I flew into Ontario, CA saturday night after a delayed flight. Well, it was only an hour later but it seemed much longer than that. I had planned for a nice little nap, in my cute little 2x2 plane for the short hour and a half flight. Instead, I got Tyrone. A 25 year-old guy from Temecula who was a chatty kathy. We got talking about where we were headed and why, I explained to him that I now lived in Utah, but that all my family was still in California. His next question of course was, why Utah? He had just been on a connecting flight trying to get back home from some work journey. I told him I had moved there, needing change in my life. But then I realized that, although that was a huge reason for my move, that was not the main motivator. I moved to Utah for change, and mostly to put myself in an environment where the majority of people held my new standards and beliefs. I feel like I needed that support and looking back now after two years, it was one of the best decisions I could have made for myself.
After my hesitation of telling him the real reason for my relocation, I knew that I should never back down from sharing the gospel and my beliefs. This led to an entire flight of religious conversation. He told me he was Christian, I explained to him that we were the same. Now, I recognize that I am horribly extremely bad at explaining things, but I tried my very best to touch on the main beliefs of the Church. He listened. He said he didn't know much, if anything about the LDS faith and I don't know how helpful I was because as I started explaining things, they led into more and more things. How the heck am I supposed to stay on one topic without jumping to a million other faucets of the Church beliefs haha! Props to the missionaries.
Our plane started to descend, our conversation started to die down as announcements were coming over the speakers and I realized something. That travel Book of Mormon was in the bag I had checked, and how I wished I had just thrown it in my backpack. I would like to think that if it had been accessible, I would have had the courage to give it to Tyrone. I'm grateful for the spirit and how I feel it in promptings. I love that when we are listening, we can hear its guidance. We can know right from wrong and it can impel us to take action in certain situations.
After locating my bag and stepping outside to wait for my parents to pick me up, I breathed in that warm California air. I looked around and saw no snow and plenty of palm trees. What a change from where I had just been! I am excited that I get to spend the next week with my family. Isn't it a crazy thing, that you can live so far from home and family, yet still come back and pick up right where you left off. Relationships are one of the greatest gifts. Accompanied with love I couldn't ask for anything more.
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