"It Never Fails!"

My father was an obstetrician. He delivered babies for a living. I remember him saying that no matter how many births he attended the thrill of seeing a new life begin never diminished.

I'm thinking about him as we approach our 20th Transfer Day in the mission. A mission president's life is defined by Transfers. Every six weeks we welcome a new crop of missionaries and we say goodbye to the outgoing ones.

Some days, honestly, I don't even remember what month or date it is, but only where we are in relation to transfers. In a mission your world rotates on the axis of transfers.  The sun rises and sets with incoming and outgoing missionaries.

As Transfers approach I often feel the weight of all the things that need to be done to prepare for the welcoming and training of the new missionaries and the activities that we do with the outgoing ones.  To be honest I sometimes feel weary about having to do once again all the same things that we've done before. "Didn't we just do this?" I ask.

I'm usually not too excited about having to make the tedious drive to the airport navigating our way through the crazy drivers and traffic. The last time I checked we were going on our 100th  trip to the airport. One week we had to go there five times due to visa waiters coming in and other issues with people coming and going.

With 19 Transfers under our belts we pretty much have the routine down. After surviving the traffic and overall craziness of getting to an airport that has been under construction since before we arrived here, we park the car then take a deep breath and try to focus on the names and faces of those incoming missionaries pictured on the paper we have been studying.

Then I take my place, standing dutifully at my post, holding up my little  "Bem-vindos Ao Missão Brasil Salvador"sign. I gaze through the large glass doors that separate the arriving passengers from those of us there to greet them. I'm tired. Am I really up to this, I wonder. And then it happens. It never fails.

I see them. I see their faces so full of anticipation, fear, and fatigue. They seem so young pushing their metal handcarts filled with black suitcases. Here they come, these modern day pioneers wearing their new suits and skirts, ready to thrust in their sickles in what will be for many of them a new and very strange land.

As I make eye contact with some of them their faces light up with a smile. And that is when the miracle occurs. My heart is filled with love. Pure and sweet love. It is this love that makes all the difference. It is this love that turns duty into privilege and mundane into miraculous. It is what keeps me going.

I see in their faces the faces of my children and grandchildren and your children and grandchildren. I see in their faces the hopes and prayers of their parents and grandparents, their bishops and young men and young women leaders. I see in their faces evidence of some very hard-fought battles bringing them to this defining point in their lives today.



And so I think of my Dad.  I'm sure getting up in the middle of the night to go deliver a baby wasn't much fun. I imagine that going through all the routine prep that being a doctor entails often felt tedious. But he testified that the thrill of seeing a new life begin over and over again never stopped filling him with a sense of awe and wonder. That's what kept him going. This is what made all the grueling days in the classroom and late nights at the hospital worth it.

Maybe my experience isn't so different from my father's.  Maybe my calling here is to be a kind of missionary midwife. I get to witness a new life begin every six weeks. I get to witness a kind of rebirth take place in each missionary as they begin the life-changing, soul-stretching, gut-wrenching, and joy-inducing experience of being a missionary. I get to witness potential become power and weakness become strength as these young men and women enter the field often with fear and uncertainty and leave with courage and conviction.

It isn't easy.  But neither is being born.  Nothing worthwhile ever is.

Until next time,
Onward, ever onward.