Friday, November 28, 2008

Six-Week Life Cycle . . .

Prior to the mission, it seemed my life was built around weekly and monthly planning. In the mission field, everything revolves around a cycle of six weeks. It begins with the arrival of new missionaries, the departure of missionaries completing their mission, the zone conferences, then interviews and finally preparation for the arrival of the next group of missionaries. Days and weeks fly by and zone conferences and interviews seem to follow each other so closely. Sometimes it is all a blur, but we are enjoying the ride and the opportunity to be of service.



We have now been through 4 different "cambios" or transfer cycles. I thought you would like to see the group photos of the new missionaries as they arrived. The first one was covered in an earlier post and included only Hermana Aguilar from El Salvador. Here are the groups that followed:

This group of 9 arrived on August 12th and included 6 from North America (the six we met while in the Provo MTC - Elders Haun, Noble, Davis, Cook, Sonntag and Darrington) and 3 (seated - Elders Zhunio, Castelo and Campozano) from Ecuador. Susie and I are also in the picture with our two assistants, Elder Ruesta and Elder Wanner.



This group of 10 arrived on September 23 and include only two from the United States (Elders Shumway and Haderlie) and 3 from Chile (Elders Aracena, Opazo and Bourboze) , 2 from El Salvador (Elder Montano and Sister Rivas) and 1 each from Argentina (Elder Aspitia), Panama (Sister Valdez) and Nicaragua (Elder Salguera).


This large group of 15, all from the U.S. arrived on November 4th and includes: Elders Adlard, Batemen, Cottle, DeGroot, Hogan, Larsen, Morey, Moser, Nash, Robinson, Seager, Simons and Sturm; and Sisters Biggs and Harper. The picture also includes Elder Ruesta and our new assistant, Elder Vergara.