He's back in Mexico!!
Friday, Chris was transferred to a new area in Liberal, Kansas...
(several hours away from anything).
He was so excited because he got to do Spanish translation during church on Sunday.
Monday he got travel docs from the Church telling him to drive to Wichita that day and he was flying out to Mexico at 6:00 a.m. the next morning!
Wow! Such a great surprise!
Two weeks ago he called us saying he was coming to Utah to renew his Visa.
He was flying in, taking a taxi to the consulate for his Visa appointment,
and had just enough time to get back to the airport to check-in for his flight back to Kansas.
We were going to be in Hawaii that day, but he wanted to drop some of his winter clothes off,
so Luke and Diane met him at the airport.
In January, he'd heard more missionaries were heading back and the Church even talked to him about making sure his paperwork was in order in case he got called back. But he wasn't supposed to talk to anyone about it either, so he didn't tell us. (My guess is the last thing the Church needed right now is 70,000 parents calling to ask if their kid was going back to his/her original mission!)
Also, Chris didn't want to get everyone excited and his own hopes up in case it didn't happen.
His mission president was very careful about telling the missionaries nothing was for sure until they actually had travel plans.
A few weeks later one of his buddies got reassigned to Mexico and another got permanently assigned to Kansas (his original mission was a Central American country.) Plus, Chris heard that if you had less than six months left in your mission, you wouldn't go back to your original. So again, he wasn't sure he was going back.
A couple weeks ago they had Zone Conferences and his President said, "Go check your e-mail."
When Chris opened it, he thought the header implied he wasn't going back.
But when he read closer, he realized it was instructions for going to SLC to renew his Visa.
Again, he was instructed not to tell anyone. Presumably so hundreds of large family groups didn't show up to the airport! He called us to tell us he was coming and to switch some warm clothes for summer ones.
(-12* in Kansas last week. 90* in Hermosillo today!)
He asked us to not even tell the rest of the family. And if Luke and Diane could meet him, I had to make sure they knew they couldn't tell anyone either. It was really important to him that he follow the rules, because of course all his friends would have loved to show up and see him.
Diane and Luke ended up driving him to the consulate -- which is great because taxis aren't exactly on every corner in Utah and without internet, he couldn't order an Uber!
When he arrived back in Kansas, he let us tell the kids when we were in Hawaii.
But he still didn't want anyone to get their hopes up, because,
"until you have travel plans, you don't know if you're going."
When he got transferred to Liberal, Kansas on Friday, it seemed that meant he wouldn't be flying out anytime soon. But... surprise!!!
We got this note from his Mission President's wife:
Thank you for these kind words.
Elder Shaeffer has made such an impact here. We are so sad to lose his joy, enthusiasm, testimony, and love of our Savior.
He’s the type of missionary who left everything and everyone better than he found them.
We wish him well and hope that he will know that he is always a part of the KWM.
Thank you for raising such a fine young man and for letting us serve with him for these past months.
Sister Ernst
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