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| We love watching the change of classes at the beautiful old campus across the street. |
Transfer Week is now over! It may be old news to a lot of you but it was all new to us. Twenty new missionaries arrived and three left. We were scrambling to be ready for them. Wednesday morning at eight we went to the Stake Center for transfers. Happily, there were many large old shade trees lining the parking lots. We were outdoors for a couple of hours and though a sweater was welcome when we began, the day was hot when we finished. Over forty cars of missionaries lined up in an assigned order (a little like lining up at Southwest Airlines, but with cars). Len was in charge of waving them on by prescribed groups to my side of the parking lot. I sent them forward to a holding spot from which they were then waved into parking spots and told which car to move their belongings into. Within a couple of minutes they gave the old companion a quick goodbye hug and drove off with their new one. Twenty missionaries no longer had companions. They were the ones assigned to train the new missionaries.
While the trainers were being instructed, others collected
all the new missionaries (greenies) at the airport. When the new missionaries arrived at the mission
office, everyone there was lining the walkway and cheering as they walked into
the building. We fed everyone a good
lunch.
President Clark had a greeting meeting with the greenies, and
for a couple of hours after that each missionary met individually for five or
ten minutes with: the mission president, the car/bike person, the mission
secretary, the finance secretary (told them about their debit cards, phones,
names tags, emergency kits), and the housing secretary (told them a few things
about their apartments and supplies).
That night all the new sisters stayed at the mission home
and the new elders stayed at the mission president’s assistants’ house. The office staff had to shoehorn any work
into the cracks of time between activities in which we were involved. A couple of things we are having to learn are:
how to use small bits of time and how to work amid chaos.
Thursday there were training sessions before and after
another nice lunch we helped serve. Before lunch, there was a pairing ceremony
where trainers and greenies got placed together. Kit and Len’s most notable
activity that day was helping prepare the cultural hall sort of like Christmas
morning. After the last training session
all new missionaries came in to find their own pile which had a bag of bedding,
a bike, an emergency kit, mail from home, a supply of proselyting materials,
etc. Friday was a training day for zone
leaders and sister leaders. Lunch was
provided. We missed that one because we
were out with the truck and trailer delivering the contents of two new
apartments.
One of President Clark’s mottos is “Everything will work
out.” That has been his experience of
leading the mission. I had already recognized what he is talking about when I was
worried about finding an apartment or about being able to rent one I
found. So far everything has just worked
out.
