New Arrivals 10/24/2016

I apologize for not posting sooner.  It was a crazy transfer and from Wednesday to Saturday we attended a mission presidents' seminar.  Having a hard time getting everything done.

Before going to the Santa Barbara airport to see an Elder off I was able to get dinner prepared and get set up for the evening.  The plan was to see the elder off, get lunch in Santa Barbara, then greet Hermana Lethbridge from the CCM at 3:30 and the other 12 at 4:30.  One phone call changed that; which made for a lot of time talking with missionary travel and discussing different scenerios.  Due to President Felix's suggestion to check out flights to Burbank, we ended up at the Burbank airport but not knowing if the luggage would have been taken off one plane to go with the missionaries.  The missionaries went through a lot to get to us.  I asked them to write it down so I could share it with the parents on the blog.  The following is what they told me:

"Our flight from Salt Lake to San Francisco was supposed to board at 1:40 p.m. and leave at 2:00, layover in San Francisco until 3:06 and fly onto Santa Barbara.  BUT, our first flight got cancelled so we were told we could get on a flight that was supposed to leave at 10:12 a.m. that had been delayed until 12:30 p.m.  As we waited for that flight, it kept getting pushed back 1:55 and then 2:10.  We then got told we were switching from United Airlines to American Airlines to a flight that would leave at 6:00 p.m.  Because we would miss our connecting flight they switched our airline again to Delta so we had to run and get our bags that were at the ski and odd sized baggage claim.  We waited for our baggage for 30 minutes then ran to the Delta baggage check in.

As we waited for two elders to finish the checking in, we (9 of us) stood in a circle and said a prayer in the middle of the airport.  As we prayed, a random person stood by us and folded his arms with his hat off.  After our prayer, he told us that 'no matter how hard it is, you're doing the right thing.  The harder it is, the more Satan is working on you.  Keep going!'  We realized our flight was supposed to board at 2:20 and it was 2:30.  We ran through security for the second time.  Surprisingly, there was no one in the line.  As we waited for everyone to get through, a worker came up and told us that the plane knew we were coming but we had to hurry.  We ran, and I mean RAN through the airport to our flight.  As we were running, people in the airport were literally cheering us on.  We made it to our plane just in time for us to leave."

Since we couldn't be at two airports at the same time, Elder and Sister Clark picked up Hermana Lethbridge in Santa Barbara and drove her to Ventura where we had missionaries meet them to stay together until we got back to town.  

Hermana Cortes was reassigned to our mission and she lives in Salt Lake.  When she found out the flight had been cancelled, she booked another flight which would arrive in Santa Barbara at 9:30 p.m.  We got the sisters situated in the mission home and drove back to Santa Barbara.  

Hermana Lethbridge

Hermana Garcia

Sister Page

Hermana Cortes

Sister Christiansen

Hermana Fernandez

Elder Bates

Elder Leckbee

Elder Emerson

Elder Johnson

Elder Baker

Elder Allen

Elder Olacsi
Two missionaries were living in Idaho, one in Montana, one in Missouri, eight in Utah and one in Washington.

Because of the craziness that happened on Monday, we weren't able to go to the cross until Tuesday morning.  It's so fun to hear the comments from the missionaries when they see the view of the ocean.

The missionaries are committing to have "both feet in." They leave everything behind and have both feet in the mission.

Sister Christiansen was the first to jump off the ledge and commit.