6. PHONE CALL- Salt Lake City Airport

Monday 19 August 2013

Elder Siebers was allowed to call us as he waited for his departure to Arizona.  Scott and I were both able to take a moment from our work day and get on a 3 way call with him.  We were able to talk for about 45 minutes.

Some highlights from our chat:

- He was extremely tired and sounded it.  He said they went to bed around 12:30 am and then got up at 2:30 am to see the first missionary from their District leave the MTC.  They then had to be on the van by 4:30 am- so "of course" they just stayed up.

- There were 24 missionaries on his flight to Phoenix.  Six of them are Elders that are assigned to Rio and waiting for Visas.  Four of those Elders are from his District.

- He has put on three pounds from eating at the MTC.

- The book I sent him of helpful-phrases-for-Americans-in-Brazil (which I ordered from Amazon and shipped direct to the MTC) was full of "inappropriate" phrases- so yeah, not that useful.

- Canned soda actually made it via USPS priority flat rate.

- His favorite "stress reliever" that I had sent to him was these Stretchy Strings.  He said that he and the other Elders looked at them and didn't really know what to do with them.  But then they read a caution on the package that said they should not be "whipped on bare skin."  So yeah- you can guess exactly what they did with them.

-He asked Scott to send him some information about how mission work is going in our Canton Ward.  He said he really has an interest and wants to hear about how things are moving along here.  This was just another evidence that his focus and efforts are really focused on the work he is doing.

- Apparently he saw an article on the Church website about the Hartford Temple Groundbreaking.  He knew that we were there and asked us for some commentary.

Overall, he was pretty mellow but also very positive.  He was very excited to be going to Gilbert and can't wait to actually start the work.

[I did some sleuthing on the internets and it appears that Mondays are going to be his Pday.  I suspect we won't get an email from him until next week.]