Our Missionary calls

These are the letters we received after submitting paperwork with our Church experience and work experience histories as well as medical status from both our doctors and dentists. We also had to be interviewed by our Bishop and our Stake President. (Local parish minister and region leader.)

We had an idea what we wanted to do before submitting our paperwork. Monthly the Church publishes "the blue sheets" (printed on blue paper, duh!!) of worldwide opportunities available to Senior couples. The opportunities are quite varied from working as leadership couples in existing wards and branches to humanitarian to mission offices to ranches to Church history sights to public relations to family history research to temples, etc. This opportunity list is also available at lds.org/servinginthe church/missionandserviceopportunities. We spoke with auditing department and expressed our interest in South Africa. They later called us back and during a conference call put us through a fairly in-depth interview to determine our work in financial areas, both in the Church and in our careers.

We are quite excited to have survived the screening process and will be serving as Auditor and Assistant to the Auditor in the Africa SouthEast Area. We will be headquartered in Johannesburg South Africa at the Area offices which are adjacent to the temple. This location is a very nice area of the city where the wealthier families of Johannesburg live. It is fairly close to downtown Johannesburg and is nestled in the high hills that make Johannesburg a beautiful and interesting city.

Our letters state that we will be entering the MTC (Missionary Training Center) in Provo on July 16, 2007. This date has been revised to August 20, 2007. The couple that we are replacing do not leave until September 11th so the earlier date left too much of an overlap. Our MTC training lasts for one full week beginning on Monday and terminating on the next Sunday. Prior to our MTC week we will spend one full day of training at the Church Offices in Salt Lake City in the Auditing Department. This training will take place on Thursday August 16th. Once we get to South Africa we will receive about a week's training by the couple that we are replacing who will give us training specific to the area.

Our expected date of departure from the U.S. is August 29th.

Any questions or comments feel free to access the "comments" area. We'll either respond in the comments or if it is of general interest, do a posting on your topic.