Mission Info

It is now official. We will be entering the MTC on May 16, 2011. We talked to the Mission President and determined that the original day was the best. The Lord knows best so we will follow. We will be assigned to the Portuguese/Spanish ward in Toronto.

The language is coming along. We have Rosetta Stone to help. Reading every morning in the Book of Mormon helps also.

Fala Portuguese?

On Wednesday, Dec 29th, we got an e-mail from the Senior Missionary Department of the church that said, "Due to an error made by our staff, your call letter stated that you would speak English instead of Portuguese. Our system has been updated to show the correct language information and your stake president and mission president have been notified." So Diane is now studying Portuguese and we are reading the Book of Mormon in Portuguese (slowly...). I have an ASA conference (for which I have responsibilities) scheduled May 23-27 in Seattle. I checked with the missionary department in Salt Lake about entering the MTC on May 30th instead of May 16th. They said it was no problem and changed the date. I got a call on Dec 31st from the missionary department informing us that the mission president wants us there as soon as possible. He has been anxious for a Portuguese-speaking senior couple. We don't know when we will be entering the MTC, either in May 16th as previously scheduled or before (which would require some rearranging of my school schedule, since May 6th is the last day of classes and May 14th is graduation). We'll keep you posted.

New car

After sending our old white Honda Accord to Andrea and Jason in August, we decided to look for a new car. We went through the process of reviewing the Consumer Report, searching the internet, and test driving various models and finally came up with the car of our choice. We then looked ahead at the possibility of going on a mission and decided not to get a new car at that time. If we were to go on an international mission we would not be using a car and if we were called to the states we could get a car after receiving the call. When we received the call to Canada, the information received said that senior couples serving in the USA or Canada were required to provide their own cars. It was time to start looking again. We checked the cars available in Logan (not much except 2011 models beyond our budget) then decided to go to Bountiful (where we had seen the car of our choice). We decided Tuesday, Dec 28th was the best day to travel to Bountiful (between big snow storms). When we arrived at Willey Honda we found a red (the color we liked) 2010 Honda Accord. They had just lowered the price (to one we could afford) that morning. All of the salesmen were calling their clients about the special deal. One of the problems we had was what to do with the 4Runner and the van. We had not planned on buying a car that day, but we drove back to Logan in a new Honda Accord (red) using both other cars as trade-ins. We were fortunate to have done the homework on model selection months before and arriving at the very time we could make the purchase. It goes to show that the Lord helps his missionaries, even before they are serving.

Mission Call

On December 22, 2010 a large white envelope came in the mail. The return address was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We called our daughter Andrea so that she could be part of the excitement of opening this call letter. We discovered that we are going to the Canada Toronto East Mission (CTEM) English speaking (or Canadian?). We report to the MTC on May 16, 2011.