Birthday Month and Thinking of Bryce August 26, 1987

I belong to a missionary mom group.  One mother asked us to write what things our missionaries learned from going on a mission.  I wrote a few things about our returned missionaries and this about Bryce:
I had one son in particular that I was never sure if he really was going to serve a mission.  He was not exactly loving church activity while growing up.  I would drop him off for Young Men's and found out later that he would walk inside the church and walk to the other end, leave and go visit friends.  He struggled with fasting and paying his tithing.  He didn't want to do scouts or Duty to God.  I was thrilled when his last year before applying  to go on a mission, he began to change and his heart soften.  He was thrilled when he was called to South Africa.  I have been able to read his mission journal and in the beginning, he wrote that two years was a very long time. He wrote it several times.   He actually got home sick which surprised him because he was always happy to leave home.
  Things began to fall in to place eventually and all that he had been taught at home, began to make sense to him.  He read the Book of Mormon with a desire to learn for the first time and picked up great study skills as he tried to live the mission rules.  He always avoided all service projects as a teenager and now he learned that he liked to help others and had many opportunities in his mission to help the members with their homes, yards, and to participate regularly in Helping Hands. 
When he left for his mission, his plans were to return and spend the winter snowboarding and working at Park City.  When he returned, he re-took tests that he had bombed in high school and applied at UVU and BYU and was accepted at both.  I know his mission gave him direction.   After he returned, he continued his morning studies of the scriptures, placed goals he wanted to accomplish on his wall by his light switch and had names of his friends that he wanted to help activate, how he was going to do it and the date he would complete his ideas. 
He also came home with a desire to do things with his family.  He apologized several times while on his mission to his grandmothers for staying home when we would go to do things with them.  He promised to do better.  As soon as he got home, he made the trip to see one of his grandmothers and took her to the temple. 
Bryce was blessed by going on a mission, our family was blessed and I think he continues to serve the people of Africa.