the beginning

The time has come to commence the blogging and who knew it would happen on my mission!  For those of you who are a little out of the loop, I am currently serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the ever sunny desert of Mesa, Arizona.  I have been out for...goodness...a little over 7 months now. Can I believe it? No...no I cannot.
Well, I wonder how many of you know why exactly I came on a mission.  I don't know if it is something I have really shared with many people.  Just so you all know...I am 24...soon to be 25.  There aren't many of us on missions.  Lives are being lived, children are being had, the world is being conquered and yet...here I am:) And you know, there isn't any place I'd rather be than right here doing what I'm doing.  That is something I've realized recently, but I'll save that for another day...yay for controlling my desires to veer off on tangents (which by the way always have a point or add to my story...at least in my mind they do).  Where was I...oh yes...us oldies (but goodies) are few and far between here in the mission field.  So these past few years since I've graduated from college and ventured into adulthood have been...well...all everyone says they will be.  Things were confusing, expensive, tempting, sometimes fun, sometimes not so fun, hard, mistake riddled--just a big process of learning and growing and then learning and growing some more.  Let's just say it was the time in my life that I was least close to my Father in Heaven because I chose to be that way.  Maybe because it comes at me in large quantities from both my mother's and father's side of the family, but I have always been a bit....shall we say...stubborn. And the need to figure things out for myself just fuels all of my decisions.  These past few years I have most definitely figured things out for myself the hard way.  Experience after experience led me to realize that the way I was living my life would get me nowhere near to being the happy, fulfilled, confident, unique, well-rounded person I wanted to be.  The decisions I was making were dragging me away from all I ever saw myself becoming.   I was, in essence, becoming a selfish, unhappy, follow the crowd, self-conscious, crazy person that I didn't recognize.   Then it hit me...like a ton of bricks, a frying pan to the head, an ACME anvil dropping on Wyile E. Coyote...the thing I was missing.  Would you all like to know what it is? Well let me tell you.  It was a personal relationship with the one who loves me the most...my Father in Heaven.  All my life I grew up being reminded who I am....A CHILD OF GOD.  Guess who I thought I was....Alexis Marie Smith...independent know-it-all who didn't need nuthin' from nobody and definitely didn't need anyone to tell her what to do.  Oh my.  Does this sound familiar to anyone else?  Please tell me it does for my sanity ha:)  Anyways...good thing every time I walked out the door I was lovingly (albeit annoyingly at the time) reminded who I was by my wonderful mother and father.  Some tiny part of me must have though it was a good thing because I remembered it, even after all these years.  In the very second I needed it the most, it came, loud and clear, wrapping me in its arms of familiarity. I am a child of God.  I have a unique, divine potential.  It took me getting rid of some not so classy habits I picked up, returning to church on a regular basis, reading my scriptures, and praying to my Father in Heaven.  But what really made the change is when I realized that God has a much better plan for me than I have for myself and maybe I should give Him a chance.  When I did, did life become just a walk in the park, full of sunny days, butterflies, and flowers?  No...no it did not.  Then why?  Why would I do such a thing?  Well...it was because life became so much more than what we consider to be perfect or easy.  Life became real.  It became meaningful.  It became a worthwhile compilation of chances.  Pardon the reference, but I believe that Mrs. G had it right when she said, "You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have...the facts of life." Things aren't easy...they never will be.  But without the bad, the mistakes, the heartaches, the disappointments, we would never know the good, the growth, the love and the support that is all around us.  I know that we have been sent here by a loving Father in Heaven who has a plan for you, for me.  This plan will allow us to be happy and to become the people we have the potential to be.  We will each go at it a different way and that is how God has intended it to be.  But we all can, through our Savior Jesus Christ, find our way back to our Father in Heaven, to live with those we love forever.  I want everyone to know of the happiness, the peace, the comfort, the hope I feel from the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I didn't come to this conclusion because I'm just a product of my environment.  I had to really search things out, make some mistakes, and ultimately get down on my knees and ask. 
That is the short...well shortish....version of why I came on a mission.  And that is my first blog.  I hope you all clap for me when you are done reading this.  This gospel is true.  Peace:)
How I got my answers too...watch:)