Excerpt from "Opposition to my Mission" by Alcenir de Souza
One day my stake president called and told me that my mission call had arrived and asked me to come to his office that evening so he could give me the much-awaited envelope from Church headquarters. I was both nervous and happy at the news.
On the same day, my manager at work asked to talk to me before lunch. When I entered his office, I was greeted in a friendly manner, and we talked for a few minutes about my training and what I had learned at the company. Then, that powerful man in the organization said something that was the dream of most of the people in the city: "You have done a good job here as a trainee, and we want to hire you and keep you on the team. What do you think?"
I explained the situation to my manager, and his reply still echoes in my mind: "I thought that you were such a level-headed young man, and here you are throwing away the opportunity of your life."
I thanked him from the bottom of my heart for his offer, and 28 days later I reported to the missionary training center in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
There is an opposition to everything. Oftentimes, the people around us see our decisions as wrong, a waste of a good opportunity, or something else especially when it involves going on a mission. However, we just have to always remember that being a servant of the Lord as a missionary in the field is a great opportunity for us to share the happiness brought by the fullness of the restored gospel. It doesn't matter what people say about us, about how close we are in achieving their goal yet did not take that opportunity, what matters most is what our Heavenly Father thinks of us and what other things we can do to be able to go back to His presence.