Our adventure started at 10:00 in the morning as President, myself and our great Assistants (Elders Stohel and Tribe) headed to the airport to pick up (we thought) our 3 new missionaries at 11:40. There was no traffic and we got there in record time so we decided to test a few polish pastries. At 1:00 pm with no missionaries in sight, President called Missionary Travel in Salt Lake City to find that they had been re-routed because of a storm in Chicago. They would now not arrive until 3:40pm!
...Elder Tribe and President stayed, had a little lunch, and happen to catch two of our Senior Missionaries (Elder and sister Harding, from Soda Springs, Idaho) trying to skip the country! (Actually, they were at the airport picking up a Family History Coordinator who was giving a fireside in Warsaw tonight.....or so they said!)
The Tarasevichs arrive--and they only lost 2 pieces of luggage! This great couple will be serving in Bydgoszcz over the Young Single Adult Program there. We are so glad to have them in our mission. WELCOME! So, it was back to the mission home for some dinner, orientation, and to bed. BUT WAIT??? Where is Sister Stay??? She was put on a different flight when changes were made in the states and wouldn't be arriving until 10:05 pm! So......................
............it was back to the airport for President Nielson! 10:05pm...no Sister Stay. 11:00pm ...no Sister Stay.
11:15 pm Finally....Sister Stay came through the Baggage Claim doors! This young Missionary is a real trooper!! She wasn''t frazzled a bit. Welcome to Poland, Sister Stay!
As usual, Sister Stay had lost 2 bags herself. Here we are at the Lost and Found Baggage Claim office. I thought it would be great to get our 'group' picture in front of it. Here is Security telling us we can't. Hey....it's the Lost and Found for crying out loud!!!! And we had lost a total of 4 bags today.....let us take a picture! As far as Security knows, we didn't take a picture. Don't tell.
President and Sister Stay. Who would have thought that picking up 3 Missionaries could be so difficult! We dropped Sister Stay off at Sister Lefevre and Sister Allen's apartment after midnight where she will be staying until she receives her luggage....which is supposed to be dropped off at the Mission Office tomorrow. When her lugguge does come, she will be serving in Katowice with Sisters Brown and Smith. President figures he spent around 12 hours (because of the weather and traffic he could not go back and forth) at the airport today, but it was definitely worth it to greet these 3 very excited and ready-to-work Polish Missionaries.
Hurry and get to bed- we leave at 5:00am (3 hours from now) for the Bydgoszcz Christmas Zone Conference.
We feel so bad that the flight delays caused you to be so long at the airport when your time is so precious!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the pictures of Sister Stay. It means so much to us that you went the extra mile to greet her personally and to take the time to post the pictures. We can tell from your previous posts the degree of love you have for these incredible missionaries.
We feel so fortunate that our daughter gets to work in such a wonderful country, with such incredible people, and with such a devoted Mission President and his wife!