Lulu is a sweet, young woman in the Salamá branch who has consistently been doing visits with the sister missionaries! She goes with them so often that we've learned that when we're taking cookies to the missionaries we had better prepare some for Lulu, too. At the beginning of the year she started preparing her mission papers, but was delayed by a case of appendicitis. After surgery, she resumed her paper work. When everything was ready, her branch president was unable to get into the online system. So they sent a paper copy to the mission president. (Because she lives in a district instead of a stake, the mission president interviews her after her branch president, instead of a stake president.) He responded that there was nothing he could do with the paper copies. Then in late-May when we were attending the Salamá Branch, the branch president asked if we could help. It just so happens that because of our work in the office, we have the access needed to enter the data by hand! And after doing that, we entered the comments from the mission president, and eventually sent it on to the missionary department. And now her call has come, and with a little extra interest, we sent it up to her. She has opened it and now knows that she is going to Bolivia, but not until the end of November! That will make it about 11 months from when she started to prepare the papers...but it doesn't matter, she's excited and ready to go! She is the first missionary from that branch in three years, and the first ever to go outside of Central America.
