"An Unexpected Journey"

Hi y'all I'm Cassidi Shingleton soon to be Sister Shingleton! This blog is about my adventures as a sister missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Sometimes I feel like the life of a missionary is a bit elusive like it's kind of a mystery, I know there are a lot of things that talk about being a missionary such as all the different manuals the church puts out, and the video series, "The District", but I always wish I could just take a peek into the day to day life of a missionary. 

I recently found a blog called "bella in berlin"; this sister has let me take that peek into missionary work that I have always wanted to see, so I decided to add my testimony of missionary life and work to hers by writing this blog. I will write here about all the crazy things that lead up to my mission, and then once I get out on my mission I will write a post on Pdays. Hopefully through this blog I can help others learn and understand missionary stuff better. 

Let me start this blog off my telling the story of how my road to becoming a missionary began. 

I never wanted to serve a mission; before the age change I had always hoped to be married before I was old enough to serve a mission, so I never planed on serving. When President Monson announced the age change that now elders can serve at 18 and sisters at 19, I thought it was neat. I was excited for all my friends who really wanted to serve, now they could serve earlier! 

I on the other hand just wanted to study abroad so I could go see new things, but still be able to do all the worldly things I love, and hopefully meet my dream guy along the way. A mission just was not for me.

My family and friends started to bug me about serving, I have to admit it actually kind of made me angry, I thought to myself "Just leave me alone! It's my life! It's not a sin for girls not to go!" I just kinda blew my family off. After a while I was naughty and even started pushing against The Lord, which by the way is not a good plan. I think deep down in my heart I knew that I needed to serve. 

During this time I had the opportunity to serve a "mini mission" that's where for three days you get to stay with the missionaries and work as a missionary right alongside them. I had a TON of good experiences on my mini mission, I met a lot of neat people; including the awesome Sisters who were my companions for those three days. At one point I even ended up teaching the lesson! I have to say though that those three days were some of the most exhausting, hard days of my life, and I thought to myself "Now I know that missionary life is not for me." So again I blew my family and The Spirit off. 

Then one day I was at work, (FYI my boss is L.D.S) and my boss came in with tears in his eyes and said "Cass, I think you need to go on a mission." I looked at him like he was crazy an just said "What?" He then issued a challenge to me to actually try to find out for myself whether or not I needed to serve, and he gave me a time limit of two weeks. He made me promise and I  timidly and a bit grudgingly said fine. 

A week later was fast Sunday, so I was fasting but I didn't have an actual solid reason in my mind for why I was fasting. I was just sitting there in sacrament meeting listening to the testimonies when my boss got up to bear is testimony, and I remembered the challenge he gave to me, but then I pushed the thought out of my mind and started singing "lalalalalalalala" in m head. Now at this point I have to tell y'all that I am a huge nerd/geek or as my friends call me, a "nork" and while I was sitting singing lalala inside my head a quote from "The Hobit" by J.R.R. Tolkien popped Into my head and the quote was "I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it is very difficult to find anyone." For a second I was all like "what?" and then it hit me, and I knew that I was supposed to go and serve a mission. A few seconds later another thought entered my mind, and it was the image of little Mr. Bilbo Baggins running down the road with a contract in his hand and one of his neighbors asking him where he was going and rather excitedly Bilbo answers "I'm going on and adventure!". I started to giggle/cry which is hard to keep quiet when your in sacrament meeting. As soon as the meeting was over I went straight to the Bishop and asked how to start my papers. 

I didn't tell my family about it that day, but on Monday, at work I told my boss and he and I conspired to have a joint Family Home Evening with our families so that I could announce the news to my family. So later that night I told my family the story I just relayed to you. They were speechless And just started to cry. It was awesome!

So yeah that's the story of how I set out on this very unexpected journey. I now know for myself that this is the path that The Lord would have me take and I am excited to serve him and my brothers and sisters who are seeking the truth, and I am sure just like Mr. Baggins, there will be times when I will miss my "hobbit hole" dearly but it will all be worth it in the end an I will be a better person because of it.