The following Friday, we headed over to the mission office with the Yeamans and they were assigned to serve as the new zone leaders for the Collections Zone. This was announced to the zone on Tuesday, January 24. We are providing support as assistant zone leaders for the next few weeks and still have to attend a day long training this upcoming week (but that will be awesome). Sister and Elder Yeaman are great and will be exactly right for our zone moving forward. We have felt a long that we were meant to serve during the time that we served, but we also felt reassured that the next couple would be right for the future. We still pray for "our zone" during family prayers, but we feel great about the transitioning to the Yeamans.
I feel bad that we are leaving now because I think the Yeamans would be such great people and we would have built a friendship with them--but we really do have to leave sometime....and February 23rd is the day.
A sweet story: So, back in July as we were discussing extending our mission to 2023--Gary was suggesting that we extend to the whole 30 months that you can serve a full-time mission in our mission. That would have been April. I was reluctant about the whole idea of extending and was thinking that December or January would be long enough and still give us a break before our next mission (remember we hadn't submitted our papers at this point.) I ultimately suggested February at the last minute and Gary agreed.
Fast forward to now--Yeamans arrive and are assigned to our zone on January 13 and then on January 20 they are assigned to replace us, giving them and us a month overlap for training and support. That is pretty much perfect, especially because President Holmes gave us the option of when to make the actual transition. Gary said--next Tuesday and everyone agreed. (This is different than the pattern since the new mission presidency started. Typically, they have called the couple a few weeks or a month before and they begin attending meetings but are not announced until the week the prior leaders are released from their mission. This way is so much better.) On to the story: After they were assigned, Sister Yeaman shared that they had originally been called to start at the MTC on March 27th. However, once they received their call to the UT SLC Headquarters Mission, they realized that they did not have to do as much preparation to leave as they had thought (they have horses and a small ranch.) When some paperwork came indicating that they could move the date up if they wanted, they decided that would work for them. So in December, they reached out to the mission department and indicated that they would be available after the first of the year. Almost immediately they received an email indicating that they were to report to the MTC on January 3rd.
As a result, they are here--right when we need them and we are so glad! (Now, there might be some who think if I had been willing to stay until April, they wouldn't have needed to come early. That might be true, but there is another side to THAT as well. More on that later!!!)
Yeamans will also be targeted missionaries and do oral histories like us so after they received their new assignment they came and observed us doing an oral history in Centerville with the Augustins who served in Texas Lubbock Mission.
God is in the details of our lives!
No comments:
Post a Comment