Peru Lima South!!!

Wow, it's been a long week. Take note, prospective missionaries: when you see online on Friday that your status has been updated to being mailed (or whatever the exact wording was), what they MEAN is that your call will trickle its way through the mailroom for the next four days and emerge on Tuesday, which is why it doesn't actually come (in Oregon) until Thursday!!!! I mean, I work with the Post Office and I KNEW it couldn't take that long. So, thank goodness, it came last night.

We were going to have several family members on the phone, but Ryan and I decided to drive down to watch him open it. Thank you, rubberneckers and other idiotic drivers, for turning a breezy 40-minute drive into an hour and a half nightmare with three kids in the car at dinnertime. Luckily, my dad was later than we were, so we didn't have to answer to Mitchell for elongating his tortuous wait.

Mitchell broke the tension of actually opening the call by providing some comic relief. Some headlines that came to mind while watching him attempt to create an opening in the envelope large enough to retrieve its contents:

"Soon-to-Be Mormon Missionary Cuts Off Hand Trying to Open Envelope"

or

"New World Record: Boy Reaches Age 19 Before Ever Seeing a Letter Opener in Use"

Luckily, there was no actual contact between the knife and his hand, but we at least have the whole thing on video for future use with girlfriends, children, etc.

So, Peru! (Spanish speaking, for anyone that wasn't sure.) The entirety of his mission (from what we can tell) seems to be the height of the Andes Mountains, but maybe a lot of people live in that little sliver between the mountains and the ocean? Good luck with the elevation! Another surprise was that he doesn't leave until November 3rd. He'll have a lot of time to brush up on his Spanish and to continue studying the gospel.

We're so proud of you, Elder McKinley!