Moving Elders Around

Dear Family,

The past 10 days have been kind of unsettling of us. On transfer day, August 28th we had an emergency transfer with one of our elders, so we had to make some quick changes, in addition to the usual transfers. 

Then this past  week was a continuation of more of the same.  We had two elders that needed to go to Suriname to renew visas, but the other senior couples volunteered to take them.  It was a good thing because on Tuesday evening, President Mehr called and wanted us to take one of the elders to the airport and pick-up a new elder for another emergency transfer.

This was really sad to us because the elder's ticket was not to go to another island, but to go home.  With only 5 more months to serve, he was being sent home.  He was a great missionary and a hard worker.  We loved him and cried because of the mistake that he had made that he couldn't finish his mission.  This is the first time we have ever had anything to do with sending someone home early.  Fortunately for him, he has a good family to go home to who we think will support him and help him through the repentance process.

Then on Friday, we went to Diamond and moved another set of elders to a new apartment.  Unfortunately, these elders had had a landlord who was addicted to pornography and was more that willing to share with the elders, so Pres. Mehr asked us to find a new place for them to live.  We looked around for a month and found a really good apartment in a quiet neighborhood and a great landlady who lives upstairs.  

That was a long day, cleaning and moving all of the furniture and food into the apartment, but we were done in about 8 hours.  The weather had turned pretty warm by afternoon and we probably drank a gallon of water each as we were doing the work.  One of the Elders is brand new from the MTC and he was still having jet lag, so he was ready to fall asleep for the night by 5:00 pm when we finally left.

The last thing I wanted to tell you was that we received our release date this week.  It is December 20th.  We are flexible in this respect.  We can choose what day to leave.  We are thinking maybe Thursday, the 19th of December so that we have a little time to recover from traveling before the week-end.  If any of you have anything to say about when we come home, please let us know soon, like tonight!

We spent the day today in Linden again.  I gave the Primary President my CD player because she hasn't been able to teach the songs for the Sacrament Meeting Presentation because she had no one to play the piano, and no CD player to play the songs.  She will maybe get one from the church soon and I will get mine back.  

Well, we are exhausted after this busy week, but we would much rather be exhausted than not having enough to do to keep us busy.  We love all of you and will talk to you all later.  

Love, 

Mom and Dad