This should be our last Sunday gathering with our missionaries. President and Sister Nielson joined us and told of the path they have taken this past week to take action to travel here as soon as possible. Their passports with new visas were lost (or stolen) on the handoff between the South African Embassy and Federal Express on 22 October.
When they didn't show up at Church headquarters in Salt Lake City, the Nielson's decided to take action on Wednesday by driving to Idaho to their storage unit. They spent two hours unloading items to get to the filing cabinet at the back. They retrieved their birth certificates. Three LDS missionaries walking back home offered to help them and they spent the next hour putting everything back.
The Nielsons spent the night at their child's place and drove back to Salt Lake on Thursday and got on a plane to Tucson, Arizona to stay in a hotel that night.
The next morning they joined us by Zoom for the special missionary meeting we had with Elder and Sister Anderson, Elder and Sister Vinson, and Elder and Sister Palmer (Area South President) from 4-6 pm SA time.
They joined us for our mission office staff meeting and then went to an 11 am appointment to get new passports. It took one and a half hours. They FedExpressed them to the South Africa Embassy in California. Tracking said they should arrive at 10:30 am on Monday morning. They flew back to their hotel in Utah.
President Leavitt and I took the rest of the time discussing mission business and our last testimonial good-byes.
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