France Paris Mission!!!

It finally arrived!  I was at home for lunch when the mail truck pulled up in front of the house.  When I saw a large white envelope go into our mailbox my heart went straight into my throat.  Our long awaited call was here.  Chris was on the BYU Idaho campus in the middle of teaching a French class.   We had agreed that morning that if the call arrived we weren't going to wait for her classes to be over.  I quickly drove up, found her classroom and peeked in; she knew what it meant.  When she announced to her class why she would be leaving a loud cheer erupted and I don't think that it was because they were getting out of class early.

We sped home, got our four kids together (three online and one with us) and opened the envelope.  Chris was standing behind me leaning over my shoulder.  We read down to the words "You are assigned to labor in the France Paris mission" and then the siren went off!  It's a good thing that we don't report to the MTC for almost 6 months so that I will have a chance for my hearing to return.

We have been assigned to serve for 18 months as "Perpetual Education Fund / Self Reliance" missionaries.  Even though we don't yet know exactly what this call entails, we couldn't be more thrilled about this marvelous blessing and opportunity.  We will do all that we can to learn and prepare.

Still Waiting. . .

We had no idea how anxious we would be to receive a call and know where we will be going!  A week ago our Stake President told us he had received a call from the missionary department asking if it would be possible for us to report on August 8th, almost two months earlier than what we had put as our availability date.  I had a retrospective sculpture exhibit scheduled for September but was able to move it forward and it will now be in May.  So we told our Stake President that we can be ready by August.  Now we are just anxiously waiting by our snow-covered mailbox!