I'll never forget that day in the mission field when I received my last transfer. I knew it was coming. The president had indicated there would be changes in the mission leadership, and I imagined all along that I would be called to serve the last six months of my mission as a zone leader. I was excited about the prospects.

When the transfer notice came, I fumbled with the envelope as I opened it and pulled out the official form letter. I quickly scanned the page for the details of my new assignment. But to my dismay, I could not find what I was looking for.

A sense of panic gathered around me, and a knot of dull pain grew in the pit of my stomach. I read the letter again, carefully this time. But it was the same. I was to finish my mission as a senior companion in Genoa, an out-of-the-way city located on the Tyrrhenian Sea in northern Italy. There was nothing more.

I tried hard to conceal my bitter disappointment from my companion, but I knew he sensed that something was wrong.

Outside the spring sunshine filtered down through the clouds, and the afternoon light burnished the cobblestone streets and walkways of Florence. Clay pots of colored flowers dotted the windows of the rust-colored buildings.

Our heels clicked briskly down the narrow byways as we walked silently toward the Pig Market, an open-air bazaar named for the great brass pig that guards one of its many portaled entrances. The market teemed with women gently squeezing fresh vegetables and plump, ripe fruit. In the portals swung gracefully shaped cheeses and chains of sausages, making the cool air pungent with their odors. There were booths festooned with spools of thread and ribbon and with bolts of multicolored cloth—plain linens; rich rustling damasks; warm, wooly quilts; fine, filleted lace; and soft, well-wrought hides with their thick, leathery smells. Tables and counters were cluttered with wooden icons, tapestries, paintings, marble statuary, and delicately blown glass from Venice, and everywhere were the sonorous sounds of haggling shoppers and the buzz of vendors moving deftly among their wares.

Taking refuge from the crowds, we walked near the old bridge that spanned the muddy waters of the Arno River. There I told my companion about my transfer—how hurt I was that I had been passed over for a leadership position, how I had done my best as a senior companion and as a district leader, how I had worked many thankless hours, almost to the limit of my strength at times, as historian and recorder in the mission office. I told him how I'd done my best to be a good missionary and how bitterly disappointed I was that now, in the last few months of my mission, I had not been called to be a zone leader but to work as a senior companion instead.

When I finished talking, we stood quietly for a while. But finally, my companion told me the very words I didn't want to hear, the words I'd said to myself so often: "It isn't where you serve; it's how."

I was near the edge of tears then, I knew what he said was true. I'd heard it all my life in the Church. I believed it with all my heart. But still I hadn't been able to rid myself of the desire to be a mission leader. I'd wanted to reach down into the center of my soul and yank that desire out of me by the roots. But I hadn't been able to do it. I'd tried to pray it out of me, tried to pretend it wasn't there. I'd fought it. But it wouldn't go away, and I couldn't fool myself anymore. I had to face up to it: I'd been doing all the right things for the wrong reasons.