A quick transfer and a new set of responsibilities

As you probably all know and I would be surprised if you didn't, last Sunday was Mothers Day.  But when you have a missionary out in the field and in our case two missionaries out serving, Mothers Day is "our missionaries call home" day as well.  So obviously we got to talk to Alex on the phone this past Sunday.  He worried us just a little because when he was able to call home in the past, he usually called first thing in the morning.  This time was a little different.  We waited all day for Alex to call and by about 8:00 in the evening, we were wondering if he was going to call at all.  His older brother who is in the Rochester, New York mission had already called us earlier that day and we had a very good conversation with him.  But Alex hadn't called all day long.  Then finally at around 8:00 pm Alex called to tell us that he was someplace other than Manhattan, Kansas.  Yep you guessed it, after nine months in Manhattan, Alex finally got transferred.  But the funny thing was, this last week was not transfer week so something very interesting must have happened. 

So here is the interesting thing that happened.  Last Monday after P-Day was over, Alex and his companion traveled to Independence for their monthly zone leader conference.  Alex arrived a little early and when the mission president saw Alex at the mission office, he asked Alex to join him in his office.  Alex told us that when the mission president invited him into the office, he was a little nervous and had a hard time breathing.  After a little bit of chit-chat, the mission president finally asked Alex if he would accept a call to be the new AP.  That's right, Alex is now one of the assistants the mission president in the Independence, Missouri mission. 

When Alex called us on Mothers Day, he was calling from the mission office.  Being Sunday night, he and his new companion were in the middle of AP training.  Part of this training included contacting each of the zone leaders throughout the mission to gather the numbers for the week.  We asked Alex what else his new responsibilities would include and he told us that he was still learning all about what it means to be an assistant and what he would be doing.  Of course he and his companion will still be responsible for doing traditional missionary work which means finding new people and teaching the gospel.  But in addition to that, they will also be responsible for traveling throughout the mission and doing a lot of training themselves.  Then there is helping out with transfers, collecting and organizing mission data and who knows what else he will be asked to do.  One thing that will be very interesting however, is that Alex will most likely be in the mission office when the current mission president finishes his mission this summer and the new mission president arrives.  That whole transition will be a very interesting time in the life of an AP.

Obviously, with this news of Alex being transferred to the mission office, most of the Mothers Day phone call revolved around finding out more about this new responsibility.  But before Alex left Manhattan, which apparently, according to Alex, is now called "Manhappenin", Alex told us all about the new people that he and his companion had been teaching.  Alex mention again this week just how much he loves doing church tours and how the spirit is always so strong.  Alex talked all about how some of the people that they have been teaching have already experienced some great changes in their lives.  Alex referred to these changes as miracles.  As you can probably imagine, when a missionary watches these kinds of miracles happen quite frequently, it makes everything that is sacrificed for a mission, worth it. 

With the transfer to the mission office happening so quickly, Alex didn't get much of a chance to say goodbye to many of the people in the Manhattan 2nd Ward as well as the many other people he had come to know.  So if you are one of those people, don't worry, Alex will be back as he travels around the mission as part of is assistant duties.  Alex can't believe that he is on his last six months in the mission and has told us more than once that he doesn't want to come home.  Of course we can't believe how fast the time has gone by to this point and that the next time we talk to him, it will be face to face at the airport.  But there is still a lot of new experiences that Alex will have over the next six months and we are very excited to hear all about them.