Sunday Thoughts

I have an amazing mission president...who makes a great effort to stay in touch with his missionaries. He often writes words of advice and counsel and sometimes just funny jokes or political opinion. During two very difficult times in my married life, I answered the phone, and found his voice on the other end...ready to comfort and lift however he could. I love that man for the impact for good he has been on my life! This is written by him...Jim Ritchie...he is serving ANOTHER mission in Hawaii on the BYU campus. His insights are always great!

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

It has been fun being in the middle of what Charles Dickens must have tried to convey when he wrote his famous book about our unlimited potential and with that potential comes great expectations. The campus is swarming with brand new high school graduates often accompanied by anxious but excited parents who are making a drop off in-between some beach time. But, you can see by the twinkle in their mothers eye that the beach is not near as important as the dreams they have for their 'favorite 18 year old' who has been been bombarded with advice and council about the families tradition of GREAT EXPECTATIONS. Most of the parents have forgotten to tell them all the truth about their freshman year so many years ago but instead they focus on inspiring them with what this first year will mean to their future, their missions, their careers, their future families and their eternal destinies.

Not so fortunate - but just as starry eyed - are the majority who arrive without any parent lagging behind but have left their island or village for the first time to begin their ascent to the top of the world. They are trying to remember what their mother tearfully told them as they packed their meager belongings and made that very long air plane ride to another island in the Pacific.

Everyone is here with Great Expectations. Not only the students and their proud and frightened parents but the faculty, staff, food services, housing professionals, studentbody officers, local priesthood leader and administrative leaders, all who are charged from a Board of Trustees to give the church a 'return on their significant investment' in these young lives. Truly everyone (from Pres. Monson, chairman of the Board, down to the 30 missionary couples who are here supporting all of the above) has only one purpose and mission which is to assist in transferring those 'expectations' into 'actualities'. These young people MUST do well. They MUST prepare for and serve honorable full time missions. They MUST marry well in the temple. They MUST be prepared and self confident that they will be able to go home at end of these formative years self reliant and become the church and community leaders all over the Orient and Pacific Rim (and the mainland) The incredible investment by the faithful tithe payers of the church must not be wasted or invested poorly. Each of these young lives has had 'matter yet unorganized' reserved for them all subject to their fulfilling their foreordained promise. Each comes with a future posterity as numerous as the sands of the seashore anxiously waiting to see if their mother and father can fulfill those GREAT EXPECTATIONS. Eternity and Eternal Life is at stake.

This army of incoming new recruits and their accompanying excitement is tempered by my first high council assignment which was being a participant to a church disciplinary action where a fine young man and his family took a step back in their ability to pursue the race toward these eternal quests. Satan is real, and although he doesn't seem to be as obvious in this hidden paradise, he surfaces and tempts and hints and sometimes wins in his mission. His victories must be temporary and infrequent.

It's exciting being here. We have GREAT EXPECTATIONS for our service here at 'this front' and we have GREAT EXPECTATIONS for everyone we love who are serving on the other many 'fronts' where so many lives are being impacted with decisions made by us and by them which will determine the outcome of those dreams. May each of us be there for them when they come to the forks in the road they will know which one to take knowing that those decisions will determine whether that 'matter gets organized' and whether the 'sands of the seashore' get a celestial or a terrestrial home.