MISSION CALL RECEIVED . . .

Linda looks just a bit surprised at the mission location

Traditionally, as family members have been called to serve full time missions for the Church, everyone has been given a chance to guess which state or country will be the destination point for this assignment. 

On August 10, 2011 family members gathered at the home of Norm & Linda Lindsay in Greensboro, North Carolina for the official opening of our envelope and reading of the mission assignment letter from Church Headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Absolutely no one in the family  ever expected our call might take us back to the state of Maryland where we have spent most of our lives. In the early days of this dispensation, however, it was not uncommon for men who had joined the Church in the country of their birth to emigrate to America and later be called to serve a mission back in their ancestral homeland.

The Maryland Baltimore Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints includes much of the state of Maryland from the Chesapeake Bay west to Cumberland and Frostburg (excluding the eastern shore and southern Maryland counties as well as the immediate area surrounding Washington, DC). It also includes the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, the upper half of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and a small piece of Pennsylvania (McConnellsburg area).

After a week of formal training at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah in early September, we will return home to Carolina where we will pack a few personal items in our automobile and drive north to Ellicott City, Maryland, which is just west of Baltimore. Upon our arrival, we will receive further instruction from our mission president and learn the specific location where we will be assigned to serve our "errand for the Lord" during the next 18 months.

We may have been a bit surprised at the location of our mission, but we are pleased to have this opportunity to serve a full time mission knowing that the call has come from the Lord.