Anticipation!

 Anticipation!  

On the Senior Missionary website it says to expect 4-5 weeks after turning in your application before you receive your call and, since it was over Christmas, we were pretty sure it would take the full 5 weeks.  Fortunately for us, those five weeks were filled with Christmas, a quick trip to Utah to see my mom, and sorting and packing things in the house.  Calls are delivered digitally now, so instead of checking the mailbox, we were checking our email every morning for a notification.  We also started an interactive map for family and friends to post their guesses: 

We weren't too surprised when there was no email yet on January 17, but quite surprised to see it there the next day.  We quickly called all our children and set up a Zoom meeting so they could watch us officially "open" our call.  They were all there on time, and very excited - and, believe it or not, neither Neil nor I peeked before the official unveiling.  Mission calls now include a full paragraph before it ever states the mission in which you are called to serve, so our family was getting pretty anxious as Neil read through it.  Finally, he got to the part that says, "You have been called to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  You have been assigned to labor in the ...  Cruise Ship Mission!  You will report to the MTC in Provo on April 1, 2022..."  About this time all our children and grandchildren started to boo and give thumbs down - they just didn't appreciate their dad's sense of humor, even though he had been telling everyone that the Cruise Ship mission was where we hoped to serve.  He quickly repented and read the real call - to the New York New York City Mission! At first we were a bit disappointed that it wasn't international, but then we realized that it probably doesn't get any more foreign than New York City!  We were also a bit in shock after reading that we would be expected to drive our car the whole way there and that we would be reporting to the MTC in Provo on March 7, in just 48 days!  Let the panic begin!