Today I woke up without much of the cold that had been bothering me. I felt quite weakened but otherwise felt quite good. The day at the office was quite a bit slower than normal. I was able to get a lot of follow up work done through e-mail and phone calls. We discovered 2 missionaries who are scheduled to come to our mission within the next few months that had not been there previously. I spent some time this morning pouring over the computer list of all missionaries scheduled to come through 1/31/2012. I feel like I have a good handle on who is coming and when, although I realize that it is very fluid. By next week, dates could change as well as the names of the people. Brother Kirikirikula came in to get a recommend for a patriarchal blessing. I got a chance to talk with him about his experience this week. Although he has always been very excited about the Church and what it means to him, it was clear to me that this week truly touched him deeply and the temple experience was a profound one for him.
I had a very exciting experience today related to a young man I had met earlier in the week. I had interviewed a young man for his patriarchal blessing on Monday. He explained to me that he had submitted his missionary papers with President Ostler shortly before he went home. He said he still hasn’t received his call but is hoping to here soon. After he had left the office, I kicked myself for not having written down his name. I did look in the mission call pending file that President Ostler had left. I found that there were 8 missionary recommendations I had completed and only three that President Ostler had completed. This young man’s papers were not in the folder. I was uncomfortable about this and was afraid that somehow his papers may have gotten lost during the excitement of the Ostler’s going home. Wednesday, I had the opportunity to interview this young man again. This time it was for receiving the Melchizedek Priesthood and being order an Elder. I learned a little more about him this time. He told me that he had not yet been a member a year (his anniversary would be in early October). He was conjecturing that this is why he had not yet heard about his mission call since he knew that he had to have been a member of the Church at least a year to serve a mission. This time I noted down his name. After he left, I e-mailed Sister Starley who is my contact for sending in missionary recommendation forms to the Area Presidency Office. I asked her to check and see if she could verify that she had received and submitted this young man’s papers. This morning, I was checking through the file drawers one more time and found a small file labeled calls delayed. Sure enough, I found this young man’s papers in that file. The front page, however, was a copy of an e-mail that had been sent to Sister Starley in late May transmitting the papers. He pointed out to her then that it was more than 100 days before his first availability date (his 1 year anniversary of confirmation in the Church). He asked her to tell him if he needed to submit the forms again later or whether she could hold on to them and submit them once it was within the 100 day threshold. I sent a follow up e-mail to Sister Starley telling her about the date and time stamped on this e-mail and its general content. About 2 hours later she sent me an e-mail. She told me that she didn’t have a file for holding missionary recommendations that could not yet be submitted. However, she had held on to this young man’s papers, submitted them a month or so later, and she knew that his call had been issued this past Tuesday and they were expecting the letter in the pouch scheduled to be delivered in New Zealand that day! I was so excited and relieved for this young man that he, in deed, was about to receive his call. As I left the office to step back over to the mission home that afternoon, he happened to be getting off the elevator (we have an elevator that goes between the basement where the service center is and our main floor). He stopped him and told him the good news. I gave him my phone number and asked him to be sure and call me to tell me where he is going as soon as he gets his call. This was truly a great relief for me and I was very excited for him.
Later this afternoon, I interviewed two additional sisters for patriarchal blessing recommends before finishing up at the office and going back home. I interviewed each of the 2 assistants in personal interviews there at the house. What great young men these two assistants are! Jan and I went out to eat with Elder and Sister Barfuss at 6pm. We enjoyed a leisurely dinner with them and got back to the house just before 8pm. This gave us a little time to work on our talks for Sunday as well as wind down a bit for the day. I will try to get to be early again in an effort to beat this cold before our trip to Vanuatu.
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