New Mission President

For any readers who are not LDS, a mission president is also a missionary, with his wife, but their mission is for three years, and he is the senior officer of the mission. Our former Mission President, Lyle Stucki, and Sister Stucki, just went home last weekend, and our new president and family arrived Saturday. One thing that is different, and slightly unusual, about the Ostlers, is that they brought along a 14-year-old son, Caleb.

We first met them all on Monday morning when we were all in the office. They are lovely people and we are excited to work with them. Their first day in the mission, Sunday, they already had one missionary who needed to go to the hospital and one, (I guess, two) who wanted interviews because they were having companionship issues! No easing into the business here!

Today, Wednesday, the entire mainland mission (we have 52 missionaries serving on the island of Palawan, also in our mission) came to the Buendia Chapel, right next to the mission office, to meet them. First, we opened with a hymn, a prayer, and missionaries reciting their purpose from Preach My Gospel and then Doctrine and Covenants 4, about missionary work, then sang Called to Serve in Tagalog. (I'm finally figuring out which syllables of the words go with which notes!) Then President Ostler spoke about how his call came about. It was really interesting to us. He has been serving as a Stake President for six years, and last October got a message from a call from Church Headquarters. He said that happened fairly frequently, but that this time the caller didn't say which department she worked for or what the call was concerning. He called back and was connected to Elder Bednar's office, and they made an appointment for he and Sister Ostler to meet with Elder Bednar via a video conference. They had that meeting, and Elder Bednar told them it was an exploratory interview about being a mission president.  If the call was going to be extended, they would hear by Christmas, and if it wasn't, well, if they didn't get a call by Christmas, they would know. They expressed concern that Caleb was still at home, so Elder Bednar interviewed Caleb and told him that the call would not be extended until Caleb got back with him to say he was ready to go. Caleb fasted and prayed, felt peace and was willing to make the move. Ostlers heard back in about three weeks that they would be called to an English-speaking mission, but not where.  They didn't get the notice of where they were serving until right before Christmas. They were totally expecting a stateside mission, so were completely amazed at a Philippines call.

Sister Ostler spoke and told us about her family, including the story of her grandmother who joined the Church in Switzerland at the age of 16. She eventually immigrated to the US, and and at age 80 and blind, was still serving at the temple every day.

Caleb spoke about his processes in accepting that he would be starting high school in the Philippines, then showed a video about their family.  Each of their six other children, with spouses and children, appeared on screen to testify of the Church and of their parents' goodness and qualifications. One of them is a very shy, recently returned missionary. Just for fun,and for the family only, Caleb stuck a picture of a very cute girl sitting next to him as he spoke. You guessed it.  That was the version that got shown to the missionaries today! It was pretty funny. Then Caleb sang "Be Still My Soul" very credibly.

President Ostler then returned to talk more about his vision for the mission, which is charity, or the pure love of Christ, and elaborated on that for awhile.

President and Sister Stucki are the bookends, the Ostlers in the middle.

As part of our job is supplying missionary apartments, we like these big gatherings because we can just go open the back of our van and dispense things very quickly. Otherwise, they either wait until we come to visit on another house check, or we make a special trip that is sometimes a great distance and that can really interfere with our schedule. So this afternoon we stood outside by our truck for an hour and a half, handing out skillets, irons, blenders, cookpots, ironing board covers, spatulas, sheets (they get one set when they arrive, then have to pay for new ones, P225, which is about $5) and so on. We had just been shopping yesterday, and we still ran out of several things! Shopping again tomorrow.  But, we finished our inspections for the transfer today, so we will be mostly free to play with Jon and Maria when they arrive next week.