With Faith in Every Footstep

As some of you know I am the mother of a missionary who is serving in Hungary. He has been serving 18 months and will be coming home late this summer. He will come home and one week later will begin school at Brigham Young University in Provo. He is beginning to feel the trepidation that many missionaries feel at the thought of coming home from their missions to begin "real life," as he calls it. He has the normal fears about being successful in college and career and even more nervousness about the prospect of marriage and family.

Today at church one of the Elder's (young male missionaries) in our ward (congregation) was expressing his fears of going home. I was in the foyer talking to this elder, his companion and a member of the Omaha mission presidency (an old family friend of ours), he asked the President if he could get a life long extension of his mission. After the President has laughed that off, reassured him and moved on to his other duties, the young Elder turned to me and continued to talk about his fears of going home, getting back to work, school, and most of all his fear of marriage and family. 

I told him that he had spent two years learning how to put his trust in Christ to do this work, this very important work. I asked him if he had learned about faith on his mission. I asked if he had increased in his faith and understanding of how to walk by faith. He confidently said, "YES!" He said he wishes he could extend his mission indefinitely and keep doing this work. 

I told this young man that what he needed to understand is that the work he will do when he gets home is the Lord's work too, in fact, it is the most important work he will do in this life as he prepares to provide for a family and becomes a husband and father. In this work he will take upon him the mantel of father, a sacred work of manhood. I told him that this work, the work of college and career, the work of marriage and family, is also a work of faith. Surely as the Lord directs mission work he directs the work that each of us perform as we follow in the footsteps of our Heavenly Parents and begin to build a family and raise children to the Lord. 

I told this young man that the promises of the Lord are sure and that if he will focus each day on walking by faith and continue forward into his life doing good in all the ways that he knows God would have him follow, he will be given all that he needs to accomplish this great work of life, this work of family.

Talking to this young man, the things I shared with him, are the things I really want to share with my son (face to face) to help him to walk more confidently into this next phase of life and to feel at peace and be able to stand still and in faith know that God will provide the way. I want him to walk, just as he has on his mission, one step at a time, one day at a time, and with faith in every footstep he can feel confident in the Lord's tender care.