Preparing for Transfers

We've been in the mission for six weeks now, and every six weeks, transfers happen. The old missionaries, who have completed their two years of service, go home, and we get a fresh new batch of missionaries from the Missionary Training Center. To accomodate the change, and to complicate matters, many of the rest of the 200 missionaries get shuffled up. Different Elders are assigned to leadership positions, to replace the Elders who have left. Some of the experienced missionaries get to train the new "greenies" coming into the mission. Companions and apartments are rotated, and generally speaking, it's pure pandemonium. To prepare for this, earlier this week, President Winn and his assistants went down to the Batcave for two days. They invited me to come, but I politely declined their invitation. Elder Campbell told me, "That's okay. Even if you had given us your opinion on stuff, we probably would have ignored you and done what we wanted to anyway." Well, now, there's a big surprise. I think I'm going to have a heart attack and die from that surprise! (Thank you, Iago. By the way, we did have a heart attack later in the week.)

Since I still haven't done the 'Cribs' video of the house, you may not know that there is a Batcave in our basement. There is! By day, and for five of every six weeks, it looks like a perfectly normal finished basement family room, with two large maps hanging on the wall.

Perhaps, you might think, the people who live here are particularly interested in Geography. Perhaps they are learning the names of the state and world capitals. Perhaps they want their grandchildren to be well educated. All of these are good assumptions. But if you guessed these things, you would be wrong!

The week before transfers, the secret doors behind the maps are unlocked and opened, revealing THE TRANSFER BOARD!!!! What!?!?! You don't know what a transfer board is!?!?!

Yeah, I didn't either until six weeks ago. But it's a white board with 200 little laminated cards that have magnets on the back of them stuck to it. Each missionary in our mission has one of these little laminated cards with their picture on it. It also contains other important information, like if they speak English or Spanish. And if they've had too many bad driver warnings and gotten their driving priveleges revoked. All around the little white laminated cards are blue area cards. These tell us the areas in Salt Lake City where we need missionaries. They divide the mission into Districts and Zones.

So Batman, Robin, and Alfred Pennyworth went to the Batcave for two days, only coming up occasionally for air and dinner. They arranged and rearranged the little white laminated cards on the Transfer board into companionships and districts and zones, with district leaders and zone leaders and trainers and a new assistant to the president until they were happy with their results. It is actually harder than you may think. There are so many things to consider. For example, you have to make sure that no two missionaries who are likely to kill one another are assigned to be companions. You cannot put two missionaries who have both lost their driving privileges together in an area that needs a car. You cannot assign a missionary who has only been out on his mission for six weeks to train a new missionary. Well, I suppose you could, but I'm not sure how effective they would be. And, you cannot put Sister missionaries in Wyoming. (I don't know why. They just don't. And I'm pretty sure that's okay with the sister missionaries.) When all that is done, we all began the hardest part of all: Keeping it secret until transfer day. They close the secret transfer board doors and lock them up, and get ready for transfer day. For whatever reason, it is very important to keep this all secret until transfer day. Well, that day is tomorrow, so I guess we've done our job. I'll have to let you know how it goes.

As for the heart attack. One night, when Bruce and I came home after a long day of working, we were pleasantly surprised to see that we had been given a heart attack. Our front door looked like this:

It was covered with sticky notes left there by some of our sweet sister missionaries. It made us smile. Many things in our new life make us smile. This is a good place to be, and we are very happy. What an amazing group of young people we are serving with! We love it.