Saturday, July 11, 2009

Horray! We just got the news that our Visa's have been approved, and we will enter the MTC on the 20th of July and fly to New Zealand two weeks later. We couldn't be happier. We are so excited to finally get started in serving in the Mission Office and working with the wonderful missionaries there.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

More frustrating news, our Visa's have not been approved yet. Elder Poelman called and said that our Visa's would not be approved this week, and our MTC date is now being delayed a week at a time until the Visa's come through.

I'm pretty sure the Lord is still testing my patience until I figure it out.

Our new date to enter the MTC is now July 13th, but that could slip as well.
We're disappointed that we are not able to be able to help serving the wonderful Missionaries and President Porter in New Zealand.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Frustrating News:

We received word from Margaret Sales who works at Church Headquarters and is the person responsible for Visa's. She said that the New Zealand Consolute has requested that two of the medical tests I did in March needed to be re-done. I completed these tests yesterday and the Doctor said that there are no issues.

Since the Church pouch only goes to New Zealand once a week on Thursdays and we were planning on entering the MTC on Monday the 6th of June, our mission just got delayed.

I received a call from Brother Poelman who is responsible for all the mission assignments for the Church. He said that we need to re-schedule the start date for our mission. We will now plan on starting our mission on the 6th of July, when we will enter the MTC and will now travel to New Zealand on the 17th of July.

We are of course very frustrated with these events. We had already given our farewell talks in Church and our dear friends had given us a wonderful open house where we said goodby to several dear friends. I also had sold my Tahoe and we were already packed an ready to go.

President Porter (Auckland New Zealand Mission President) called last night and he was concerned as to when Rain and I would be able to serve there. It sounds like he is very anxious for us to be able to serve there. The mission has now been without a Senior Couple for three months, and it will now be four months if we are able to get there in July.

People have told me that there is a reason for these trials. I think the Lord is testing my patience, which Rain says I have none.

I will update this blog once I have something more positive to post.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Our mission call






This is our letter from President Monson telling us of our call.


Rain and I received our call to serve in the Auckland New Zealand Mission Office. Rain (Sister Robertson) will be the Secretary to the Mission President and I will be doing Finance for the Mission Office. This is the mission that we have been praying to receive.

We enter the MTC on Provo on the 8th of June and will be there until the afternoon of the 18th and will fly to New Zealand on the afternoon of the 19th of June. We fly to LA and have about a four hour layover and fly out about 11:00 pm on Friday and arrive in New Zealand Sunday morning at 5:30 am. There is 18 hours difference between SLC and New Zealand.

We are so excited to finally be able to serve a full time mission and are so looking forward to working with all of the you Elder's and Sister Missionaries in that part of the world.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Rick and Rain's Mission

Our wonderful Church History Group Family. This picture was taken the 1st day of our nine day tour. We are on the Palmyra Temple grounds.





This picture is of Rain entering the Sacred Grove.











Today is Tuesday March 17th. We received a call from President Allred yesterday saying that our mission call has been completed. We should receive it Wednesday or Thursday hopefully. We submitted our paperwork to the Church over three weeks ago, and have been anxiously waiting to see where we are going to serve.
This has been a long process getting prepared to go. We've talked about going on a mission together for a long time. We attended two Senior Missionary Stake meetings in the last four years, and after each meeting, I would ask Rain if she is ready yet. The answer has always been not yet. Rain is such a wonderful Grandmother, and I know that being away from Amy's kids for so long is what has made her hesitate going on a mission.
This last fall we went on a Fall Conference Church History Tour. It was probably the best vacation we have ever been on together. We traveled to all the Church History sites with a group of about 50 people from all over the world. The host of the tour was Steven Kapp Perry. We met 50 strangers when we began the tour and became life long friends with everyone on the tour.
At each site, we talked to Senior Missionary couples that each and everyone of them said that serving a mission was the best thing they had ever done. The tour was such a testimony building experience for both of us.
When we returned Rain and I went out to dinner one night, and instead of asking her if she was ready to go on a mission, I told her that we were going, and she said OK. We then got into several discussions as to what kind of a mission we should do. Since I am so new to the gospel. (I've only been active in the Church for less than six years) I thought we would serve best doing office work in a Mission Office, or at a Church History Site. Rain agreed that would be wonderful. We then got into the discussion as to how long we should serve. Rain said she thought we should serve a 12 month mission and I thought we should go for 18 months.
The thing that convinced us to serve an 18 month mission was our dear friends Lynn and Anna Lee Mackay. They are serving a mission in Auckland New Zealand and suggested that we replace them. That mission sounds wonderful and we are hopefull that we can serve there. Unfortunately, Lynn got an infection in his knee and they will not be able to complete their mission as planned in June of this year. I'm not sure if this will have an impact on where we will be called to serve.
We did tell President Allred that we would serve where-ever the Lord calls us, so we are impatiently waiting for our call.