Mission 2.0: Two Phone Calls

I promise we are still serving on our current mission during the day, but we had two phone calls this past week also related to our mission in Bentonville.

The first one was on Thursday night with President Richard Collins--the mission president there:

On Tuesday, I sent a short email to President Collins about receiving our call to Arkansas Bentonville.  He responded that he was very excited.  He had been notified a few days prior that a couple had been assigned but they don't release the names until later (we assume after the call is accepted.)  He asked if we could talk to him on the phone on Thursday evening which we, of course, did.  He talked to us about opportunities to work in the office or working out in the stakes and talked about some possible options such as Sullivan, MO, or Ft. Scott, Kansas.  We also talked about Jena and what she might be able to do.

Second Call:

Then on Friday we got a text from Elder and Sister Moss who wanted to set up an orientation phone call with us over the weekend to give us information about being an MLS missionary, the MTC, and training meetings prior to the MTC.  Because we had some family coming in this weekend, I chose 5:00 pm [during the BYU football game--that's sacrifice :)] on Saturday afternoon.

They gave us a lot of information about preparing to serve as an MLS missionary including our 4-6 hours of pre-MTC training over Zoom and then the second week in the MTC.  One of our questions was can we take Jena to the MTC and they are going to find out for us.  We hope that she is able to attend at least some of it.  I know she would LOVE it!!

One fun thing for all of us as we were getting to know the Mosses who are senior service missionaries from Florida is that Elder Moss served in Hong Kong--the same time as Gary.  He started several months after Gary but served with the same mission president.  After our phone call, he sent these pictures from the mission "yearbook".  How fun is that?

Elder Moss (first one in second row)

Gary

We had a fun time talking about Hong Kong--one of my favorite places in the world.  They mentioned what a sweet mercy it was that of all of the senior MLS missionary couples called this week---I think they said there were 32 couples--that they got assigned to us--

They also mentioned that they had recently spoken to another couple assigned to our same mission who will start in November.  We asked them to share our information with them so that we can follow their mission experience as well.

We already have connected with one senior couple serving in the Arkansas Bentonville Mission.  The Ritters were in the MTC with Steve and Dana Bickmore back in April.  The Bickmores are serving in Rwanda, Africa.  We have exchanged messages with Ritters.  They work in the Institute in Fayetteville and will be leaving in April so we may or may not see them.  They are loving it there.

Small world!!