New companion and coming home date

Elder Savage will be my companion for the next couple transfers. His first name is Weston and he's from Bountiful. He graduated from Bountiful High with me. If I remember correctly, he lives in the neighborhood up above the temple. He'll be coming in from Muskegon. I'm excited to serve with him.

This week we'll be doing a lot of preparations and planning for Transfer Week. Transfer Week is one of the busiest weeks of an assistant's life. All the week has to be preplanned down to the minute if we're going to accomplish everything. There's a checklist a mile long of things to do next week. It's an exhausting week.

Monday and Tuesday we do our transfer runs, traveling about 17 or so hours between those two days. I was in charge of travel arrangements this time so I gave all the missionaries their information on when to be at which stake center and when they'll meet their new companion and if they have to stay overnight with the zone leaders if they don't have a companion Monday evening, etc. So it's been busy. We were up until 1 AM on Thursday getting things ready for transfer calls on Friday. You may think why so late and not work on it before? Well, President was making quite a few changes Thurday so it was no use to start the travel plans before then and he actually made some changes Friday morning about ten minutes before the calls begun so we had to adjust our plans at the last minute. The transfer calls lasted from 7 AM to 12:30 in the afternoon--constant calling.

Next week we have the departing testimonies for those elders and the sister who are going home. That's Tuesday (a transfer day). On Wednesday, we get up really early (like 4:30) to drive the departing missionaries to the airport. We make plans and memorize the names, birthplaces, and faces (from pictures) of all the 15 incoming missionaries so we can greet them off the plan that day. We have to help with dinner for the departing missionaries on Tuesday and again on Wednesday for the incoming missionaries. We have an orientation we do for the new missionaries Wednesday. On Thursday, we'll have a meeting with President to match up the trainers and their new missionaries. Then we'll train the new trainers on how to train, if that makes sense. After that, we'll put the new missionaries with their trainers, grab their bedding, and it's another trip all around the state. It's like the Tuesday trip, where we go up to Mt. Pleasant, back to Lansing, and then on to Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Battle Creek. But this time we start at around 2 PM instead of 8 AM, so we'll be getting in late.

Then Friday we have a transfer planning meeting with President and Sister Edwards to decide the transfer theme and district meetings. Oh, and we have to update the zone rosters, as well as car rotations and a whole host of other programs in the office. And we have to prepare for Zone Leader Council the following Monday and Tuesday, where we'll train the new zone leaders and prepare skill trains or discussions, etc.

There's more happening that week, too (We'll be opening up two new areas, so we might have to move some furniture around).

So you get the idea about how life will be this next week. Exhausting, crazy, sad (departing missionaries), and exciting (new missionaries, zone leaders, get to see the missionaries around the mission). All at the same time.

This week I was able to go on an exchange with Elder Buhanan in Battle Creek. It was awesome to see the Schumacher family again and Wendi Nofs. They all had a glow about them. It's true what people say about members--you can tell the difference the gift of the Holy Ghost makes. Especially with Wendi. She looked a lot different, and it wasn't just that she took out her nose and lip and eyebrow piercings, either. She had a renewed look about her.

We also taught one of the people they found door knocking. It was awesome to teach the two (a man and a woman). I asked them, "As you come to find that these things are true, as we have come to know that they are, will you be baptized into this church?" The man responded quickly, "Of course! I would think that God would want me to make that commitment if I'm going to ask Him about it." It was really neat.

I'm sure you got the one about me coming home on the 16th of January for sure. I'll come home with one other missionary from my transfer (MTC group) that day. Even Elder Udall, my MTC companion will be going home a week before. The rest of the transfer will be leaving December 13th. However, as it is turning out, with over 20 missionaries leaving that month, and many of them zone leaders and the next assistant, I will be needed to keep some continuity and to train all those new zone leaders and the next assistant. So it really was important to the mission that I stay. Otherwise it would be like we were kind of white-washing the mission.