Missionary Life has begun and the world isn’t small

Lois and I checked in to the Senior Missionary training center on Monday Morning.  We had an appointment for 10:20 AM.  They are very efficient at the check in process.  There were multiple stops all mapped out for us as we got name tags, picked up materials, paid for our meals for the next two weeks and reviewed our immunization records.   We started orientation and were separated into Districts.  I was asked to be a District Leader.  We have three couples and two senior single sisters in our district.  Our destinations cover the globe from Germany to the Philippines to Thailand to Wichita Kansas and to Eugene Oregon.  Overall 94 Senior Missionaries checked in with us on Monday. When you add all of their various destinations in we really do cover the earth.   We are having opportunities to practice what we have learned from principles in Preach My Gospel.  Today, Lois and I taught a 45 minute discussion to a community volunteer who pretended to be a nonmember.  We get to do a similar teaching practice again tomorrow. 

We have had multiple experiences demonstrating that the World isn’t small but The Church is large. 

1. On Monday I ran in to Elder and Sister Tooley.  They are in our Senior Missionary Training group.  They started training on Monday with us.  Elder Tooley was my boss when I was a teenage paperboy for the Tacoma News Tribune.  I even sold my 1968 Plymouth Barracuda (my first car) to him when I went away to college.  He later married Darla Pollard – the oldest daughter of the family that befriended my entire family thru most of my growing up years in the Tacoma Third Ward.  Elder and Sister Tooely are going to the Southern Adriatic Mission (Four small countries just north of Greece).

2. When we were checking in Sister Skousen (Volunteer Missionary at the MTC) informed us that her Granddaughter and her Husband live in Thailand. She wants us to look them up when we get there.

3. Elder and Sister Hiatt, Senior Missionaries in our group also started training this week, going to the Philippines told us they knew some Meekers from Port Orchard Washington.  Turns out that he is Telly Meeker’s uncle from northern Idaho.  So my brother Paul’s son Christopher is married to his niece. He remembers Paul from the Christopher's and Telly's Wedding Reception that of course I was in attendance.