Called to serve

While we were on vacation in Maui, our neighbor sent us a text that Jake’s mission call had arrived in the mail. We toyed with the idea of having the long-awaited envelope FedEx’ed overnight to us in Maui, but Jake decided to wait an open it the night we came home.

So, on Thursday, April 26th at 7pm we had a bunch of family and friends gathered around to see how our family would be forever changed.

As you can see in the video and in the scanned letter, Jake has been assigned to the El Salvador San Salvador East mission and will be speaking Spanish. He will report to the Guatemala MTC on August 8th and will probably spend 6 weeks there learning the language and receiving training.

Manina has been freaking out about the country, the gangs, the mosquitos, the food, and all the passport and visa requirements still to be done. We have some family members who have served in El Salvador — cousin Grant Rowberry served in the Santa Ana mission, and cousin Nate Cryer was in the exact same mission a few years ago, so it will be good to get inside information from them.

We’re all super excited for Jake and all of his upcoming adventures over the next couple years. He’ll be a great missionary and will be able to really help the good people of El Salvador. They’re lucky to get him.