Transfer Week

We survived our very first transfer week! What an emotional roller coaster we have been on. We hit the very bottom when 26 of our amazing missionaries went home. We thought our hearts would break and wondered how we had grown to love them so much in just six short weeks. They will be missed.

Our first group of departing missionaries

They started coming in on Friday for their 1/2 hour interview with the President. Interviews were held on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Monday morning they all came to our home for breakfast.  We cooked a ton of food! We had french toast, cheesy eggs and cinnamon rolls. Lili also made some brownies and banana cake for them. I cooked 112 slices of french toast and they ate every last one!  The office elders helped us get ready for the breakfast.

Can you believe we had room to feed 29 people?

Making frosting for the cinnamon rolls

We had food EVERYWHERE!

Those smiles made it all worth it

After breakfast we had a testimony meeting and each missionary was able to bear testimony of the truthfulness of the Gospel. Then we loaded all 26 of them and their luggage up and headed to the airport. We used our 4 Runner, a senior couples car, the mission van and truck. We also borrowed a van and truck from the south mission and rented two big vans! They were all on the same flight to Santiago and then went their separate ways. 

As they were checking in one of our Elders had a problem so the mission secretary went over to help him out.

Turns out his passport was expired!  The funny thing is that he was the office Elder for 14 months. Part of his job was to check passports, etc...

He kept checking and doubling checking to make sure it was really expired.  

We checked around and found out he would have to go up to Santiago (5 hours away) and meet with the Mexican Consulate. We put him on the midnight bus and called the Santiago West Mission Office. They picked him up and helped him with everything he needed. It took a couple of days but he was finally able to fly home. 

One final picture of our first group of departing missionaries -

God be with you till we meet again....

Our mission was a little lonely monday night. Here's a look at the transfer board. Each post it note represents where a new missionary will be assigned.

Monday morning we were up bright and early preparing for our group of 28 new missionaries. The Latino missionaries arrived first. They train at the MTC in Santiago which is just a short flight from here. They got in at 9:15 a.m. and we were at the very top of our emotional roller coaster.

Our office elders made this awesome banner!

We shuttled them and all their luggage to the mission office and they started filling out forms.  at 12:30 they ate lunch while we ran back to the airport to pick up the last group.  Fourteen of the next group trained at the Mexico City MTC and the other two were at the Provo MTC.   We welcomed all of them, gathered their luggage and posed for pictures. We were missing the two who had been at the MTC in Provo and decided they must have taken a different flight. We were out loading the luggage when they came running out. Thank goodness we didn't leave them behind!

Each missionary got half a pizza, a banana, a brownie and some juice. Dominoes loves us!

Love their enthusiasm!

Mexico MTC Group

Provo MTC Group

We took this group back to the Mission Office for some lunch and training. At about 5:00 p.m. we gathered them all together along with the 28 trainers who had come in from all over the mission. The new missionaries all had the opportunity to share their testimonies and then the party started. President called them up one at a time and then announced who their trainer would be. Everyone cheered and clapped and the trainer ran up and gave a huge hug to his/her greenie. It was so much fun. about half way through the AP whispered that it was the next guys birthday that day. When he got up there President explained, in Spanish, that it was his birthday and we were all going to sing. When everyone started singing he turned to me and asked why we were singing. He turned around and tried to sing along when it suddenly dawned on him that they were singing happy birthday to him. He grinned and thanked us. As we were driving home I mentioned to President that he must not have learned spanish all that well yet since he couldn't seem to figure out what was going on. Turns out the reason he was slow to catch on was because it was his birthday on July 13th - not August 13th!