My Mission

Belgium Flag | Belgian Flag
My mission call from Spencer W. Kimball arrived on December 4, 1978 in my college post office box. As I read the call to the Belgium Brussels mission I wondered, “Where is Belgium?” and because this was a day before the Internet, I trudged through the rain to the university library where I found in an encyclopedia and the answer to my questions.
My mission was mostly paid for through the generosity of one family – the Earnest Newsom family. I had managed to save about $1000, enough to pay for all the preparatory expenses but after that I was broke and it was the Newsoms who provided the $200/month necessary for me to serve. I received my temple endowment in Salt Lake on February 21, 1979 and entered the MTC the following day. I ended up staying at the MTC for 13 weeks because of visa problems. Because of my extra 4 ½ weeks in the MTC I had the privilege of listening to more General Authorities as they gave their weekly addresses. I also got to participate in a slide show for missionaries as they arrived at the MTC in subsequent years. Later, while serving in France, someone commented that they remembered me from that slide show.
| Provo, UT | Post Mart Provo
After a marvelous two years during which I had 14 companions in 7 different cities in Belgium and France I returned home to Hammond and resumed my life. I got a job at T.K. Valve in Hammond and went back to school, this time as a Liberal Arts major. In October of that year I married Beatrice Paulvaiche and started a family. Other than a brief and disastrous move to Pennsylvania we stayed in Louisiana until the year after I graduated from college.

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