Dear Sister Reid...

Dear Sister Reid:

You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
You are assigned to labor in the Florida Orlando Mission. It is anticipated that you will serve for a period of 18 months.

You should report to the Provo Missionary Training Center on Wednesday, September 23, 2015. You will prepare to preach the gospel in the English language. Your assignment may be modified according to the needs of the mission president.

You have been recommended as one worthy to represent the Lord as a minister of the restored gospel. You will be an official representative of the Church. As such, you will be expected to maintain the highest Standards of conduct and appearance by keeping the commandments, living mission rules, and following the counsel of your mission president. As you devote your time and attention to serving the Lord, leave behind all other personal affairs, the Lord will bless you with increased knowledge and testimony of the Restoration and of the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Your purpose will be to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. As you serve with all your heart, might, and strength, the Lord will lead you to those who are prepared to be baptized.

The Lord will reward you for the goodness of your life. Greater blessings and more happiness than you have yet experienced await you as you humbly and prayerfully serve the Lord in his labor of love among His children. We place our confidence in you as you pray that the Lord will help you become an effective missionary.

You will be set apart as a missionary by your stake president. Please go the missionary.lds.org promptly to acknowledge your acceptance of this call.

Sincerely,
Thomas S. Monson
President

This was my last time seeing Teri until 2017. She will be serving in the Maryland Baltimore Mission and she leaves next Wednesday. Good Luck Teri! I love you to pieces!

Adam will be serving in Orlando too!!! (note the hat) He leaves July 15th.

Sister Hartvigsen served her mission in Florida!

Thanks so much to everyone that came! I am definitely blessed with the best. Thanks for all of your love and support over the last 18.5 years. I wouldn't be where I am today without you guys. So thanks for your good examples and your loving smiles. I love you guys!

I feel so honored to be blessed with the opportunity to serve The Lord and his Children in Orlando. I pray that I will be able to be His hands in doing good in peoples lives. It's been a crazy week with graduation and a mission call within two days of each other. But I'm so happy about it. And as for September 23rd... I can't wait.




feel my sunlight



p.s. As soon as I got my call I posted on Instagram and Facebook the words "I GOT MY HOGWARTS LETTER!! (Aka my mission call!)" Little did I know Harry Potter World would actually be in my mission. The Lord has a sense of humor. I'm sure of it.
p.s.s. Can you tell I'm a little excited?!
p.s.s.s. Here are a few pictures from graduation last Wednesday. And you'd better know we nailed a high school musical jump. Because can you really graduate if you didn't take a HSM picture?

the greatest storyline

You know that feeling you get as you close an amazing book for the last time after reading the words "the end", or the way you feel as the credits roll on your favorite TV show's last season finally? That way it seems like in the end everything is over and finished and you will never be able to live in that story again. To me this feels as if something inside of me has died. Like I've just lost all of my friends and they can only come back through reliving the stories you've already been through.

I know this sounds way dramatic for a book or pictures on a screen but I ask anybody who lived through the Harry Potter era that has read all 3407 pages and watched all 17 and a half hours of footage that can honestly say they didn't cry when the watched this...

Crying yet? You should be.

Now, while stories and books always come to an end, our lives don't. Just like Daniel Radclif says about the Harry Potter phenomenon that "the end of the story [doesn't] end tonight." it is the same in our lives.

Our lives extend much further than than a few pages and a few hours on a screen. Our lives extend into eternity. And they do that because we have the greatest writer and director anybody has ever known.

Our writer is our God, and our director is our Savior, Jesus Christ. God wrote our lives in a way that they would extend forever, and because of our Savior and his Atonement, our lives are possible.

Now, just like in any story worth reading or watching, there is conflict. If there wasn't it would be a boring story.

There would be no story with out Voldemort, no excitement with out the White Witch, and no anticipation without factions. There would be no enthusiasm without the switch, no empowerment with out the shark, and no story without cloning. There would be no exhilaration without the Capital, no interest without the maze, and no anticipation without crime.

There would be no life without trial.

The good part is that in our movie, our writer and director have their hands on our lives. They will make sure that everything turns out. Granted, things don't always turn out as we imagined them to, and they don't always turn out how we wanted them to, but they will always turn out how the writer wrote if we listen to the director.

In our lives we are to become great. God has written us into beautiful characters who have lessons to learn and trials to overcome, and amazing people to become, and he has given us a director to show us how to do it. He has given us the greatest gift to become the greatest us. He has given His Son.

We must listen to the director.

And the best part of life is it doesn't end when our figurative "credits" roll. They don't end because our lives extend beyond the grave. This is only the audition. The time when we are tested to see what kind of characters we will play.

Life is less about how much money you have and weather or not you own the iPod 3,000 or the newest athlete endorsed shoes and more about who you are and who you are becoming.

Who you are and who you are becoming is the greatest storyline that will ever exist.

Live it right.




feel my sunlight



p.s. My photography blog is no longer called WhitneySue Photography and is now called keep life bright photography and graphic design. We'll see if this stays.