I (Eileen) have been told that our positions are the two busiest in the mission other than the mission president and his wife. That certainly seems to have been true this past week. Sister Hegvik who was supposed to be training me came down with COVID. She has been wonderful about helping over the phone and with charting, but it just wasn't the same as being trained in person. With transfers, missionaries leaving and new missionaries arriving it seems like life has been quite busy for us this week.
With all of our missions I have never seen a missionary transfer like this one. It was quite fun to watch. All the missionaries gathered in the gym of the stake center. At exactly 10 AM they were able to look at their phones and see where they would be assigned and who their companion would be. There were many shouts of joy with hugs and backslapping going on. Certainly there must have been some missionaries that were kind of disappointed, but I didn't see them. On Saturday after the new missionaries arrived they were assigned their trainers. President Summerfeldt kind of made a game of it, finding something unique about the trainer and new missionary to match them up. Each missionary seemed happy with the matchups. I hope that excitement continues through the duration of their companionship, as it will make my job as the nurse meeting their emotional needs much easier.
My (Russell) intent was not to say much this week, and follow my mother's advice about if you don't have something nice to say then don't say anything at all. Last Monday morning at our meeting with the mission president he asked how things were going. I responded that it was okay but that I really didn't know since I didn't yet know what I didn't know. Tomorrow when he asks at our meeting I now have a better idea of what I don't know and it is a lot! With transfers and my driving the truck and trailer for three days, I'm struggling to keep up even with working in the office all seven days this week.
While it is usually Eileen that has the phone calls until late into the evening, last night it was my night to have nine calls after we got back home at 4:30 PM from the office (Saturday is supposed to be our preparation day). One call that started out as particularly distressing turned out to be one of those events that remind you just how involved God is in our lives. One of our new trainers (who I had just been with earlier in the day) called at 7:45 PM to say that he had lost the key to his car. He further explained that he actually had not yet seen the key fob to his newly assigned car. He said the prior elder who had the car told him he had left the key in the car that morning at the church during our meeting. The elder/trainer explained to me that when he pushed the ignition button, that since the car started that he decided not to worry about finding the key immediately. And since the car continued to start each time during the day they knew it must be in the car somewhere. I said, "So you have not been locking the car when you have been leaving it?" To which they stated the obvious, "No."
But now, with it starting to get dark, the car would no longer start and they couldn't find the key anywhere. They were quite a ways from home with a car they couldn't lock. I told them to take a few minutes and retrace everywhere they had been since stopping the car, pray and then call me back in 20 minutes if they couldn't find it and I would go get another key for their car at the office and then drive to where they were in Kansas, bringing them another key fob. I was not happy but trying to be a decent missionary in front of my wife and the elders on the phone, a task I'm not sure I accomplished. When they called back after ten minutes, they said they had found the key fob! The departing elder had put it on the windshield under the wiper. Which means the driver of the car was looking past it every time he drove. We were all happy and grateful, believing our prayers had been answered. They could get home, and Eileen and I were spared from our first drive to Kansas and back in the dark.
While the elders were feeling pretty sheepish about the whole situation, I related to them an experience about how I had done a similar thing several years ago. While serving in Senior Missionary Services (Missionary Department), one January morning in 2015, after backing the car out of the garage on our way to the Church Office Building, I realized that it was garbage day and I had not taken the trash cans to the street. I got out of the car, left it running and put my car keys on the hood of the car while I brought the trash cans out. Then I got back in the car and we drove to Salt Lake. After parking the car I went to lock it and couldn't find my keys. Remembering I had set them on the car hood, I looked and there they were, not having moved during the drive in. I figured there was some divine intervention that day making up for my foolishness.
This morning while getting ready for church, I finally recognized the real miracle and greater blessing that occurred last night. It was that the car fob did not work! In spite of the car fob being in the same spot it had been all day, within an arms length of the dashboard, it failed to start the car. The battery in the car fob was obviously still good since the car started up this morning. Had the car fob not failed last night, the missionaries would have returned home and probably left the car parked outside overnight, with the car fob on display for anyone to take advantage of and drive off with a less than year old Chevy Equinox. Last night I had missed seeing the greater extent of God's tender mercy in my life, just because it wasn't what I was praying for. I was praying for what I wanted (to keep from making a late night trip to Kansas), while God was doing both that and taking care of my greater need that I didn't realize I had (not having to deal with a stolen car). I am humbled by and grateful for a merciful Father in Heaven that puts up with my short sightedness.
Missionaries waiting for new assignments for transfers.
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