Called to Serve

     We were going on our merry way, Rick working long hours as president of Woodbury Corporation and both of us working as Ordinance Workers in the Salt Lake Temple. Rick was serving as High Priests Group Leader in the ward and I was the Ward and Stake Choir Director and Music Chairman. We were enjoying our time being parents of five and grandparents of seven. Then came the phone call from Elder Russell Ballard's office, and our lives changed in an instant. After meeting and being interviewed by Elder Ballard, we were told to expect another call in the near future, and sure enough it came less than a week later. This time it was from the President Dieter Uchtdorf's secretary. We met with him at his office a day later and it was then that he issued our call, for Rick to be a Mission President in an English-speaking mission, and I to be a full-time missionary and Rick's companion. The term "shock and awe" comes to mind, as well as "trembling in our boots," but with all our hearts we answered, "yes!"

     In February we received our assignment, to preside over the Kentucky Louisville Mission, and we were thrilled. Earthly powers wouldn't have known this, but the Lord did, that we have special familial ties to Kentucky. My ancestry on my mother's side, come from this area, Stamping Ground, Kentucky to be exact, where my grandmother was born and raised and generations before her likewise. My mother was a convert, and when she died in 1983, had completed four generations-plus of her genealogy. Rick, then took over as the detective he is, and researched back many, many generations. He likely knows the land records, wills and probate records of Scott and Owen counties better than most professional genealogists.   I have then taken those records and submitted them to the Temple, and been able to do the work, with the help of other relatives, for a large number of Kentucky and Indiana ancestors. I had visited kin in Kentucky with my family as a child, and Rick and I had visited a couple of times, once with our children when we were on a cross-county trip. So, of all the places we could have been called, this one already held a special place in our hearts. (I had also said, with a smile, that I would go anywhere as along as there was a Costco!)

          It was not easy, to leave and transition Woodbury Corporation, where Rick had been President for over 30 years, nor to leave our family, our children and precious grandchildren that we love so much, my aging dad and step-mom, and my sister who was just finishing chemotherapy. Nor was it easy to leave our home that held so many memories and that we had just remodeled/rebuilt, our neighborhood, our friends, our mountains and beautiful city. But we did so, with courage in our hearts and faith in the Lord and his goodness. We had crossed the line and committed ourselves long ago. We had covenanted in the Lord's house, to consecrate our time, talents, and everything the Lord had blessed us with to the building up of His Kingdom. So, hand-in-hand, we took a leap of faith, and the rest is history...