We Got Our Mission Call!

Ken and I got our mission call!  We are headed to Sendai, Japan!

During the Saturday morning session of general conference, Ken got a text saying our call had been assigned and mailed and that we should receive it in the next few days.  After the session, he went out to the mailbox and it was there!  We immediately started texting and calling our family to see when they were available to skype with us.  Kristen was headed to a between-sessions funeral, so we set it up for right after the afternoon session.  We were unable to reach Shonna because she was with Blake's family at the family cabin where there is no cell or Internet service (we talked to her and the kids later.)  But everyone else gathered for the grand opening.

We had everyone guess where we were going.  Everyone guessed Wisconsin, except my sister Joan.  She guessed Japan. Ken let me open it since I had never had that experience before.  Both of us were in shock when we read "Sendai, Japan"  What?
  We had been requested by the Milwaukee, Wisconsin mission president (President Cutler) and put on our papers that we would like to serve there.  So, we were so surprised to see Japan! Joan was right! We walked around in shock the rest of the day.  We were both suffering from bad colds which didn't help us have clear heads!  We tried to muddle through all the packet that they sent, but we both got overwhelmed.   You just can't believe all there is to do.
  Now a little over a week later, we've whittled that "to do" list a bit, but I think I add more things to it each day than I cross off!  That is going to need to change soon.  We leave on  Monday, December 7th.  We will fly to SLC airport and then take a shuttle to the MTC in Provo.  We leave for Japan on December 14th.  Our call is member/leadership support.
We have been in contact with the mission office and so we unofficially know where we will be serving:  Tsuruoka, Japan.  It's near the coast of the Sea of Japan. It's on the opposite side of the island of Honshu from Sendai.  If you look at a map, we're north of Tokyo, west and a little north of Sendai (I've tried in vain for the last hour to get a picture of a map on here.)
 We pray for help in this huge, new challenge in our life!

Elder and Sister Hinton