Balancing Family and the Mission

As you can see from our failure to post last week, things have been busy. Let's start with family events. It was so much fun having all of our family stay with us for a few more days when they got back from their trip up to Bear Lake. It was a packed house but we had the room (rooms) to house everyone and it was wonderful having everyone together. We went to the Utah Bees minor league baseball game on the Fourth of July. The game was not all that interesting but the fireworks afterward were spectacular! We were so close to them, however, that ash and residue from the explosions would fall down on us and into our eyes. Most importantly, Kensington (our oldest grandchild) turned 8 on July 6 and was baptized in the same font as her Nana (Anne). It was so fun to see her excitement to be baptized and the change in her afterward. Everyone eventually had to travel home at the end of week and we were so sad to see them go.

As it relates to our missionary service, Anne and I still feel like we are drinking out of a firehose. The past two weeks were filled with interviews with each of the missionaries;  reading their weekly letters;  holding our first Missionary Leadership Council (a training meeting with our young missionaries who are in leadership positions); counseling with specific missionaries with various questions and needs; organizing and setting all the missionary transfers to occur this cycle (transfers are where a missionary is moved to a new area or receives a new companion in his or her current area); and preparing training for the new missionaries that will be arriving next week and for their trainers (those current missionaries that will be assigned as companions to the new missionaries).

Perhaps a brief description of our mission is in order. The mission is organized currently with 167 young full-time proselyting missionaries (43 young women and 124 young men between the ages of 19 and 24) assigned to 82 areas (geographic areas in which a companionship of 2 or 3 missionaries is assigned to work), which are organized into 23 Districts (a geographic area made up of 3 to 4 areas each), and which are then organized into 9 Zones (a geographic area made up of 2 or 3 Districts). Seven of the 9 Zones are in the Salt Lake valley with the other two being located in Eastern Utah and Wyoming. We have missionaries officially called to our mission to teach and work in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. However, some of our areas include congregations that are organized according to their native language so we have missionaries working and teaching in Tongan, Samoan, Swahili, Nepali, Korean, Chinese, and Russian communities as well. We also have 9 senior couples (older married couples) and 2 senior single women assigned to proselyte, teach, train and leadership roles and 4 senior couples that work with us in the mission office working in the following administrative areas: Finance, Housing, Fleet [cars and bikes], and Secretarial. These numbers are constantly changing though as new missionaries come into the mission and others leave for home or other assignments.

To that end, this past week was a busy one working on transfers (i.e., assigning missionaries to areas and companions for at least the next 6 weeks). It would have been nice, as a new mission president, to simply leave everyone where they are for this transfer and wait until the next one before making any changes, when we have more experience under our belts. But such is not our opportunity. We have 17 missionaries who have completed their missions as of this transfer and who will be returning to their homes so that leaves their companions needing a new companion. Just coincidentally, we also have 17 new missionaries coming in this transfer, unless there are any last minute changes (there has already been one change as we were to have received 18 new missionaries). Of the 17 coming in, 4 of them were called to a mission other than the Utah Salt Lake City mission but are awaiting their visas so we will likely have them only for some as yet undetermined amount of time until their visas arrive. Then you have missionaries who have served for many months in an area, which might warrant a new assignment, or missionaries who are struggling with their current companion and might need a change. Ultimately, however, it is the Lord’s work and I testify that He directs it. Next week will be very busy implementing all of these transfers and the training of those new missionaries just starting their missions. Let me just say that Anne and I love getting new missionaries into the mission and cry when we have to say goodbye as they're going home. The two pictures below are two of the best missionaries we've known and we are so grateful to have been able to work so closely with them these past three weeks. Both of them helped Anne and me immensely as we tried to learn all of the tasks, responsibilities, processes and procedures that faced us.

The highlights these past couple weeks though most definitely revolve around attendance at baptisms. It has been so inspirational to watch the joy and happiness these people experience when they are baptized. At a baptism for a family of three tonight, the young son came up out of the water and said, “Esta bien!”, with a big smile on his face. That experience exemplifies what we have seen at each baptism. And yes, that baptism was all in Spanish. I have been trying to learn Spanish (I speak English and French - not Spanish) and have been blessed to be able to understand quite a bit. The bishop asked me to say a few words and it became clear quickly that I have a long way to go in my Spanish studies. I said what I could in Spanish and had someone translate the rest for me.