Guess where Rhys will go on his mission

Hi all,

Our son Rhys should receive his mission call either today or next Friday. Feel free to post a comment and take a wild guess as to where he'll end up.

To make full disclosure I will give the following information which might be relevant, but then again, might not be...

He has studied four years of spanish in high school. His older brother is coming home from the Belem, Brazil mission on November 5th. He is secretly hoping to be sent to Fiji.

Please post a guess and we'll let you know where he's going once we find out.

Memories of my mission

With a son currently serving in the Belem, Brazil Mission and another that is preparing his mission papers, I have reflected back on my own mission. I feel impressed to share some of the experiences I had, and encourage those that read this to share maybe one or two of your favorite missionary experiences in the comments section. Your memories can come from when you were serving in the mission field, or maybe you just had a good missionary experience last week in your home ward.

I served in the Canada Montreal Mission from May 1984 to May 1986. The unofficial mission motto was, "Many are cold, but few are frozen."

I was actually only called to serve an 18 month mission. At the time, all of the elders were called on 18 month missions, but the time length was changed while I was there. Those of us that were already in the field were given the opportunity to serve anywhere from 18 months to 24 months. My father encouraged me to come home and get started on my schooling, but my mom encouraged me to stay in the field for the extra time. I opted to stick around for the extra six months.

I was serving in the mission office, as the financial secretary, when the change occurred, and I was the first person in the mission to know about it. The mission phone rang and I answered. Elder Bangerter of the Seventy called and asked to speak with President Taggart, our mission president. President Taggart was at a zone conference, so Elder Bangerter relayed the information to me and I tracked down President Taggart to inform him.

I remember being interested in what President Taggart’s response would be. When I explained to him that missions had been extended from 18 months to 24 he chuckled. Scott and Lou Ciel Taggart are truly rare people. They have a positive outlook on everything. You get to see this in future posts when I talk about some of the knuckleheaded things I did and how they responded. As I was preparing to write this post I googled Canada Montreal Mission and came across the website I highlighted above. Since serving as my mission President, the Taggart’s have served missions in Chile, South Africa, He was called as the temple president, and she as the temple matron, for the Montreal, Canada Temple in 2000, and they are currently serving in the Madrid Spain Temple. There are not enough superlatives to describe them.

I was born and raised in Orange County, CA. After graduating from high school I worked and surfed for about a year until it was time to go on my mission. When I entered the MTC I had sun bleached blond hair (back when I had hair), and a dark tan.

President Taggart and his wife were actually in the MTC the same time that I was. I was in either the first or second batch of new missionaries for them.

On the day I entered the MTC, there were only two missionaries that were assigned to French speaking missions, myself and Sister Diana Devries. We were both assigned to the same mission.

Sister Devries and I were always put into another companionship, i.e. I was matched up with two other Elders and she was put with two other Sisters. However, there was about a three day period between when our last companions left and our new companions arrived. For those three days our branch president in the MTC told us that we were unofficially companions and to hang out together trying to keep a low profile for three days. I remember once sitting somewhere and just chatting with Sister Devries. Another man walked by, he was probably a branch president for one of the other languages and he looked at us very oddly, kinda like “what are the two of you sitting here together doing without another Elder or Sister present?”

I’ve never heard of another story of 19-21 year old elders and sisters being paired up with each other. It’s possible that Sister Devries and I are unique in that regard.

President Taggart, being aware of the unusual circumstances surrounding Sister Devries and myself, sent her to the northern part of the mission and kept me in the southern part of the mission for the bulk of our missions. We were never assigned anywhere close to each other.

I loved my time in the MTC. It was a spiritual feast to day after day be taught how to draw closer to the spirit and to learn a new language. I remember Elder McConkie coming to speak to us and the powerful testimony of the Savior that he bore.

I will chronicle more of my mission later, but please feel free to add thoughts or memories of your own in the comments section.

Missionary e-mail 5-16-08

It was great to be able to talk to you all this sunday! I loved it. I cant wait to be able to talk to you all again. This week was super busy, we had another baptism on saturday but water ran out in our part of the city. Somehow, one of the neighbors of the church had water in their house so we filled up buckets one by one and filled up the baptismal font. It took about an hour and half to do but finally we got enough water in there to baptize.

Things are getting quite a bit more busy now as we are getting closer to another transfer. Things will be changing around here though as the idea of a "Transfer" will be done away with. Starting in a few weeks, transfers will be on a weekly basis instead of every 6 weeks, encouraging the missionaries to work hard all the time and not just a few weeks out of the transfer. It should make things pretty interesting around here. Ill be around just long enough to start seeing the effects of the change.

The poor new guy at home had yet another shocking experience to add to his list of things that have happened just this transfer. Last night, he an his comp were affronted by a man who came up to them, demanded their cell phones, and proceeded to steal it out of their pocket, then took off. He has a tenth of the time I have on the mission and he has already seen so much cool stuff. Lucky...

I gotta go. Love you guys ton. Hope you all have a great week!
Tchau!

Elder Childs

Colin's e-mail 5-2-08

Hey there,

Well, like always, I didn't even realize that friday had arrived again. Things in the office have been a bit more calm than before. I managed to get all caught up in my work and used my free time to try to remember my C++ class I took in high school to be able to fix up and improve the system we use to keep track of all the missionaries. Im making a little bit of progress there.

Things around the house are pretty calm too. We are helping out the new guy, Elder Spencer, so he can learn Portuguese. He just got here from Norco, CA and is struggling a little with the language like most american elders do. The poor kid has had quite the culture shock since he got here 3 weeks ago and has already seen a guy run over by a bus, been caught up in a robbery, and seen a guy shot and killed. Soon enough, he will be as desensitized and used to it as the rest of us. I like seeing the new guys come in because I find it interesting to remember what it was like in his shoes a year and a half ago.

We have found some great investigators recently that are showing some potential, including a 15 year old boy named Jadernilson who has been visiting church for a while with his RM neighbor. His mom seems to be showing some interest too. The lawyer I mentioned last week couldn't make it to church but is excited to be there this week.

Well... not much else is going on. Im sorry things are a little boring to hear about here in the Staff. like always, I'll keep looking for something good to be able to tell you next week. I love you all tons and can't wait til the 11th!

Love,
Elder Childs

PS. Send Chapstick in the next package. Im almost out. Thanks! :)

Colin's e-mail 4-18-08

Belem Brazil is right off of the Amazon...the river, not the dot com company.

Hello,
Believe it or not, I changed areas already. Kinda. It was a prety interesting week this week with the transfers. Here in the staff, things get pretty hectic the week before and week of a transfer. We got a bunch of new elders and sisters this week so a bunch of new areas were opened. President Hoggan decided that he would put an extra companionship in every ward in the mission that was just about ready to split including ours, here in Telegrafo. There is now a companionship of an american and his new greenie american comp who will be staying in our house and working full time in our area. President also decided to split our area in half so that all 8 elders wouldnt be in the same place. 4 elders stayed in the half with all our investigators and 4 will be going to open the other half of the area where elders havent been working. I am one of those 4. I thought I wouldnt have to open another area on my mission seeing as I already held the current record of 4 times opening and area. This makes 5. It will be little challenging because we have to start over fresh with no investigators or anything but it should be great. Me and elder Hinsdale found 2 married families last night that are showing some great interest. It was a spiritual lesson and they accepted all the invitations. We are already off to a good start I guess. I will be staying in the same house with the same comp and everything but now we will be working a little further away and I pretty much have only 3 comps instead of 5.

The transfer was great. It made things so rushed around the office trying to get everthing ready but everything went well. I got to see a ton of my friends and elders from my group at the MTC so It was really fun. I was still just as nervous anouncing the transfers as the first time but I still got some laughs and cheers out of everyone so its all good.

Yesterday I participated in the mission Council again with all the zone leaders in the mission. It was really spiritual and the assistants and president hoggan gave great talks. It was pretty nerve racking having to do my little part of telling them all what they can be doing better to make my job easier but it went well.
Well, thats all I can think of that was exciting this week so I better get going. I love you. I cant wait for our phone call in a few weeks. Tchau!

Elder Childs