16.2.09

Receiving your call

What were your thoughts when you opened your call and learned you had been called to labor in the Brasil Curitiba Mission?

4 comments:

Giggles said...

My brother and I submitted our papers at the same time, and I wanted to wait until his call came so we could open them at the same time, but his didn't come by Saturday and I wasn't going to wait any longer so I opened it that night.

I started crying while I read the call. And then we got out the big Atlas book and I was looking all over the map of Brasil trying to find Curitiba and I couldn't find it. I did eventually locate it.

Mimi Nowland said...

My family had been out camping and we drove home in two cars. My mom took most of the kids home while my dad finished packing up camp. My call was in the mailbox when we got home, but then I had to wait until my dad got home to open it and it seemed like torture. I do remember having friends who had expressed initial disappointment with their calls and I didn't want to feel that way. I prayed to be happy to serve wherever the Lord had need of me. I was excited to go to Brazil, but a little scared. I had not done to well in my high school spanish classes and was worried about learning the language. But I remember feeling that this was where the Lord wanted me to go and so I was happy!

Kika VilaNova said...

Hmmm I didn't open my calling. I was in Portugal on vacation before the mission and my calling went to Brazil, so my stake pres called my mom and told her, and she told me. I remember I was like "Curitiba... cool! What's for dinner?"

heheheheheeh

Susie said...

Oh Kika, you're too funny.
I was working at Magic Mountain as a waitress. When my dad came to pick me up after a long shift, he told me something had come in the mail. I remember being so nervous that whole drive home!
I also learned that you'll likely be called wherever you naively said you wouldn't want to go. Just like a guy in my ward who said, "I'll go anywhere in the world except Texas." He got called to Texas.
I had thought many times, "I'll go anywhere except somewhere that speaks Portuguese." Why? Because I grew up in LA. My dad speaks Spanish fluently and we usually asked in Spanish for stuff to be passed at the dinner table. Then I'd heard someone speak Portuguese at BYU and thought it sounded like horrible, ugly Spanish (of course, he may have had a horrible accent!) So I didn't want to learn Portuguese. Besides, my big brother, who I've looked up to all my life, went to Argentina. I would have loved to converse with him in Spanish.
When I got home and opened the call, I tried not to let my eyes flit down to the mission, but I saw what looked like Spanish words and declared, "It's Spanish!!!" So when I actually got to the "Curitiba, Brasil" part, I was stunned. All I could say was "oh!"
Of course, I wasn't really a language snob, so I got over it in about a second.
There was lots of crying and some really hideous pictures of me (I'd just gotten home from work, AND I was crying) and then I had to call everyone.