The Call -Circuitous Route to Success

THE CALL

     

When we arrived home from a whirlwind trip to a funeral in St. George, then to California to sign some legal papers, and back to Mesa to help set up for our young adult ward Christmas Party Saturday night--our mission call was waiting. We have been called to serve in the Guatemala City South mission. Paul's specific call is to serve as a volunteer dental professor and my call is to serve as an assistant to the volunteer dental professor. (Remember Gilligan's Island? Am I Ginger or MaryAnn?)

The story: One of the reasons I have such a strong testimony of prayer and the sure knowledge that Our Father in Heaven loves us, knows who we are and what we need.

It is a small world in the church. Several months ago when we were in Guatemala for the dental brigada as they called it, we talked to Dick and Jennifer Johnson. He is a lawyer from Mesa and they have been there for about 3 years working on legal issues for building the temples that are being built down there. Jane Johnson Rasmussen, Dick's sister is an old school friend of mine. I went through 

   our stake while we raised our kids and we had kids the same age. She knows Annie and April and Benjamin and is in Benjamin'  ward now. While in Guatemala, we also visited with the Thomkinson's, a couple who had been in Honduras on a dental service mission. They were transferred to Guatemala City and as it happens, Dr. Thomkinson is  Jennifer’s 2nd cousin.  We were happy to hear he is a general dentist Because Paul thought they would only want a specialist for this kind of mission.

Since my cup is always half full instead of half empty, I kept telling him that I thought there would be an opportunity for a general dentist somewhere). When we got home, there was a blurb about that mission opportunity in the LDS Dental Academy's newsletter that asked if anyone was interested in taking over the orphanage dental center when the Thompkinson's left. Paul immediately called and

told them he was ready. For months we tried to get more information about what we needed to do but to no avail. We just weren't getting much response and since we had been praying about what we should do, we were starting to think maybe we weren't supposed to be in Guatemala.

When Jennifer came home for a visit and was visiting with Dick's sister Jane, my friend. Jennifer had
asked when she left if there was anything she could bring back to the Thompkinsons and he told her what he really wanted was a replacement to come before they left so we could work together and learn the ropes. Jane told her that my daughter-in-law had told her we were ready to go. I had already visited with them so she knew who I was and she called me, got us hooked up with the Thompkinson's and they got things rolling on their end, had Elder Clark ,the area authority, request us, and here we are. So much for response from the dental academy. It all happened like it was supposed to and the way everything happened we really know that is where we are supposed to be, Kind of a neat story about how small the world is in the church. And . . . tonight we went to a sing-a-long of the Messiah and saw our good friends the Laytons and found out he is Brother Thompkinson's first cousin.
And . . .The night we got the call from the Thompkinson's, a young man from our young adult ward was visiting with his bishop, Paul, and said he would like to go into dentistry. The young lady he had been dating had parents that were in Guatemala at a dental clinic in an orphanage, the Thompkinsons, of course. Small world! We enter the mission home March 1st.