Every missionary waits with baited breath for their mission call, checking the mailbox day after day, sometimes several times a day, waiting for that big white envelope. The adventure of our mission call makes a great little story that we will share here.
We knew that we would be receiving our mission call sometime during the week of May 11-14. The missionary portal and our bishop had given us the information that the call had been issued and that it would come during that week. The only problem was, we were leaving on a road trip to South Carolina on the 11th and wouldn't be back till May 15. That meant if the letter came, it would languish in our mailbox for days and we wouldn't see it til Sunday. We just couldn't wait! So we came up with a plan. Ray approached Lori's Aunt Norma, who lives in our town and asked her if she would be willing to check our mailbox each day to see if it had arrived. We could have had her open it and read it over the phone to us, but we really wanted to do the opening ourselves. So we made arrangements with her to take it to the PO when it arrived and send it overnight mail to us in S. Carolina. No letter on Tuesday. We left early Wed morning and Aunt Norma texted us later and said that it had not arrived. Our Bishop texted us that, in his experience, most calls came on a Friday, so we began making plans for a Sunday night opening after we got back.
Thursday morning, early, as we were preparing to leave our hotel in Branson, MO we got a phone call. It was Justine at the Salem Utah PO with the information that our call had arrived at the PO. Apparently, Norma had let them know at the PO that we were waiting for this most important letter. Only in Utah would a postal worker call to let you know that you mission call had arrived! Since it was still very early in Utah, we waited a couple of hours before calling Norma to let her know it had arrived. She hurried down to the PO with the instructions to open it, take a picture of the letter (in case it got lost in the mail), put it in an overnight mailer and overnight it to us. We gave her the address of a good friend of our daughter's who had a permanant address, since our daughter had just moved there and was in a temporary apt. Then we continued our drive to South Carolina. When we got into the town, we went straight to the friend's house and picked up the letter, even before we saw our daughter and family. Our son-in-law Mark got us set up on google hangout and we let all the kids know to jump on at 7 that evening. We had several hours to wait until the appointed time and it was SO tempting to peek ahead of the time, but we remained strong.
When the appointed time came, we gathered all of our children via google hangout, except one, who we just could not reach. Each of us had received our own call so we opened the letters at the same time. We covered up the body of the letter so we would not be able to jump ahead and read line by line Ray had me read the letter. This is what we read:
Scotland/Ireland Mission! There were exclamations, hoots and hollers and everyone talking at once! Excitement all around! What a wonderful mission to be called to in such a beautiful country. We
We started out at 4 months to prepare, and we are now down to just 28 days til we leave. It has been a wonderful experience getting ready and tying up loose ends. We are excited and ready to serve!
Posted 8/23/2016 LW
