*Elder Sam Abplanalp and Elder Ashton Mayberry

I have felt the need to keep in touch with Ashton’s friends, classmates and missionary companions. I feel a great responsibility to see them succeed. I can’t help Ashton any more, but I can cheer on his friends as they still journey on this earth.

Carter and I spent the weekend with the sweet Abplanalp family in Mountain Green, Utah. Their son just returned home from his mission in Fiji. He was one of the missionaries Ashton trained. We finally got to meet him and hug him. We saw pictures and videos of Ashton we had never seen before. We heard Elder Abplanalp speak about Fiji and what he learned from his mission. This was the missionary report I never got to hear. Ashton couldn’t do it, his anxiety was too much. Made me teary to hear that Fijian language again, the Fijian Ashton is so good at.  I loved seeing, again, the sulus and sandals worn by missionaries in Fiji. Ashton was super comfortable in his ‘man skirt’ and flip flops. I still keep his black flip flops he wore in Fiji by the front door. They just belong there.

I have often thought, “What would Ashton say to his friends he left behind? What would he want to tell them, now that he can see the bigger picture… now that his spirit is free, and his broken mind is healed?”

This is something I sent to Ashton on his mission. I’m not sure he believed it then, he was too deep into that depression that swallowed him up.

Christopher Robin said to Winnie the Pooh:
“Promise me you’ll always remember that you are braver than you believe and stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.”
No matter what the set back, it might surprise you to discover how brave, strong and smart you really are.

Maybe he would want to tell his friends this…and I wonder if he would want to add something he now knows very well… that their Heavenly Father knows and loves them more than they can ever comprehend in this life.

I KNOW that Heavenly Father’s love is there for all of us, even if we don’t believe it or can’t feel it. It’s ALWAYS there. When we DO believe it and can really feel it, it can be the one thing that gets us out of bed in the morning… that helps us do hard things… that gives us the light in our life and the hope of better days to come.

Deiter F. Uchtdorf said: “…Please understand that what you see and experience now is not what forever will be.”

I sent that one to Ashton also.  Perhaps he might want to tell his friends that too, now that he knows it really is true.

Maybe he is cheering them on in heaven just as I have that need to do here on earth. We can do it together, Buddy! (High Five!!)

Written by Faye