Prepare Ye the Way

9/1/24

Our summer months have been filled with mission preparations. First, Todd needed to retire so we could serve our mission. He officially retired from teaching for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a seminary and institute teacher on July 19th. We did a lot of traveling to see family before we leave. And, we spent time preparing to move out of our house. Our daughter and her family are living there while we are gone. The house will be full of grandchildren and love and it makes us very happy! While there has been a lot to do, it also feels like the summer has flown by. In just 2 weeks we enter the MTC for a week and then we are off to Iceland. The mission call came 5 ½ months before our mission began and, at that time, it seemed like a long time to wait. But now! Here we go!

In August we spent 4 days in home MTC training. I’m not sure what home MTC is like for young missionaries, but ours was pretty great! We were taught by another senior missionary couple, Elder & Sister Austin. They live in Texas and they are serving a senior service mission to help outgoing senior missionaries prepare to serve Member & Leader Support missions. They have previously served as MLS missionaries and they were sharing with us all about how these missions work. We met for a couple of hours each morning over zoom. Each day emphasized a different focus: Living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Caring for those in Need, Inviting all to Receive the Gospel, & Uniting Families for Eternity. As member and leader support missionaries we will spend our time ministering to those in our branch and community and supporting the young elders as they are teaching the gospel. Each night the Austins sent us an email with invitations and commitments from our study that day. They are great teachers and we admire their example of service. It was wonderful to meet with them.

As you know, things couldn’t just go smoothly with our summer preparations. One of the reasons why our call came so many months before going to Iceland was to allow for our Icelandic visas to be approved. At the start of April we sent all of our documents required for our visas to the church in Salt Lake and they sent them to Elder Allen (a senior missionary in Iceland) who would facilitate getting our visas approved. For months we hadn’t heard anything about the visas and assumed that they were working their way through the system. We got a phone call from Elder Allen late in August telling us he had heard from Icelandic immigration and they were not happy with our marriage certificate. He said they thought it looked like something we had just typed up and sent in. It didn’t look official enough to them! I’m not sure what we were supposed to do about that. Elder Allen replied to the email and told them that those were the documents our state had given us, which was true. 

At this point we were wondering if our visas would be approved so we could go to Iceland for more than 90 days. When we sent in our original paperwork for the visas we were told to send two copies of our marriage certificate. We wondered if the fact that they were copies and not originals is what the problem was? That night Todd and I ordered several more original marriage certificates from Utah to be sent to us overnight. We got them 2 days later and then used DHL to ship them to Iceland. We hoped that when Elder Allen took new originals to the immigration authorities they would accept them and approve our visas. Well, about two days after we had shipped them (and before they had made it to Iceland) we got another message from Elder Allen that started out with “I hope that you two don’t hate me for putting you through the extra steps and expense. . .” and we wondered what was wrong now! But he went on to say, “I got word today that your visas in Iceland have been approved!” I guess they decided to accept our marriage certificate as genuine. I promise, we really are married. And we now have 5 original marriage certificates to prove it. 🙂 

We got the message that our visas had been approved early on a Monday morning. As that day went on we got the following information as well: Official notification from the church that our visas had been approved, an email from the MTC with information about our MTC week and a survey for us to fill out with things the MTC needs to know about our stay. We will be training in the Provo MTC from September 16th – 20th. 

The next day we got emails from church travel with our travel information to Iceland. They had plane tickets for us to go from Salt Lake City to Copenhagen, Denmark on September 23rd. We are serving in the Copenhagen Denmark mission, but we weren’t sure if we were flying straight to Iceland or going to the mission home in Copenhagen first. The senior missionaries who are currently in Iceland all flew straight to Iceland when they entered the mission field. However, there is a new mission president now and maybe he wanted us to go to Denmark first? Also, we weren’t sure about who arranged travel from Denmark to Iceland. We decided we should call church travel and confirm that this was all correct and get some questions answered.

Throughout these couple of days with so much information coming in we had a few phone calls to make with both the MTC and with church travel. We talked with the kindest employees who were all so happy to help us with our questions. It turns out that we should be flying straight to Iceland and not to Denmark, so our tickets were updated. I’m glad we called! What a surprise it would be to show up unexpectedly in Denmark when we should be in Iceland! We fly out of SLC in the morning on the 23rd and we arrive in Reykjavik on the morning of the 24th. 

Another phone call we made to the MTC was to clarify about our mission name tags. There is occasional confusion about just where we are going (see flight story above and the first few days after we got our mission call!) and we wanted to make sure our name tags will be printed in Icelandic, not Danish. Another super kind sister at the MTC made a note in our file that will assure we will have Icelandic name tags. 

We were also blessed with the opportunity to speak together in our stake conference about how preparing to serve a mission has brought us closer together as a couple. It was fun to stand together and testify of the blessings we have received over the last 5 months as we have prepared to serve. I can’t imagine a better companion than Todd and we have definitely grown closer these last few months. 

In the scriptures we read the phrase “prepare ye the way of the Lord” (1 Nephi 10:7). I have often thought of this phrase as we are preparing the way for our mission, preparing our hearts for our service, and watching the Lord prepare the way for us. I love this teaching about preparing the way: 

“In ancient times, before a king paid a visit to a place in his kingdom, the roads were often improved in order to facilitate his travel. When kings and potentates in those days were about to travel, they notified their subjects that they were coming, and that the roads were to be repaired and straightened so that there should be no unnecessary delay. When we repent, we remove the mountains, valleys, and rough places, from the pathway to our hearts and souls and the Savior can more easily come into our lives.”

https://www.ldsliving.com/New-Testament-Lesson-4-Prepare-Ye-the-Way-of-the-Lord-/s/63338

I love this. We are preparing our hearts to receive the Spirit of the Lord. We are preparing our lives to serve Him on a mission. And, we are watching Him prepare the way for us. He is opening doors and clearing obstacles that stand in our way. He is softening hearts and strengthening us to overcome hurdles in order to serve. His hand is involved in preparing our way as we are preparing to serve Him. He has been with us this summer. We testify this is true. See you in the MTC!