The Call !

Monday, June 3 - We pushed the button to submit our papers. Being the ward executive secretary, and therefore the keeper of the Bishop's schedule, I figured we could move things along rather quickly.

Sunday, June 16 - Unfortunately, it was a very busy time for the Bishop and we didn't get to meet with him for two weeks. It was a very long two weeks. In the meantime the bishop had read through all our stuff. The meeting was short. 

Sunday, June 23 - After another very long week we met with the Stake President. It's amazing how time slows down when you're anxious for something to happen. This was also a pretty short meeting. 

For the next few weeks we waited, sort of patiently, for news from the Bishop that would indicate the status of our mission application. We couldn't see anything, but apparently the Bishop has a magic way of seeing status changes. It was quite exciting when we heard the papers had been received and when the status finally changed to "ready to be assigned". 

Since we apparently can never do anything the easy way, Kathryn and Rob, our daughter and son-in-law in Kansas, decided this was a good time to have their fifth baby. But what if our mission call comes while we're in Kansas? No problem. We called the missionary department and changed our mailing address temporarily. 

Monday, July 15 - Ruby May Chase, our 14th grandbaby, arrived as babies often do, and was more than a little distraction from our waiting, but as much fun as it was to cuddle with a new baby girl, we were still a bit anxious for the mail. Ruby is deserving of her own blog, but we'll leave that up to her parents.

An email from the Bishop finally said the status had changed again and we were "assigned". Well, at home in Utah, that would have meant we might expect the letter in the mail perhaps on Wednesday. But we weren't in Utah. We were in Kansas, which is apparently as far away from Utah as you can get. Our daughter's mailbox is one of those community boxes at the end of the street. Presumably it saves the mailman some time. We didn't actually sit by the box every day. Thursday I went down with a can of WD-40 to make sure the mailbox lock was working smoothly. We wouldn't want any problems with that. Friday there was still nothing. 

Our son Tom happened to be in the States on business from Japan and since he was in the neighborhood he managed to fly into Wichita to visit for the weekend. Thus, when the letter finally came, we had two of our kids with us, along with Rob and the other grandkids.

Saturday, July 20 - I'm not sure about the origin of the term "red letter day", but this was such a day for us as the mail carrier left a big white envelope in the box. We all gathered around where Kathryn was feeding the baby and we tried to open the envelope. We didn't get all silly and take a movie of the event as some people do. We just took pictures. Sherrie handed me the envelope. This was not one of my best efforts, but I did get it open without destroying anything. I pulled out the letters - there were two of them - one addressed to Dear Sister Dalton and the other to Dear Elder Dalton. Even as calm and composed as I was, I couldn't quite manage to read it out loud without choking up. So, to avoid that problem here, I'll let you read it for yourself  instead of my reading it out loud.

Dear Sister Dalton:

You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Dominican Republic Santo Domingo East Mission. Your primary assignment is to labor with Santo Domingo Dominican Republic Family History Records Preservation as a records preservation specialist. It is anticipated that you will serve for a period of 23 months.

You should report to the Provo Missionary Training Center on Monday, October 14, 2013.

 Since then, we've been smiling a lot and doing a lot of preparing. But that's a story for another day.