That is not entirely true. As you can see, I had crossed out getting together with Jessica's family which we moved back to the 15th (good thing because the weather was rainy) and the Go Forth Meeting had a question mark by it. We have to save the morning JUST in case we are getting new missionaries, but we were fairly confident that we were not. We only had one formal request in and we have gotten missionaries almost every time in the past several months. Last week was unexpected and we didn't expect it to happen again. Sure enough on Thursday when the assignments came out, we were not receiving any new missionaries.
A bit of the back story: We have an ongoing excel sheet list of missionaries which are needed within our zone. When new missionaries are being trained (like the full time missionaries this past week), the mission president interviews them on Wednesday and then has a meeting Wednesday afternoon and then a check in on Thursday to make the assignments within the mission. We receive the assignments usually mid-day on Thursday.
On Thursday, we got a note from one of our employer managers reminding us that they could really use some more missionaries. They were the ones on our list, but we indicated that we had been told not to expect missionaries for awhile because of the needs throughout the mission (and actually the world is really hurting due to the decline in senior couples during Covid.) Gary did reach out to President Parker to remind him that our request didn't need to have language skills, other than English. Like I mentioned when the list came out, we didn't not receive any missionaries as expected.
This brings us to Friday morning--Gary is in the shower and I decided to make breakfast which I rarely do during the week because of our schedule--it is mostly oatmeal or yogurt for me. I decided to scramble some eggs to go with some leftover muffins from dinner the night before. Gary and I had a nice breakfast together and then he prepared to leave the apartment to head to the Church History Library at 8:35. As he grabbed his phone off his desk, he noticed that it was ringing (it had been on vibrate) and it was President Parker. Very unusual time for him to be calling as he had a Go Forth Meeting with the new missionaries and the mission presidency at 9:00.
It went something like this: "Elder Hall, this is President Parker. We noticed this morning that we had missed the assignment of one of the couples and they are being assigned to your zone. Do you think you can make it to the Go Forth Meeting today to meet them?" Gary, of course, said yes--he was dressed and ready to go. I, on the other hand, am still in my pajamas. However, missionaries are missionaries and we both immediately felt that they were to go to the Latin American team. We made a plan--Gary would drive the car to the parking lot at the Conference Center and then head to the JSMB. I would take a quick shower, get dressed, and walk over to the meeting. (There was to be lots of rain that afternoon which is why we wanted the car there. It is actually faster to walk to the JSMB building than drive and park so that is why Gary took that job.) He left and I flew around trying to get ready. As I was heading through the building to get to South Temple, I realized that I didn't have an umbrella but the weather report had been for rain starting at 10 so I thought I would be fine. I left our apartment building about 8:55 which I thought was pretty good....and I started walking at a very fast clip...
About 1/2 block from the corner of State and South Temple, it started sprinkling and then raining. As I got to the intersection the rain started in earnest and of course, I missed the light so had to stand there for a couple of cycles. I used my bag to cover my head in some hopes of keeping my hair presentable for a formal meeting. When the light finally turned, I hurried across the street and started running under the trees for a bit more protection from the rain.
At one point, I looked ahead and saw one person walking with a big black umbrella. I thought to myself--at least someone came prepared for this weather. A couple of steps later, I realized it was Gary walking to me so that I could have the protection of the umbrella. It was one of those weird moments when I was flooded with love for my husband. It was a simple thing but it meant so much to me. He had been in the lobby of the building and noticed the rain starting so instead of going up to the meeting, he walked out with our umbrella to meet me. He is the best! And we made it to the meeting just after the welcome/hymn, and prayer---
And then we got to enjoy another sweet Go Forth meeting and then met our new missionaries--Elder and Sister Barrus from Bountiful, UT. It turned out that they are actually service missionaries but both had been sick the week before, so they had been put into the full-time missionary training this week. That is how their name got left off the list on Thursday, because they were actually part of the cohort the prior week. Paperwork can be crazy with so many missionaries coming and going.
They are delightful and we are excited for them to be part of our zone and part of the Latin American team. The more we talked to them the more sure my feelings were that was where they should go. despite that he speaks Italian from his mission and has tried to keep it up over the years. They have the right kind of attitude to learn and be excited about learning new things as they begin to serve. We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon with them.
After they headed home, we touched bases with the US/Canada team and hope that we have come up with a solution about where the zone leaders should be. We will see if that plays out in the future. Our idea is that the zone leader desks should not take a spot from one of the areas but be separate from all of the team areas as we really can't do has much work for the team while serving as zone leaders.
We got home around 2:00 and got lunch but it was too late and unfortunately I ended up with a migraine for the rest of the day. However, it responded well to the second medication I took at bedtime so I was able to sleep well Friday night and didn't have an ongoing headache and migraine symptoms on Saturday--which was good as we had our Covid booster shots on Saturday morning!
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