to finish it, because most likely I would lose some interest in reading Italian and would like to start learning the language that I was assigned to learn. (That is, if I was going foreign. It was my hope, though, to go foreign.)
So, I read 10 pages that morning and came so close to finishing my goal. I would finish it tomorrow, I said to myself. Today is the day, and I can't focus on Italian very well.
Well, suffice it to say that my call did not come on this day. So that night, I finished the last 10 pages of Il Libro di Mormon, and woke up the next day for school. It is now a joke that I didn't get my call because I didn't complete my goal.
15 March 2013, I go to school in anticipation to get back home. I had no word from home until second hour, Spanish class. I had received a picture message of my call. There went my concentration on correcting Spanish tests. I was bouncing off the walls with excitement. I told a few of the people in my Spanish class about it, and within 30 minutes, everybody in the school seemed to know about it. After suffering through school for another 4 hours, I jolly well go on my way home to see my envelope.
Somebody had asked me what the price was on the stamp of the envelope. Not knowing exactly what she meant by that, I began to be curious about what the price would represent. So I kept asking my parents, and they refused to tell me until I opened my packet.
7pm, I opened my packet. I had a couple of my favorite past-Priesthood leaders there, my whole family, along with several of my best friends from all over the world.
Dear Elder Vincent: You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Singapore Mission...You should report to the Provo Missionary Training Center on Wednesday, July 31, 2013. You will prepare to preach the gospel in the Malay language.
My mind is all over the place. I had never even thought of going to such a place! Just weeks before, a return missionary spoke in my ward, who had just come back from Singapore, and he even bore his testimony in Malay. My thoughts of the language were, "Glad I don't have to learn that language." Oh the irony of that thought.
My friends cheered, congratulated me, and went on their jolly way back home. After everyone went home, I was left with my best friend from the Czech Republic, who was probably the most excited for me, perhaps even more excited for me than I was. Being already away from home for over half a year, she gave me some advice for my mission. Hopefully that advice will be very helpful to me later on.
4 months after my mission call, I head to the MTC to learn the Malay language. This is where my journey begins.
with Janean Vincent, Jerry Vincent, Jeremy Vincent, Jared Vincent, Ethan Schow, Brigham Larsen, Eliška Rzehulková, Michael Bushman, Ted Schow, Diane Schow, Paul Gilbert, Connie Jones, Rick Jones, Matthew English(phone), and Alicia Nixon(skype).
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