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.