Timeline for Getting our Mission Call

Here's a timeline of key events in our mission:

• 1967. In the year that we were married, my wife and I decided we wanted to serve a mission together. That desire has never wavered in the 41 intervening years.
• December 2000-January 2001. My wife and I, and two of our daughters, served a humanitarian expedition to Peru. I considered this part of the preparation for our upcoming mission to Peru.
• February 1, 2008. I'm not sure about this date, but some time around here, we started filling out the LDS church's online recommendation forms, with information about almost every aspect of our lives--past church service, education, special skills (music, computers, etc.), language abilities, and medical history.
• February 15, 2008. We started to get our physical and dental checkups. We needed some shots, and we both needed dental work.
• March 7, 2008. We finished all our medical and dental checkups.
• March 9, 2008. We held our final interview with our bishop in the morning and with our stake president in the afternoon. They both completed their part of the recommendation, and turned over the recommendation process to the assistant stake clerk. We received notice, however, that our physician had left off a couple of items that I needed to obtain from him.
• March 10, 2008. In the morning, I got the needed information from our physician, sent them to our ward clerk, and he submitted the final recommendation.
• Monday, March 10, 2008, 4:00. Our papers were officially submitted, and we received the official notice of "Recommendation Papers Received."
• Thursday, March 13, 2008. We got the official notice that our recommendation had been upgraded to "Ready for Assignment." I was surprised that things went that fast, because my medical profile wasn't the best, because of my history with atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries and atrial fibrillation. But because I recently had extensive tests that showed my heart was in good shape, and because I had recently run a half marathon, I guess the medical staff at church headquarters didn't have any issues with my medical condition.
• Friday, March 28, 2008. We got the official notice that our recommendation has been upgraded to "Call letter sent," which means we'd get on official call in the mail the next Wednesday.
• Wednesday, April 2, 2008. We received our mission call letter. We had been to our weekly service as ordinance workers at the Timpanogos Temple, and stopped by on our way to work at BYU to see if the mail had come. As we pulled into our cul-de-sac, our postwoman was pulling out. We stopped her and asked if our call had come. She said yes, that she had knocked on our door to hand deliver it, but we weren't at home. We didn't open the letter at that point, but waited until our kids who live in Utah could be there with us to open the letter. We got the kids who don't live in Utah on the phone, and opened our letter at 6:30 pm Utah time. I was thrilled by the call: Peru Lima East Mission. My wife wasn't quite so thrilled because she doesn't speak Spanish, but she knows that the call comes from God.

So from the time from when we started the online recommendation form and began our physical and dental checkups to the time that we got our call in the mail was only six weeks.