Why I wrote this book

I didn’t set out to write a book. I set out to write a letter to my sister.

Years after I came home from Japan, my younger sister left on her own mission and struggled. My dad asked the family to write her letters of encouragement. I sat down and titled mine “Five Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Served a Mission.”

I sent it. And then it sat in a drawer for years.

From a drawer to a calling

Time passed. I got married, had kids, kept walking. Eventually I was called to serve as a bishop. As the youth in my ward started receiving their mission calls and preparing to leave, I remembered that letter — and I thought, they should have this before they go.

So I dusted it off, updated it, printed it, and personalized a copy for each of them before they left. (If I missed someone along the way, I’m sorry. Better late than never.)

I wanted them to have what I didn’t have at nineteen — someone who had been there, telling the truth about what really mattered. Not a hack list. Not five steps to baptize more people. The real things. The ones I had learned the hard way.

The prompting I ignored

Over the years, more of those young men and women left and came home changed. And somewhere in the middle of all that, a quiet prompting started showing up — that these five lessons needed to reach beyond my ward.

I ignored it. For far longer than I should have.

I had every reason a person uses to ignore a prompting like that. Not only am I not a writer — I really do not like to write. There are already a lot of books out there. Who am I to add one more? On and on. Reluctant obedience has been the through-line of my whole story with the Lord, and this was no different.

This book exists because I finally listened.

What the book is — and isn’t

It is not a book of mission tips. It’s not a collection of hacks to baptize more people or become a district leader faster.

It is the honest story of a reluctant nineteen-year-old who served a mission for all the wrong reasons — who didn’t have much of a testimony, who hated fish and got called to Japan, who spent a brutal first year over his head and a second year falling in love with a country, a people, and a Savior he hadn’t really known before.

It’s built around the five lessons that finally emerged out of those two years — the ones I’d had to learn the hard way:

1. You never know who you will touch.
2. You are sent where you are sent for a reason.
3. Keep the Savior’s life and ministry as the focus in all you do.
4. Don’t underestimate the power of prayer and the Lord’s love for you.
5. Baptisms aren’t the focus; the Savior’s love is.

These are the same five I first wrote down for my sister. They didn’t change. I just kept living long enough to understand them better.

Why now

Honestly? It really had nothing to do with timing, or trends, or some clever plan on my part.

Two years ago, I received the prompting. I finally stopped arguing with it and followed it. And ever since, everything has just fallen into place — doors opening, people showing up, the right help arriving at the right moment, in ways I can’t take credit for and wouldn’t try to.

That’s the whole answer. The Lord was patient with my reluctance for a long time — until He wasn’t. The promptings got louder and more frequent, and I finally said yes.

What I hope you find here

If you read the book — or even just hang around this blog for a while — I hope you come away with three things:

• You are not behind. Wherever you are in your walk, you have not missed the train.
• You are not alone. He has been closer to you, even in your most reluctant seasons, than you let yourself believe.
• You can keep walking. That is, in the end, the whole instruction. You don’t have to run. You just have to keep walking.

If God can work with someone like me — a kid who showed up to his mission for the wrong reasons and hated the food — He can work with anyone.

Thanks for being here. There’s more coming.

— Ken