Transfers Oct 2012

 Every six weeks transfers take place.  This is a very exciting time for the missionaries.  This transfer we had 11 Elders and 1 Sister go home to all places around the world.  One missionary is going to Shanghai, China where his parents moved while he was on his mission.  They will be there for 3 years with the Dad's work.  The Elder will be there for a while and then in the fall will return to the USA to go to BYU.  One Elder returned to Norway.  A few to France.  One went home to Mexico and others to different US states.  We had Elders arriving from Tahiti, France, Montreal, USA and other places.

 These are the new missionaries meeting in the mission home basement

 Here I am training the new missionaries.  (everyone takes off their shoes in the entry room.
After the training I go upstairs and make copies of everyones passports, visas (which I first un-staple from the passport and the re-staple into the passport.  Sister Conway and I work as a team.  We also copy drivers licenses, international drivers permits and various other documents which we then assemble into their folder which we previously put together with many other pages of information.  We keep the passports and visas in a safe until they need them again.

 Elder Arhets has a turn teaching them about vehicles and all related driving information.
After the training is over, we rush back to the office and work for about an hour.  Then we go to the Temple with all the departing missionaries.  The temple president forgot that we had scheduled a session and so we had to wait about an hour for him to arrive and open up the temple.  It's interesting that the entire session is run by the senior couples.  We also will become temple workers.  As it turned out the present president called us and then could not set apart because he was just released and a new president was called.  Only one person has the authority to do the setting apart.  We will be set apart next time we go.

 Here is Sister Conway and Elder Blank from San Jose with Sister Chadburn from Riverton.

 Elder Holbrook is a silly guy who was in the office almost every day.  He is an awesome tech guy and helped me a lot with computers.

 Here he is again

 and again.    Elder Rivera, from Mexico, on the left became one of my favorite elders in the short time we've been here.  He is oh so so nice.  He gave up a desired spot in the university to serve his mission.  He will not be able to get it back, but he is happy to have served a mission.  He says things will work out and they definitely will.  The Lord will bless this great young man.

After the temple we went out to eat with the other senior couples.  It's interesting that here we often have to choose a restaurant not by how good the food is, but is there parking there or not.  The parking here is horrendous.  Every where you go you must pay for parking and a lot too.  Trying to find a spot is difficult too.  Anyway the restaurant was one where one of the couples had gone before and it was quite good.  THEN we had to go back to the office and I had to print out all of the boarding passes for the departing missionaries and also pay for their luggage.  I couldn't do it earlier because of the 24 hour period that the airport has.  I had trouble with United which would not let me use any credit card, neither the mission card nor our own.  Aero Mexico would not even let me register the missionary.  I tried and tried for a long time and finally gave up.  Delta, Air Canada, and others gave me no problems.  By the time I was done it was almost 9:00.  Then we had to drive everything to the mission home.  I was sooooo tired by the time we got home.  I guess this is par for the course on transfer day.  Sister LeVitre had the same problem.  In fact I will now be contacting United and speaking to someone there because this is apparently a long standing problem.