1992, one of the most crucial years of my life

I am blogging via cell phone, so forgive me, but spelling and grammar are going to suffer. As I was riding on the bus this morning, I was thinking about the Silverdale fifth (YSA) ward, and how I will miss it, and how it was created twenty yeard ago, and should dissapear and become something new this year.
Then the thought hit me that my mission had a very important twenty year celebration this year, twenty years since LDS missionaries firs entered the country of latvia, my mission headquarters, and a place i loved and served in for three months.

  And then I did a bit of math in my head, and determined that I was ten years old twenty years ago. And when I was ten years old my mom and dad went out of town for a weekend and left me and my brother with my baptist aunt, who took us to her church for my cousins baptisim. There events unfolded that led to me questioning everything my parents had taught me about Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and living prophets. For many months i questioned and wrestled with all I had been taught. Then one day I was talking to my younger brother who said, well if you want to know, read the book of mormon and pray about it. And I did, and gained a deep and living testimony that Joseph Smith was not a liar, he was a prophet of God, that the Book of Mormon was a correct book brought forth by the work of God, and that we did and do infact have living prophets today that recieve revelation and guidance from God to help direct us in our lives. 

  After a bit more thinking and calculating, I determined that all these things happened in 1992,  the last year that the summer and winter olympics were held in the same year. The first year that I gained a true and deep love of the games, of sport, of cultures, of languages and peoples. The first year the countries of my mission got to compete for their own country, the first and last year of the unified team, which, though the colapse of the soviet union in my opinion was most definately a good thing, i will admit i was sad that the unified team was a one time thing, and team mates would be split appart.

It was a big year for me, my mission became possible because of that year, a ward that introduced me to people that changed my life and became my family came about that year, and I started to become everything that I am today that year.

This year, is a year of change and a crossroads for me, but I am where I am today because of things that happened twenty years ago. It was while serving in latvia I met a companion from washington that persuaded me to move here. Where will we be twenty years from now? What will the new ysa multistake ward mean to someone then? I dont know, but every new begining comes from some other beginings end, and its going to be awesome I am sure. Happy twentieth anniversary, 1992.  Thanks for changing my life.