Friday, May 8, 2015

The Ongoing Saga of the Call Assignment and Some Time with the Moving Angels

Official Letter:   Humanitarian/Welfare mission, Phnom Penh Cambodia.  Your mission president may change your assignment.  Report for orientation on May 18.

Mission President:  We're thinking we would like to change your assignment to "Member/Leader Support" (MLS) and are looking at how to manage that.  

VN Govt.:  Can't switch while you're here.  You have to leave the country and reapply if you want to switch.  It will take 30 days or so from application to approval if you do.

Humanitarian/Welfare supervisors in Hong Kong: Welcome! We understand that you will be serving as Humanitarian missionaries in Hanoi.  We'll arrange for your welfare training in the US before you come.

Humanitarian/Welfare missionaries in Hanoi: Welcome!  One problem: The host organization contract states that they will not host more than two couples at a time in the country.  We have two couples here already and none are scheduled to leave before August.  And there is one more couple already scheduled to arrive to replace the two who leave then.

Mission President:  Good to know.  We'll start the church support visa applications now.

Humanitarian/Welfare supervisors in Hong Kong: Good to know.  

Wheelchair specialist trainers in the U.S.: Welcome! We'd like to meet with you before you leave for a couple of hours of wheelchair training.

Wheelchair specialist trainers in Utah:  Well, maybe not. Never mind.  We hear you won't be needing that training.

Us: Hi, Mission travel department.  Here is the postcard you wanted us to send you so that you can make our flight reservations.

Mission President:  We need the following documents from you to put together your application.....

Mission Travel Department: We haven't made your travel reservations yet.  We are waiting to hear about the timing of your visa.  We might need to delay your start date.

Mission President:  We've finally gotten all the papers submitted.  The last time we did this it took 3 weeks to get approval. This one may take longer because we are requesting that you be able to work both in Hanoi and in Ho Chi Minh.  It might be wise to delay your start date.

Harried, Slightly Anxious Assistant Manager at the Church Missionary Department: We might need to delay the Hassells?  They have been assigned and called as Welfare/Humanitarian Services missionaries.  If they don't do Welfare/Humanitarian training the last week of May as scheduled then they'd have to wait until the next one in July.  The only way we can allow them not to do Welfare/Humanitarian Training is if we get the senior missionary coordinators in the Welfare Services Department to sign off on that.  And it is my understanding that they will receive instructions from the Welfare Department managers on their welfare assignments in Vietnam. Please see the attachment which explains how welfare department missionaries work with mission presidents.

Mission President: Dear Brother Harried Assistant Manager,  You can keep them on the regularly scheduled date.  We can find work for them to do in Phnom Pehn while they wait for their visa.

Harried But Now Less Anxious Assistant Manager at the Church Missionary Department: We"ll keep them on the schedule.  Will they have their passports or are they currently being held by the Vietnamese government as part of the visa application?

Church Travel Specialist: I have their passports. I'll send them to them during their orientation training.

And the saga continues. 

Four more days until the first segement of the journey.


Many thanks to Ngoc Tran, Li Chao Zhao, Kasey Gillespie, Beau Shaw, and Ryan Flake for helping us load furniture into the UHaul this evening and unload it into a storage unit in the midst of a solid Oklahoma rainstorm.  And to Armi Albers for her amazing cleaning skills. We could never have done it without you. You were angels. And we treasure our friendship.

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