IT'S A SMALL WORLD

This week the new mission presidents for our church were announced. Each year in June, one third of the missions get new mission presidents.  One hundred and ten new presidents were announced and take their positions starting  July 1^st.  One of those men is a good friend named Kai Hintze who is from our neighborhood back home. He will be presiding over the El Salvador San Salvador/Belize mission.  We know he and his wife will do a wonderful job with the missionaries. We are sad we will not be able to say goodbye to them because they will be leaving before we return home.

Another president called is a man named David Berrett.  We recognized the name because over the last couple of weeks he has helped us with some legal documents we have been working with here in Indonesia. He is a lawyer for the church living in Hong Kong.  Two weeks ago Eileen accidentally woke him up in the middle of the night trying to get some legal advice on a project. Unbeknownst to us, he was not in Hong Kong but in the states on a work related trip.    Despite the fact that I woke him up, he was extremely gracious and helpful.  He will be presiding over the India, Bangalore mission. 

When talking with our daughter Becky, she asked if we had seen the list of mission presidents.  Becky told us us that she had eaten Thanksgiving dinner at the Berrett home the first year she was attending BYU.  She also reminded us that this was the same Berrett family whose son was serving in the North of France as part of the Belgium mission, while we were living in Belgium.  Becky, knowing that she would be with us over the Christmas holidays arranged for a present to be delivered to their son for Christmas.  Russell and Becky got up very, very early Christmas morning and drove from Brussels to the north of France and delivered the gifts like Santa Claus. They made it back home before the rest of the family woke up Christmas morning. 

It is strange how small the world can seem at times.   We have had interactions with the Berretts, a family that we barely knew, from more than a decade ago, on three different continents.  It is a gentle reminder to us of the importance of being kind to people.  You never know when someday your paths might cross again.  We know we have a lot of room for improvement in the area of being kind to people. We are trying to work harder in this category of relationships.