With God’s help, returning home early from a mission can actually be a building experience.
Photo by Angello Lopez
Some situations in life—such as returning home early from a mission—can leave us feeling overwhelmed and inadequate, but if we let God into our lives, we can move past these feelings and use the experience to draw closer to God.
In “Returning Early from a Mission,” Jake Green shares his experience of coming home early from his mission and learning to let God into his life. Returning home early can be a daunting, testimony-testing experience. Green says that when he began to struggle with depression and decided to end his mission early, he “started to doubt everything about [himself].” He worried that there was something that he should have done differently. He felt like a failure.
Green finally stopped seeing himself as a failure when he began thinking about what God wanted him to do now, instead of dwelling on the might-have-beens. Green says that God asks, “Are you willing to let me in to help you through this process?” And Green learned that he needed to say, “Yes.”
Answering yes to God made all the difference for Jake Green. Likewise, we can answer yes to God and give our trials to him. We might not know why trials come, but if we will let God in, we can continue progressing in our lives and in the gospel, just as Green has. In his words, “If we can just answer yes” to letting God in, “we can be lifted to such unimaginable heights.”
Learn more about Jake Green’s story in the video “Returning Early from a Mission.”
Source: Mormon Channel
—Heather White, Mormon Insights
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Find more insights
Read “Returning Home Early from My Mission” to find out what Brittany Romanello Casco learned from her experience of returning early.
Listen to Elder Jeffrey R. Holland in the Face to Face excerpt “Elder Holland’s Thoughts on Early-Returned Missionaries.”