Ascending

In third hour of church the lesson was on Linda K. Burton's talk, "We'll Ascend Together". For me its good to have reminders of the type of wife I want to be in twenty or thirty years, because then I have direction for today and tomorrow.
In the talk she quotes Robert D. Hales twice, which he is quoting a Quaker Proverb, which I guess  was penned by John Greenleaf Whittier.

Thee lift me, and I’ll lift thee, and we’ll ascend together

The foot notes take you to two different articles.
A conference talk by Elder Hales in 1999
and One written about Elder Hales

The one written about his life is quite interesting. This story especially stood out to me,

In 1975, Robert was in a board meeting when his secretary handed him a note saying that President Marion G. Romney was on the phone. Since it was very unusual for anyone to leave a board meeting, everyone was surprised when Robert left to take the phone call. At that time, President Romney asked Robert to serve as a mission president. Later the assignment came to preside over the England London Mission.
Shortly afterwards, Robert got another call from Salt Lake City—this time from President Spencer W. Kimball. He asked Robert if he would mind going to a different mission. Robert replied, “I don’t mind. Send me wherever you want to send me, President.” Then President Kimball asked, “Do you mind if we ask you to serve longer than three years?” Robert said, “Okay.” President Kimball then extended a lifelong call to him to serve as a General Authority.
“President Kimball told me he knew I was disappointed because I wanted to go out as a mission president,” says Elder Hales, “but he said, ‘Don’t worry about it; you will have many missions.’”

There have been many missionaries sent out from our ward while we've been here the last 4 years. I can't remember who, and maybe a few, but a missionary's mission was changed while he was in the MTC. I think that happened quite often when they first lowered the age. I remember a friend in the ward saying to my husband they (the Church leaders) don't understand how faith shaking it is when they move their call around. Here they are, they've gotten a letter signed by the prophet then they change it. I didn't response but I thought, really you don't think the Church leaders understand that can shake a 19 year old's faith? I'm positive they know it can, but yet isn't there many experiences in life that shake our faith. Isn't that our faith is built? So I liked hearing a story when it happened to a potential mission president, a general authority.

But in true blog post nature, I'm off topic.