Jeff received his mission call on 21 October 2009. Salem, UT is a small mostly LDS community. When mission calls come into the post office, the postmaster calls the family early in the morning to let them know it has arrived. On the 21st we received a call from the post office at about 7:00 a.m. The family can then go and knock on the door of the still closed post office and pick up the call early. Tammy took Sean and they headed right over to the post office pick up the call letter.
We called Jeff and agreed to meet him at his dorm at BYU at about 11:00 a.m. with the call so that he could open it. Tammy picked me up at work and Sharee met us at the dorm. Jeff's friend, Rhett Nance also came for the "opening".
Jeff looked a little nervous but was excited to open it up but got right to it. After opening the envelope he read silently while the rest of us waited in anticipation. Finally, every in near unison said, "well?!" "I've been called to the North Carolina Raleigh mission," he finally said. Right away I remember that I knew someone else that was currently serving there but coudn't think who for a moment. Jeff reminded me that Jason Carrick, a young man Jeff had known through scouting and had looked up to was due to return to return sometime in November from the same mission. Someone asked what the letter said and that's when Jeff noticed that it was a Spanish speaking mission.
Jeff had pre-composed a text to all of his friends and so he filled in the mission and used up the remainder of his texts (and then some) for the month sending to a full address list. Sharee went online to Wikipedia and started filling us full of facts about North Carolina.
I had no idea to which mission Jeff would be call and had never thought of North Carolina. My initial response was surpirse followed quickly with a calm feeling that this was definitely where the Lord wanted him to serve. Jeff had a missionary prep class and so we had to cut our time together short as he rushed out to tell his mission prep teacher and the students in his class about his call. Tammy, Sharee, and I walked next door to the Creamery on Ninth for a good BYU hamburger and curly fries with black pepper!
