Back to French

It seems that we get new or updated information almost daily. We received an email from the Pankratz ( the mission office couple now) that advised us that the mission office may not move until the lease expires and she thinks that may be September 2011 ( just before we would be going home - assuming we get our Visas by then). She suggested we continue with French training and she and Bro Pankratz will give us a "crash course" in Dutch, if we need it. So we are trying to be very positive and very flexible.

Paula's retirement from UVU

So I really did retire from UVU after 22 years! I started part-time at UVU as a counselor in the Fall of 1987. By October of 1988 I began my full-time contract and have been there ever since. I started out working in a double wide trailer in the parking lot of the Administration Bldg and was there for 4 years, running to the nearest building every time I had to use the restroom. Then we moved to the basement of the Administration Bldg, and then upstairs, and then to the Business Bldg. Just last June, we moved to the newly remodeled Losee Center where we more than doubled our space and I enjoyed my dream office for the last 9 months of my stay at UVU.

I watched UVU develop and grow from a little community college of 7000 students, to a State college and then to a University of 26,000 students. I began as a vocational evaluator, then an career counselor, then an Asst. Director of the Assessment Center, to a Director of Career & Student Employment. In 1999 my office of mainly career counseling services was merged with academic advising and I became the director of Career & Academic Counseling. When I left, my staff included around 20 people.

I loved my job at UVU. The people I worked with were like family to me. I miss them tremendously, yet the time felt right as we prepare for our mission. These are some pictures of a retirement reception the college had for me. I think about 100 people stopped by to say good-bye and wish me well. Some of my family came, too, which was great. My boss presented me with some gifts from my co-workers. My last week at work my staff had a farewell party for me and gave me a beautiful picture they had signed on the back, and some lovely books.

Ironically, I enjoyed 8 real days of retirement before UVU called me and asked if I come back and work part-time as an accreditation consultant. Each department has to write a self-study, which is a thorough analysis of their dept and I will be facilitating that process. Since our mission is delayed, I said yes, I would help. I'm hoping to be working maybe 15 hours a week on this project. My former boss' comment when I told her that our mission was delayed was, "Well, someone upstairs is looking out for me!" It was fun to go back and visit with everyone again and feel kind of likc I'm back in the middle of things. My co-dept chairs are always shocked when I call them about accreditation - their comment is, "Didn't you retire?"

Our Mission is Changing

Our first blog entry is from Paula's family letter describing our initial mission call. Since then there have been several changes. This is a list for our own history.

We received our call in mid November with a reporting date to the MTC of March 15, 2010. Plenty of time. Al we have to do is some shopping, get Visas for Belgium and France, study Preach My Gospel and learn some French, since we will be living in Brussels and Brussels is a French speaking city.

A FBI fingerprint check is required for the Belgian Visa, not required for the French Visa. We submitted the fingerprints on November 17 and they were returned in four weeks. Unfortunately Paula's were too smudged and couldn't be read. We re-submitted Paula's fingerprints in late December and they were received by the FBI on Jan 4. Remember that date.

We started checking with the FBI a week after the fingerprints arrived in Charleston, WV and we were told, "Fingerprint checks are taking 10 weeks". With considerable frustration we continued to check weekly until today when we were told, "The new time for fingerprint processing is 13 weeks as of today". "How 'bout if we submitted them in January?" "Yup. Still 13 weeks".

Our original MTC date was March 15. When we started running into a delay with the FBI, Paula talked with the Missionary Travel Office and they said, "There's also 6 to 8 weeks required to process the Belgian Visa. Let's see - Jan 4, plus 13 weeks - that's about April 5th. Plus 6 weeks, that's May 17th. March 15 isn't looking too good. So now we wonder when we will get to the MTC. Hopefully before May. We're praying for a miracle.

The other really significant change is that the Belgium Brussels/Netherlands Mission will cease to exist on March 1st. The French speaking part of the mission will go to the France Paris Mission and the Dutch speaking part will be come a new Netherlands Amsterdam (?) Mission. We spoke with President Brubaker , our mission president, last week and he will become the mission president for the new mission and we will be going with him. The Netherlands Mission office will be in Brussels until a location is determined for the office in the Netherlands (4-6 months), so we will go to Brussels initially and then move to the Netherlands (if we can get Visas before then - I hope I'm just kidding). The French we've been trying to learn may be very temporary. We've asked the MTC to get us a Dutch tutor and that's in process. President and Sister Brubaker said not to worry too much about the Dutch as most of the people in the Netherlands speak English.

Our Mission Call

We're going to the Brussels/Belgium Netherlands mission!!! We'll be an office couple and probably live in Brussels the whole time as that's where the mission headquarters are. We are very excited. I wanted to serve in an office and was afraid of going to a third world country like Bolivia, Africa, or Russia. This is perfect. We'll speak English - this mission takes in part of northern France, all of Belgium and all of the Netherlands. So lots of languages are spoken there - Flemish, Dutch, French, German. We'll get there in the spring when the tulips are out, have 2 summers there and one winter. We hear it's a beautiful part of the world.