Mama Winn's Place: Transfers!

On Wednesday, August 11th, after spending the morning with our new missionaries, we headed over to a nearby chapel, where our 200ish missionaries had gathered for an insane process called "Transfers!" This was even worse than the previous week in the Batcave! As Bruce and I drove up, the first thing we were greeted by was the sight of two large fire trucks and about a dozen police cars. "This cannot be a good thing, " we thought. To our relief, we found that an electrical transformer had blown, with sparks flying about through the air, but it was not caused by our missionaries (thankfully) and nobody had been hurt. I was talking to one officer on the scene, and he requested that our missionaries stop praying for a sign!

Once we got over the fear that our missionaries had started the chapel on fire, we were in awe of the organized chaos that was the parking lot. It looked like this:

So we decided to join in the madness. We parked the car and started wandering about like everyone else. We smiled for pictures and chatted with our friends.

Then it was time for the big announcement.

All of the new zone leaders gathered around President Winn. A couple of days before, he had called 22 missionaries and told each of them that they would be a zone leader for the next six weeks. They did not know what area they would be in charge of, or who would be their companion, but they knew that they would have the shared responsibility for 16-20 missionaries in a certain geographical area. So 22 eager and very curious Elders gathered around President Winn and the assistants.

With an almost audible drum roll sounding, the names of the eleven zones were called out, one at a time, followed by the names of the two zone leaders over each area. It was pretty exciting as each missionary found out who his companion would be. One announcement that caught most everyone by surprise was that Elder Nelson would no longer be an assistant, but a zone leader, and that Elder Beck would be the new assistant to the president, along with Elder Campbell.

Then, each companionship of zone leaders took a poster board with the name of their zone on it and lined up in a row with all the other zone leaders. On the back of the poster board, were the names of the missionaries who would be serving in their zone, listed with their companions. On the count of three, all eleven signs went up, and every missionary there scurried around, looking to see where their name was, who their companion was going to be, and where they would be serving. There were whoops and hollers and squeals of delight, and lots of hugs all around.

Then the real total chaos began, as each missionary had to find their companion, find their cars or a ride if they were assigned to a bike or walking area, find out what apartment they would be living in, get keys, get the cell phone that was assigned to their area, load up and head to the apartment to drop off their luggage, after which they headed out to the street to work for the afternoon.