Because You Are Free

Sometimes life takes a turn for the unexpected. If you had asked me a few months ago what my plan was, I would have easily told you. I was dating the most amazing girl I was intent on marrying, I had been accepted to a prestigious Paramedic program and I was on track to have a job as an emergency medical technician. If you had told me that I would board a plane back to Ghana for the next three months, I would have thought you were crazy. Since then, I didn't gain residency resulting in me having to drop out of school for the semester, I failed the test to make me an EMT and I felt prompted that I needed to end things with who I thought would be my eternal companion, breaking her heart in the process. She really got the short end of the stick here and I hope one day she can forgive me for it. But sometimes, God has a plan for us that we don't necessarily understand at the moment. So even after that all happening, I still don't even know what God's plan is for me and perhaps that is why I feel like writing this all down. Something is GOING to happen.

I have had the most amazing life. I have a wonderful family with parents who love me, friends who support me in all that I do, I even had the chance to travel the world from the time I was 5 and I have seen much and learned much that will always stay with me. I have had some of the most amazing experiences that I have just been lucky to be a part of and I might be perhaps one of the luckiest people in the world that no matter what endeavor I attempt, whereas it may not work the way I intended it, literally has always worked out. High School. Trying times for some. Didn't really have a problem. Looking back to the beginnings, I was a pretty average kid. There wasn't any one thing that I was overly good at. Just average. My best friend in middle school was a stellar football player and was the item of interest for all the swooning girls. Sam was one of those people who could pick up a talent in a matter of hours and master it, from ukulele to rubik's cubes, yo-yoing to juggling fireballs, it seemed like there was nothing he couldn't do once he tried it. Anson, from the time he moved in could lift a car, squat an elephant and somehow always had enough energy the next day to workout again. Cole, well, he's just Cole. He was just one of "those" people who no matter what he did, he was the best. The day he entered the number one ranked high school in the nation, he showed his stuff. Varsity football team, top dance team, State 800m champion, and even after he moved to a new school he was elected as the student representative on the county school board. But despite all of the "greatests" he had under his belt, perhaps his most admirable quality was that he was the world's #1 wingman. He knew what it meant to help a brother out. Spiritually and temporally. I guess that's why we have been the greatest for friends for so many years. He knew how to love me in a way that no friend had ever before, and as the good book says "Let Brotherly Love Continue" (Hebrews 13:1) he is the greatest bro.

It took me a long time to really understand what it was my real talent was. It really wasn't until I served my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the Ghana Cape Coast Mission that I found it. In a conversation with woman in a village, she told me that she liked my character and when I asked her to explain further, she said, "Because you are free." That hit me. Hard. Like a fufu pounding pestle straight to the brain. To be free. Open. Adaptable. It rang true. I had often thought of my life as fluid, changing from day to day flowing wherever I felt like I was needed. Because I feel just that, I am needed. A tool. Not the kind of tool that wears snapbacks and only drinks protein shakes, but the kind of tool that is only as good as the hand that is holding it. I decided at a young age that I was going to commit my life to Jesus Christ. So, things like waking up before the crack of dawn for seminary in order to get 100% attendance, or magnifying my calling, or even the choice of serving a mission for two years came naturally to me, logically even. I never had to search for a testimony, I feel like I was born with one. So when a thought comes to my head to go serve that person, tell that person a compliment, tell your mom you love her, I graciously oblige. I know that I am a part of a much larger picture that is being painted by the Creator of the worlds himself. It shouldn't matter what I have to say about it, as long as I Go and Do what I am told, I know that the world will be a better place because of it. So in a way, the one thing I am good at is being free and open with people and I can do what I am commanded. 

I have the utmost high degree, as high as Kilimanjaro itself, of confidence that if I do what I am told without doubt that everything will work out beyond my wildest imagination. Maybe that's why feel I am one of the luckiest people in the world, I have burning desire to do good in this world and God uses that desire to use me to do great things. And right now, I am being told that I am going to live in the land that I love, Ghana for the next few months. So buckle your seatbelt, hands and arms inside, because some crazy stuff is about to happen and I promise you it is all going to work out in the end.