Getting the Mission Call

About five months ago is when my brother received his mission call. He had been working on all of his papers a lot because he wanted to be able to submit them as early as possible, which was three months before his 19th birthday. Since his birthday is in September, that means that he could submit them at the end of June. He wanted to be able to go as soon as he could because he wasn't going to go to school first and he didn't want to sit around forever. Chris finally finished all of his paper work and interviews and submitted the papers. He was told that it would take about one week for him to receive his call.

Because Chris had turned his papers in over a holiday weekend, we were not sure if he would get his call back that week or not. A lot of people kept telling him that he would not be getting it until after the holidays. Chris just kept nodding his head and saying that he would get it on Wednesday. He was like he knew that it was coming and nothing was going to convince him otherwise. It turns out that Chris was right. On Wednesday July 8, 2009 Chris received his mission call.

We all told him that he had to wait until tonight to open it so that we could all be there. Chris had wok until nine so we all planned to meet at the house about then. As nine o'clock get closer, the more excited we all got. We had a bunch of family and friends over for the occasion. There was my family, the grandparents on both sides, the best friends or "brothers" of Chris, the bishopric and his young men leaders. All of them were gathered there to support Chris and what he was doing. When Chris arrived at home that night we all went straight down stairs. Before he would open the envelope he made everyone write on the back of it where we thought he was going to go. By the time the envelope made it all the way around we had quit the list. Some of the guess's were Italy, California, Africa, New Zealand, Brazil, and Canada. There were many others as well.

When the envelope got back to Chris he opened it up and started to read it. As he was reading he got this huge grin on his face. You just knew that he was happy. He read that he was being called to the Brussels Belgium/Netherlands mission and that he needed to report to the MTC on November 18, 2009. At that time we were all very excited and happy for this fine young man. And he just smiled and laughed. For what we didn't know was that he had already opened his call earlier that day. He had opened it when it first came in the mail and had even started telling other people. He just wanted to see if any of us could guess where he was going. And he said that even though he had already opened it earlier, he wanted to open in front of his mom for her to hear where he was being sent.

We spent the next little while eating donuts and laughing at the whole thing. We went over the map of where he would be and discussed all that needed to be done before he left. Chris was happy about the call and very excited that he would be speaking French. he was a little bummed though that he would be waiting five months until he left. All in all it was a great night and a fabulous one to be a part of.