Another New Group!!

We welcomed another new group of missionaries to the mission in December.

They were all supposed to arrive on December 17, but two from South American and three from the United States did not receive their visas on time so only the seven who attended the MTC in Mexico City arrived that day. 

Some groups come terrified, and others just excited. This group seemed very excited, very prepared and very ready to go to work. 

Since we only had the one flight come in, we welcomed them, fed them breakfast, and then did their training in the afternoon before sending them off to their areas. This is usually a two day process but this time it was all done in one. 

Here are all the new missionaries waiting to meet their trainers--with the exception of the sisters. The sister on the left is the trainer for the sister on the right. When we only get one new sister, it is pretty obvious who her trainer will be--the other sister in the room. :-) 

 And here are all the eager trainers, excited to find out who they will be training for the next three months!! We usually try to pair American elders with Spanish speaking ones, and vise versa. This way the Americans can learn the language faster, and the Spanish speakers can learn English. It doesn't always work out that way though. Sometimes inspiration dictates differently. :-)

Of course after training we fed them again . . .

And sent them out to work, celebrated Christmas and then received an email that two of the elders from the US would be coming December 27!! We were so excited to have them. Usually I am home cooking their food while President Wagner goes to the airport (and usually we don't have any spare room in the car, which is another reason I stay home), but this time they arrived late at night so I went to the airport and we all went to dinner afterward at a restaurant that was new to us (but very good).

  Here they are the next day with their trainers at the office. We can tell that these new missionaries will be great as well. Unfortunately they arrived without their luggage! So they stayed in town one extra day until their luggage arrived. Thankfully they were both very smart and had a carry on with all the necessities in it--minus one toothbrush. So President Wagner went to the pharmacy at 11:00 at night to buy one. What a nice man!!

We came home the afternoon after training to discover that the third US missionary was coming the next day!! He was very lucky and got a direct flight from Salt Lake and came early in the afternoon. We fed him at the house and did his training at night. I didn't get a picture of his training, but here he is at the house in front of our "Tree of Life."

We will see all of the new missionaries soon as we have interviews this month. I know the first few weeks can be pretty rough so we look forward to visiting with them.

Now we just need the two from South American to come!!