Mission Call!

I already posted this on facebook, but I have to write about it here because BRANDON GOT HIS MISSION CALL!

We got all the work of dental and physical exams, and paperwork, and photos, and interviews done by the middle of July or so, and he turned in his papers, and then we waited.

This was the first photo Brandon submitted with his mission papers. I wondered if we should use this picture because, although he had the best expression here, his eyes were squinted. But the family all voted for this one. Well they should know by now that Mom is always right. ;-) In the end we were asked to take and submit a new picture where we could see his eyes. 

After ...I want to say three weeks... On Thursday, August 15 Brandon got the big envelope from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the mail. This was it!

Bruce and I asked him if he wanted to wait until later in the day when Michael, Jason and Lindsey, and possibly my mom, could all get on Skype or face-time and watch him open it. But he didn't want to wait. (I didn't either, really.) We did at least get Lindsey on Bruce's phone, and Ryan used our camera to take a video of Brandon opening his mission call.

Brandon waits patiently while we all guess where he will go.

We made him wait while we went around the room and made some guesses. "Somewhere foreign" was ruled out as a cheating guess. (I thought they said, "somewhere foreign like Florida," which made me laugh.) There was an Asia, a Canada—speaking Mandarin, two Taiwans, and I chose Australia. (Bruce thought I said, "Austria," which I also thought would be cool.) Really,we all thought there was a possibility that he'd go somewhere Chinese-speaking because he had studied Chinese for two years in high school.

Brandon pulls out his trusty pocket-knife, opens the envelope and reads...

..."you are assigned to labor in the Hungary, Budapest mission."
!!!

We all laughed, it was so unexpected and exciting! (Although really every mission call is a surprise.) It was noted that Hungary is closer to Austria than to Taiwan. ;-)

Brandon continued reading aloud, "You will prepare to preach the gospel in the Hungarian language."

"I'm gonna be speaking Hungarian."

Well, how exciting is all that?

Later Brandon called his grandparents and Michael in Salt Lake, and Jason in Ephraim, to tell them the good news. And I took him out for ice-cream. And then it hit me: Hungary is far away!

Five thousand, six hundred, sixty-one, and eight-tenths miles away, to be exact. Wow.
But that's OK. I know it will all turn out good, so I'm still pretty excited. :-)

And now we prepare: Buy clothes and shoes and whatever else they tell us to get for him. Brandon will be entering the MTC (Missionary Training Center) on December 14.

(This is the picture that actually got turned in with his papers.)

So we are all excited here. Congratulations to Brandon!