Mission Call

We started working on Eric’s mission papers back in May. In our experience, things always take a little longer than you’d expect, and he’d set his availability date for October 1st, so we wanted to get them submitted! He had his final interview with President Thornton on Sunday, July 14th, and then we just had to wait! 

I checked to see if a missionary email address had been created for him on Friday the 26th…and it had! From everything I’d heard, that meant he’d be getting his call the next Tuesday! 

So, just a little more than 2 weeks after his papers were submitted, Eric got an email on the morning of Tuesday, July 30th saying his call was ready!!! We thought about opening it that evening, but decided to wait until the next evening to give people more of a notice. Plus, that would put it on July 31st, the day of our annual Harry Potter Birthday Party, which meant we’d have lots of goodies to share with whoever came over! 

We collected lots of guesses:

Eric has been learning Dutch and really would’ve loved to go somewhere Dutch-speaking. But in the days leading up to opening it, he kept saying he felt like it was going to be Salt Lake. 

We told everyone to come over between 7 & 7:30 that night and they dug in to all of the goodies while we waited.

Then we started a Facebook Live video, called the Montgomery family chat so any family not here could watch, and we even got to call Matt in Argentina so that he, his companion, and the family they were eating dinner with that night could watch.

 We were ready to open the call! 

And…he was right! He was called to the Utah Salt Lake City West Mission, Spanish speaking!

We’re so excited for him!

His Uncle Ryan also served on n the Salt Lake City Mission (he was there on his mission when Michael and I got married!), plus Matt’s friend Emma Fisher had served there, and our homeschool friend Dacey Jackson is there currently, also Spanish speaking. So lots of cool connections!

He is scheduled to start Home MTC on October 7th and will report to the Provo MTC to learn Spanish on Wednesday, October 16th. He’s supposed to head up to Salt Lake on November 19th. 

It’s going to be a busy few months!

The other cool thing about Eric opening his call on July 31st was that it was exactly a year since Matt started Home MTC!

Andrew got to color in Matt’s halfway mark that week!

That evening after opening his call, he and Matt got to message back and forth a bit.