Turning in Mission Papers

Posted by Braden

Today I sent my mission papers to Church headquarters in Salt Lake City. But the process of getting them completed up to that point started a few months ago.

In November I turned 19 and arranged an interview with my bishop through the ward executive secretary. In the interview, we set up an account for me online and he showed me the papers I had to fill out.

Over Christmas I had my medical and dental forms completed by my doctor and dentist. Well, sort of. I went and had my doctor's appointment. I got home and realized that they hadn't given me two of the shots I needed. So I went back and got those shots. Then, the day before leaving, I realized that they hadn't done the blood work or tuberculosis (TB) tests that I needed. I got the blood work done, but TB tests take three days, so I had to get that done at the BYU Student Health Center once I got back out to Utah. My insurance covers a dentist cleaning once every six months. I had to go back to school sooner than my next six-month appointment, so instead we paid for just a little examination and I'll have the cleaning done this summer before I leave.

After all of my papers finally reached my bishop, and after my bishop got back from a vacation he'd been on, I was able to have my second interview. We went through all of the papers and double-checked everything, he wrote his recommendation, then he forwarded it on to the stake president.

I showed up in the "first-come, first-served" line for stake presidency interviews on Sunday at noon. An interesting fact about BYU stakes: they are the only stakes in the church where it is approved for the counselors in the stake presidency to do mission interviews, in addition to the president. Because we send off multiple hundreds of missionaries each semester in this stake, it makes sense to spread the workload. I had my interview, President Brad Wilcox (the first counselor in my stake presidency) typed in his recommendation, and then they let me click "send."

It's hard to not think about it now. I've heard various reports about what day of the week mission calls typically show up in the mail, how long it takes for them to show up, how the amount of postage correlates to stateside vs foreign calls, how many weeks after your availability date you are typically asked to report, etc. The other hard thing is deciding what to do when I get my call! Some people open it with the whole ward looking on and their family on the phone. Others open it up by themselves and announce it at ward prayer. A part of me wants to go for a walk and open it by myself. On the other hand, I always find it so exciting when someone from the ward opens his publicly. I just don't know! I suppose I have approximately two weeks to decide. Now I just need to find out what time of day the mail comes so I can start checking the mail compulsively every day for my envelope.