OUR MISSION CALL

Our call to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kinshasa arrived the last Saturday of July. The family gathered to open the letter. All the local children and my brother Ron and his wife Lynette, and my sister Sue and her husband Lee were present, and the rest of the family were on Skype, or FaceTime, on the computer and on Iphones. Because my daughter Emily had not served a mission, we had her read the letter. Our reaction, while not completely unsuspected, was, nevertheless emotional. We had been prepared by experiences over the past year and a half for such a call. One of my missionary companions from the French East Mission, Bill Coles and his wife had served in Cameroun and we had visited with them for some time. Prior to that, the Frogleys, my brother Ron's dear friends, had recruited Ron and Lynette to volunteer to replace them in Burundi. Ron had forwarded the email to me, saying that it fit Sue and me perfectly. We were not ready, and neither was he at the time. Shortly after that my son Seth was asked to help translate for missionaries who were teaching a Congolese man, Severin Tsumbu-NGoma, who had recently won a Green Card in the Congo and had recently arrived in Orem/Provo to study English prior to finding work, enroll in the University, and then to bring his wife and two children to America. Severin and his wife had heard many negative things about the Mormons, but he had agreed to listen to the missionaries. My son could had to travel and could not continue working with the missionaries, so I took over. Eventually Severin was baptized. During that time we were introduced to the Livingstones, who invited us to their home for a Congo Mission reunion, so we took Severin with us and went to their home where we met many wonderful returned missionaries and members from the DRC Mission. Later we received an invitation to a gathering of returned missionaries and mission presidents who gather on the first Monday following General Conference at the Golden Corral. There we heard reports from Ellis Nuttall, a former French East Missionary whom we knew in France in the 1960s, and his wife, recently returned from Cameroon, and from Gary Packer and his wife, recently returned mission president from the DRC Lubumbashi Mission. All of these experiences and many other chance encounters had prepared us for the call to Africa. We had many concerns, but have caught the spirit from all the experiences we have had, and from the emails of those now in the Congo, who have prepared us for this wonderful mission.