Sometime in July Jeff and I looked at each other and said, "It is time." Then, we visited with a friend in Maryland who said, "Well... A mission?" and we chatted with her saying the usual things about how we wanted to go on a mission and that we intended to go on a mission... soon. She suggested we talk to President Johnson, our former stake president who had just gotten home from serving a mission in the mission office in Salt Lake City, Utah. He and his wife had been involved with processing the papers of senior missionary couples who wanted to serve full time missions for the church. (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints)
Then, while walking through Target in Long Gate Shopping Center of Ellicott City, MD we ran into President Johnson's daughter, who said, "Mom and Dad just got back from a mission in the mission office in SLC. You should talk to them." Sounds like we needed to talk to them.
So we did. They kindly spent an hour or two with us. When we left we were ready. So we went home and, through our branch president, initiated the online recommendation form that would tell those people in that office in SLC all about us, so they could decide what recommendations should be made about what kind of mission we should serve, where we should go and when we should start.
The recommendation process was lengthy and, at times daunting. It was not a sit down and answer a few questions, write a few sentences about ourselves and push the SUBMIT button. No.
We browsed and then studied the Senior Missionary Opportunities Bulletin. We answered pages of questions about ourselves. We considered everything. From "How do you feel about flying" on a scale of 1 to 5, to "how comfortable are you with teaching English, or leading the music." We considered if it would bother us if we were the only missionaries for miles... or the only members of the church for miles... We thought about our prior missionary service, our callings, our skills, our life experiences, and our fears. Then we tried to explain details about all of them in 500 or 2000 characters or less. Finally, we told them we would love to serve a PEF/self reliance mission, or a humanitarian mission. We tried to explain why. We felt pretty inadequate and inarticulate through it all. Finally, on Aug. 25 we declared ourselves finished, and tapped the submit button. We made appointments to meet with our Branch President (local ecclesiastical leader) and then our Stake President (the ecclesiastical leader one step up the chain). Upon completion of those two interviews, their submit buttons were pushed on Aug 29.
Then we waited, and watched the mail. And we waited for five weeks. When we got to that last week we were in New Mexico to spend time with some of our children and grandchildren. So, we called. We called our neighbor (Yahoo... Bob and Trina) every night to find out if our letter had arrived. Finally, on Oct 7 Bob said yes. We listened on speaker phone as Bob tore open our letter and began to read.
"You are assigned to labor in the Philippines Quezon City Mission. Your primary assignment is to labor in thePhilippines Welfare Country Office as a humanitarian specialist. It is anticipated that you will serve for a period of 18 months."
