The Mission Call

It's lost.

That's pretty much why I don't have it yet. But it's my own fault. It's also really complicated, but people have been asking me to explain. Here's how it went down.

I got an email from my stake president June 14 saying my papers had been reviewed, and a call was sent out (stake presidents have access to the status of mission papers). It should arrive Wednesday.

On the following Wednesday, nothing came. I would be going out of town Thursday afternoon until Sunday night, so even if it came the following day, I would miss it. My mom convinced me to talk to the post office. My roommate drove. A nice employee told me if I put a hold on my mail, it wouldn't be delivered and I could pick anything that came up the following morning from the post office before leaving town (he was sympathetic and really nice about it--and I think I got a little more help than normal).

Thursday morning, my mom had come down to Provo to drive me to the airport. We go to the post office and talk to a very accommodating employee who looked for my mail--but had to report that nothing had come. But she then showed us the route map for my address and told us to go hunt down the carrier.

We go and patrol the eight blocks for a good...twenty minutes, at least. I'm ready to give up. We find a carrier--but he was a block outside the correct route. Some more patrolling, and we find the right carrier. "No mission calls today," he says.

My mom and I head to Salt Lake. En route, she gets on the phone with the bishop. He does a bit of searching, and we figure out what went wrong:

I had written the wrong mailing address on the papers. I had moved like a week before I filled them out, and was two blocks off.

He does have the date I'm leaving, though: September 10. Apparently, he gets the date as a confirmation that the call was issued.

I go out of town. And a bunch of other things happen...well, mostly my mom sending people to look for the address I wrote down (which, despite what the post office said, doesn't exist).

That's where things are. The Missionary Dept can't send out a duplicate until something like two weeks after the original. I think we're waiting for that...although something else might happen in the meantime, I don't know. Pretty much I don't care where I'm going. I don't care as much about finding out, either--every time we chase down a postman, I get my hopes up but then nothing comes of it. So I'm cool just waiting and not thinking about it.