The END IS IN SIGHT!

Our grandson, Samuel, who submitted his missionary application the same day we did, got his mission call last Wednesday. He is going to the North Carolina Charlotte mission. He leaves for the Missionary Training Center on August 7, which is what we put in our application as our availability date. We were on the way home from a short trip to St. George when he called us with the news.

And, our bishop, who monitors these things online, checked today and let us know that we have been "assigned," meaning that we should receive our call next Wednesday, May 1. We've invited family to come watch us open our letter and together find out where, and when, we will go.

The countdown is now about two weeks from Max's 70th birthday; five weeks from his retirement; and ?? weeks from the mission. We are getting pretty excited, and a little scared.

Here's a photo of our flower garden from last week.

The WAIT

What do you do when waiting for your mission call?
Well, we enjoy the Spring flowers growing in our front garden

and our forsythia bush in bloom.

 And we watch General Conference, here in the Conference Center Sunday afternoon.

Max works every day at the Church History Department (eight more weeks). Mary continues to serve as a Church Service Missionary two days a week at the Family History Library. She is also working at home organizing her genealogy papers and documents.

We also tended Laura and Jared's kids Friday night so they could go on a date.

Becky and their children went to St. George for Spring break and used our condo.

The INTERVIEW

Max says:
Our bishop acted quickly and got our application to the stake president. We had a telephone message waiting yesterday asking us to meet for an interview. We got out of church at 2:00 and met with President Mendenhall at 2:20 PM. Together, we went through our application and medical forms and answered his questions. He wanted to know where we would prefer to serve and we told him England or the British Isles. He will finalize the application and submit it soon. We should expect our call in about five or six weeks.

He said he has seen couples come and go and in each case the mission has brought them closer together and blessed the lives of their families. We are looking forward to a wonderful experience, no matter where the Lord chooses to send us.

Mary says:
Today is a beautiful warm day with spring flowers coming up in the yard.  A beautiful Easter.  We will always remember that we were interviewed  for our mission on Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013.  As we wait to hear about our call, we will continue to read the Book of Mormon individually, say our morning prayers and look for ways to serve others as we go about our daily activities.

Max says:

Our Sunday School lesson today was "The Field is White Already to Harvest" using Doctrine and Covenants, section 4 and others.

 3 ... if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work;

 4 For behold the field is white already to harvest; and lo, he that thrusteth in his sickle with his might, the same layeth up in store that he perisheth not, but bringeth salvation to his soul;

 5 And faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work.

 6 Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence.

 7 Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Amen.

The SUBMISSION

Max says:
Finally. I finished with my doctor appointments today. We turned the medical forms over to Bishop Wirkus this evening and just now pushed the "Submit" button on the online forms. The bishop will check our application and make his recommendation to the stake president. President Mendenhall will interview us and send the application to the Church Missionary Department. We are told that a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will, under the inspiration of the Lord, make our assignment. We should receive our mission call in five to six weeks after the stake president submits it.

We are trying to prepare, by reading the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants and saying our prayers. We think we are in for a great adventure. Writing the title of this post made me think: we not only pressed the SUBMIT button to start a process, but by doing so we are to SUBMIT to the will of the Lord. We will go where He wants us to go, and do what he wants us to do. A mission requires submission, in every sense of the word.

On Wednesday this week, we met with the human resources director for the Church History Department and I signed my retirement forms. The date is set: Friday, May 31, just nine weeks from now. Mary will continue as a Church Service Missionary in the Family History Department until the end of July. We should be ready to go on a mission in August or sometime soon after.

Mary says;
I'm not sure what we put down as we answered the questions on the form over a month ago.  But we'll go with our first impressions.  The bishop came over to get our medical papers; he seems as excited as we are.  The Stake President has been talking about this for senior missionaries for some time now.  I'm sure he'll be excited about this too.  I feel like we're on the bandwagon with thousands of young 18-year-olds--not the least of whom is our own grandson, Sam Evans, who is putting in his papers as we speak.  He just needs to talk to his stake president and then the process will start;  wait a minute that's all we have to do too.  I wonder where we will be called.  That's the $64,000 question.  And what kind of a mission will it be.  Your guess is as good as mine.

The DOCTORS

Nothing much happened since last week, except making doctors' appointments and seeing doctors.

Mary called the dentist and since we both had recent visits, he had her bring in the forms for him to fill out. So that one's done.

Max as able to see the dermatologist and get his precancerous skin things frozen off and have a chunk of skin taken from his back for a biopsy. Negative, thankfully. Dr. Reese, the skin doctor wants to see us six weeks before we go so he can check us again since we will be gone for 18 months. We usually see him once each year.

Max needed a blood test for something else, so he arranged to have all his lab work done at the same time on Friday. He will have the tuberculosis skin test done at the next doctor's appointment, in early March.

Mary will also she her primary care physician the first week of March.

Max went to the optometrist on Friday and ordered new spectacles, even though there isn't a big change in the prescription.

Max spoke at the devotional for the Church Service Missionaries in the Family and Church History Mission. That's Mary's mission; she works on the British floor of the Family History Library. She sat on the stand in the Chapel of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building with Max. There were about 200 people in attendance. Max spoke about the Joseph Smith Papers project, since he is on the Editorial Board for the papers.

Since the Salt Lake Temple is still closed for cleaning and minor remodeling, we went out to dinner with friends last night. We went to the Symphony Friday night and heard two versions of Romeo and Juliet in honor of Valentines Day on Thursday: Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky.

Mary says:  Planning for a mission gives a new perspective on about everything.  I'm still driving Mom's car, the 2000 Mercury Tracer;  although we need 2 cars, buying a new car is out of the question until we come back.  We have been constantly remodeling our house since we've moved back into it 5 years ago:  new bathrooms, new basement apartment, new paint, new roof, sky lights, new patio, new front porch, hot tub, pergola, and new landscaping.  I think of new carpeting, but it makes no sense to tackle until later.  We buy season tickets to the symphony every year, but, wait a minute, we won't be here.  Vacation planning this summer seems to revolve around spending time with family--no exotic places this year.  I can hardly believe Max is actually retiring in May.  We're truly entering into a new era of our lives.  

The MISSION

Max writes - Well, we finally took those first steps into the unknown. Since I will be retiring in May, we thought it would be a good time to put in our papers for a senior couple mission. Especially since I learned that seniors can apply up to 9 months before the availability date, not 120 days, as is the case for the young elders; yes, Sam.

The bishop has to start the process, so I asked him to get us going last week. It's all done online now, so we log in the the missionary application form on lds.org and begin to answer dozens of questions, about us as a couple and each of us individually. We each fill out a health survey that we will take to our doctors and dentist. It took us each a couple of hours. We had to find and scan documents to upload into the application.
We also had to have a photo of the two of us in our Sunday attire. Mary had her hair done, so she looked nice. I was about to get into the hot tub, so I put on a shirt, tie, and jacket so I would look decent. Emily took the pictures.

Here is the one we selected.

Emily also took this one, with me in my swim suit and Mary in pants and another jacket.

We will make appointments with our doctors this week. Then we give their reports to the bishop who scans  and adds them to the application. He then  notifies the stake president, who will send it to the Missionary Department.

I takes about four to six weeks to receive the call. We indicated that we will be available in August and that we want to serve for eighteen months.

Mary writes - Yes, it is my mother's white jacket that I thought would look the best.  I know I was smiling better in all the other pictures, but Max looked weird in them so that's the one we chose.  The process of filling out the mission papers takes a lot of thinking--we ended up going through medical files and shredding most of what we were keeping.  It changes your perspective.  You realize you need to organize your life and make plans in a different way.  We do have current passports and are in reasonably good health at this point in time.  We need to go sooner, rather than later--when our health might be more iffy.  So, we will let you know more as time goes on.  

Our St. George condo

We bought this condo in the Sports Village in January, 2012. It came completely furnished, so no move in was necessary. We used it twice, Presidents' day weekend in February and just now, in March.

Here are some photos --

Our building. It is building "A" the first of A-Z.

Steps to leading the the building entrance.

Our kitchen window has the shelf.

View from the front porch.
Our carport and storage unit are straight ahead.

Our front door leads to ...

The kitchen, dining area, and ...

Living room.

The "master" bedroom (the one without bunk beds). 

The bathroom. Lots of mirrors, a garden tub with a

shower, and washer and dryer in a small space.

The other bedroom. Not enough room to get a good shot.

There is a mirrored-door closet behind the camera.

See end of the bunk beds. The bottom bunk is a futon 

that folds out to a double bed. 

 The deck from this bedroom.

The deck.

The view from the deck.

The deck from the view.

Here are photos of the clubhouse, some of the pools, courts, and other recreational facilities--

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kuala Lumpur

Max went to the quadrennial meetings of the International Council on Archives (ICA) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in July. Yes, we know, a blog is supposed to be a daily web log, not a retrospective. But that's what Max does for a living. In his words:

I flew to Los Angeles on a Saturday night and went to the International Terminal to catch the 1:15 AM, twelve and a half hour China Airlines flight to Taipei, Taiwan, followed by a four and a half hour flight to KL. The Church policy for long flights is to put us in business class, which is pretty nice. Good food, attentive service, and comfortable seats. Haven't enjoyed that much lately on a U.S. domestic flight.

Crossing the International Dateline put my arrive early Monday morning. There is a 14 hour time difference between SLC and KL, so I missed Sunday altogether.

The Malay peninsula is, as expected, a very beautiful, tropical place, green and lush. It's humid, but not extremely hot, even for its location almost on the equator and at summertime. It seems more like Hawaii to me. Malaysia is located on the Malay peninsula south of Thailand and north of the city-state of Singapore, and on the northern side of the island of Borneo. KL is located a bit inland in a valley surrounded by low mountains. It is a very modern city, as you will see from the photos. It is offically a Muslim nation, but they have a large Chinese and Indian population, so they are tolerant of other religions, including Hinduism. I learned that there is a small but growing LDS presence there. There is a Malaysian Mission (or maybe its the Singapore Mission, I'm not sure) and a branch in KL.

The ICA conference was a good one. There were 1,400 delegates from 120 countries. Many were from southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, but from every other continent as well. The Israeli delegation, however, could not get visas. They don't require visas for Americans.

Almost everyone spoke English and all the sessions I attended were in English, but they had translation into the Malay language and French, the three official languages of the meeting.

Here are some of the two hundred photos I took there:

The Prince Hotel and Towers, where I stayed. One tower is the hotel, the other has condos owned, it seemed to me, by wealthy Arab families who vacation in the more temperate climate.

The modern bathroom in my modern hotel room.

The KL cityscape from my hotel room.

The 88 story Petronas Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in the world until Taipei 101 took over the record. However, the towers are still the tallest twin buildings and office building in the world. The 42nd story sky bridge between the two buildings adds structural stability, circulation between the buildings, and a observation deck for tourists. Petronas is the state-own oil company.
A tourist on the skybridge.
A view from the skybridge. A large park and high-rise buildings.
Looking down at the roof of the large mall at the base of the towers. The mall is six stories and contains some of the world's most upscale stores. The lower level of the towers also has a symphony hall, the home of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, sponsored by the Petronas company.

One day I took a tour to the outskirts of KL to see the famous Hindu Shrine at Batu Caves. I ran across a program about the shrine on National Geographic TV the week before I left.

This is a view of the caves from the bottom of the staircase. The gold-colored idol at the right is about 100 feet high.
These two statues guard a temple at the bottom of the hill.
The last of the 272 steps to the cave.
Wild monkeys live inside and around the cave.
One of a half dozen shrines inside the cave.

It was an interesting trip. I left there the following Sunday afternoon for Taipei and left Taipei before I arrived in Los Angeles Sunday night. I stayed the night at a hotel near LAX, then flew to SLC early Monday morning. I was glad to be home. It only took be about five days to get back into Mountain Time.