Our mission has come to an end and we have returned home. For both Virginia and I, our time passed as though it were a dream. As we look back on our time in Hawaii, it is hard imagining where it all went. We certainly had our challenges, but mostly it was a beautiful and sacred experience. Upon returning home, we were asked to speak to our local church congregation, which happened this last Sunday. I am sharing my talk in this blog post. With these words and a handful of images, we leave our mission behind, though it will never be far away in our minds and hearts. Going forward I will change the blog from the Handley Mission Blog back to HandleyCraft Photography as I continue sharing our travels and photography.

How does one prepare to serve a full-time senior mission? Or more importantly, how does the Lord prepare one for a mission? And how long does that take?

Sunday morning August 15, 2022, we met with our stake president and were set apart as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and blessed for the work we were embarking on for the coming 2 years. We had answered a call to serve in a specific capacity at the Polynesian Cultural Center that would leverage the professional skills I practiced for 40 years. President Smith knew the parameters of our assignment, yet under the influence of the Spirit, he stated clearly that my talents and experience in the theatre were secondary to the real reason I was called to the Hawaii, Laie Mission, and that I would have an influence along the North Shore of Oahu and beyond. I thought it an odd pronouncement, and it stuck with me throughout. Nothing has testified more clearly the sensitivity of my stake president and his ability to vocalize as the mouthpiece of God a mission that continued to influence my activities for nearly 700 days from sunup to sundown.

The mission did not unfold as I expected, but with that blessing and my faith in the restored gospel and my Savior Jesus Christ, I witnessed the remarkable plan God had for me the last two years.

But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

Before any of this happened, the Lord was preparing our minds and hearts to serve as missionaries. My lifetime career ended amid the pandemic. It was good timing, I suppose. I had the required time to receive a full pension, and Virginia and I had other dreams to chase. We purchased a small travel trailer and set out to visit all the National Parks. After 18 months of off and on travel, I turned to Virginia one day and asked, “So, is this it for the rest of our lives?” We were in the temple about this time, and while pondering my purpose in life, I felt a distinct prompting from the Spirit informing me that we had other work to do, service to give. Upon exiting the temple, I asked Virginia what she thought of serving a mission. Well, of course she received that impression, also from the Spirit, long before me. She needed me to be properly motivated. Not only did the Spirit prompt me that our time had come to serve, but I was told of a specific assignment calling to us. We hurried home and logged into the senior missionary webpage. After scrolling through nearly 1,500 requests, mostly flagged as high need, we found the one we felt was our fit; the Polynesian Cultural Center was looking for a Theatre and Lighting Specialist. I seemed to have the proper qualifications, and then some.

But again, I’m ahead of myself

That incident was preceded by perhaps the most intense period of preparation, a course of study that took years, in fact, the bulk of my adult life. For nearly 35 years, I learned to juggle fatherhood, a career, church service, and gospel study. If mortality is to teach us to be like God, I can’t imagine a better laboratory exercise than thrusting someone into fatherhood and making him responsible for additional fragile lives. We all know that parenthood comes without a handbook, and sadly, isn’t a funded program either, which is where the career enters the equation. If that isn’t complicated enough, we are further asked to contribute our “free” time in service to others. Of course, the key to surviving all this is regular and consistent gospel study. Whew! I’m exhausted thinking about it. Nothing, and I mean nothing was a better preparation for this mission than time spent helping six beautiful souls through to adulthood. Of course I had Virginia’s help, and together we sought guidance from a loving Heavenly Father.

My career was in theatre arts. It goes without saying that any level of artistic expression I achieved was a gift of God. I learned to draw on the influence of the Spirit in my most simple or complicated projects. I learned that trusting the Spirit allowed me to make quick, gut-reaction decisions that were always right. In fact, the only mistakes I made were when I ignored a prompting of the Spirit or acted from an ego centric perspective. I can truthfully report that the Spirit never led me astray.

In church service, I never offered a moment that wasn’t compensated many times over. Most of those years were spent working with young men. Seven years as Scoutmaster. No doubt these activities cross-blessed one another. The more time spent in service seemed to enhance my abilities of fatherhood. Parenting gave me countless experiences to draw on for creative projects. And my study of art taught me to express the purpose of the human experience.

Lest any of you think God didn’t prepare me for all this, here’s a bit more:

Only God could have known decades ago what I was heading into and that I couldn’t pull it off by myself. He prepared a help meet. Back in 1985, while Virginia was still serving a proselyting mission in Mexico, almost ready to wrap things up and return home, I was back for a summer job in the California hometown where we grew up. We are 4 years apart. In a teenage span of time, four years placed us in entirely different orbits. Though we may have known who each other was, we shared nothing in common that either knew of. I casually heard through the grapevine that she would be home in a week. From that moment forward, she was in my head. I could not get her off my mind. There had been no communication between us, and no association before her mission. I thought it odd to think constantly about someone I didn’t know and was barely an acquaintance. Taking the matter before the Lord one evening, I knelt by my bed and asked, “So, what’s up with Tina Keele, and why is she in my head all day?”

In a flicker of an instant, a flame ignited within my breast, and I felt a consuming fire that didn’t burn me. For the second time in my life, I received a sure witness from God, a direct manifestation through the operation of the Holy Ghost with the following answer, “Because she is to be your companion for the rest of eternity”.

What does one do with information like that? I certainly didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. We’ve all heard stories of young men attempting to manipulate a young woman into marriage by saying he had received revelation they were to wed. That wasn’t me. I saved that little bombshell until after we were married. I was an awkward, shy, and insecure young man. The Lord saw fit to shove me in the right direction. Virginia received her own confirmation because we were engaged on our second date and married two months later. Think of that, barely an acquaintance to marriage in two months, pulled off by a dorky 26-year-old kid who barely had the courage to hold her hand. It almost seems like an arranged marriage. Perhaps it was.

But how did I get to that? What was the Lord’s plan in my behalf before marriage? The Lord knew my path long before me. He knew the family I would have and the career I would enjoy. He also knew I would use art to affect the faith of others. Before marriage, I needed the skills that allowed a way of feeding eight mouths. As much as I wanted to study hard science and be a geologist, the theatre always held an open door. Upon my third and final attempt at Chemistry 101, I realized I was bucking my natural talent. My heart was always in theatre, and as often as I fought it, that is where I consistently found peace, success, and inspiration. Once engaged in the right course, the Lord opened door after door after door. My undergraduate degree was a difficult journey taking nearly 8 years to complete, minus the two years of mission service.

Speaking of mission service, there is no way I would have survived college without my two-year stint as a full-time missionary in Italy. I simply wasn’t mature enough. But aside from maturity, the Lord saw need to prepare me for other critical life lessons. I received my testimony of the restored gospel and joined the church when I was 16. I had a witness of the Book of Mormon, but I didn’t understand the doctrine. Most of the time on that first mission, I was only ½ step ahead of people I was teaching. I was memorizing doctrine in Italian one day and teaching it on the street the next. I was gifted a copy of Marvelous Work and a Wonder, which I took to Italy with me. It’s a beginners’ guide to church doctrine. I read and studied it daily even though it wasn’t approved reading material in our mission library. After reading one day, I wrote in my journal, “There’s a lot more to this religion stuff than I ever thought”. One has to wonder about the Lord’s plan to place the proselyting of His gospel in the hands of 19-year-old knucklehead boys. He knew I needed that training ground and the foundation it would give me for the rest of my life.

As I continue moving backwards through this timeline, I notice the Lord’s influence appears broad and simple. God has been wise and gentle. My growth was slow but steady. Prior to a mission came my conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ. This conversion came about through an association with a unique group of youth, and one young man in particular. Everyone deserves a best friend, and in my case, I had the best of the best. Though years and circumstances have separated us, there will always be a special place in my heart for Michael Grayson. He and his family opened their home and hearts to a stray young man. They loved me and he shared with me the Book of Mormon.

I desperately wanted to know more, so I showed up one day at early morning seminary. The course of study that year was the Book of Mormon, how fortunate for me. With time, I learned about a passage of scripture called Moroni’s Promise, with an invitation to learn for myself by asking God for a witness through prayer. It seemed simple enough, so I took up the challenge. A moment ago, I shared a personal witness I received with respect to my relationship with Virginia. I said that was the second witness. Well, this was the first. Between that early morning seminary class and my first period high school class, I asked God to reveal to me the validity of the Book of Mormon. Again, but this time, for the first time, my breast burned with fire that didn’t consume. That witness has stuck with me for nearly 50 years and counting. I cannot explain it away, I cannot ignore it, nor deny it happened. It was real, and it is real. It is the rock-solid base upon which all my faith and testimony rests.

But, alas, there is one story more to demonstrate how God prepared me to serve a mission in Hawaii. When I was 9 my parents moved us into a new home. It would be the first time to have my own bedroom. The day we moved was stormy and we needed to put light bulbs in all the fixtures. It was late, and we only got the necessary lights working. When I went to bed, all alone, there was fierce thunder and lightning passing by. I was scared. It didn’t occur to me to run to Mom and Dad. Instead, I knelt by my bed and prayed to God. Somehow, I always knew I could find comfort through prayer. I didn’t learn that from my parents, they didn’t pray. I don’t know where I learned to pray. It’s something I always knew how to do. It’s as if I came into mortality with that knowledge, and therefore it wasn’t a stretch when it came to an inquiry into the Book of Mormon.

I hope what I have shared illustrates that the Lord has been preparing me for this mission for nearly 60 years. It’s been a journey. But I don’t feel this mission is the culminating event in my life. I suspect the experiences we’ve had these last two years have been preparation for something yet to unfold. The trials we passed through have refined us. It’s easy to write off a mission to Hawaii as an extended vacation. I assure you it wasn’t. Missions are not defined by local climate. It was a sacred space for Virginia and I, for it was in Hawaii that we came to better know our Savior. One doesn’t approach the Savior without a measure of sacrifice. There was a price we paid for the privilege. A mission is a lot like a crucible. A crucible is a ceramic container in which materials are placed and subjected to very high temperatures. Under the proper amount of heat, a reaction occurs. One must be careful however so as not to apply too much heat too quickly. The Master watches carefully so as not to damage the material inside. Some crucibles may be prettier than others, some may have a finer finish on the outside. It doesn’t really matter. What takes place inside is all the same. The Master applies heat until the desired outcome is reached. A senior mission isn’t mandatory. Those who go, willingly place themselves in the crucible. In some ways it’s a relief to have it over. On the other hand, I tend to like it hot.