In Anticipation of...

... Elder Greggie's upcoming Christmas phone call (and the subsequent Christmas phone call post) , I have decided to do a few mission-themed entries. This first offering is a guest post written by the very first person in our family to serve a mission: My Dad, Homely. It was June in Southern California. Beautiful Downtown Burbank, to be exact. I was going to be 19 in a week, and I was looking forward to a summer of going to the beach and partying.

All my buddies were serving their missions, except for Mike Bivins who was leaving in a week. I wasn’t going to be able to go because of a Vietnam-era rule that said only two missionaries could go from each ward per year. Our ward had two missionaries leaving the next week, so it wasn’t looking good for me. To be honest, I wasn’t too broken hearted about it because the beach was looking good and life in general was good.

Saturday night I had a date with Jennifer Barlow. Early Sunday morning, as I was leaving to go home, she asked me why I wasn’t going on a mission. She was a recent convert to the Church and didn’t know about the restrictions put on the wards, but she asked me, “If the Bishop asked, you would you go?” I said, “Sure”.


Little did I know that, after I drove away, she called and woke up our Bishop and told him I was ready to go on my mission.


Bishop Rickard was a very patient man. We would “borrow“ empty beer kegs from the local beer distributors and put them on his roof late at night. We thought we were really embarrassing him. Later I found out he would simply take them down and return them to the distributor and get a $10 return fee.


When I got to priesthood meeting that morning, Bishop Rickard asked me to come to his office. There he asked me if I was ready to go on my mission. I asked about the two missionary limit, and he said he might be able to find a slot not used by another ward. I said I would be glad to go but couldn’t possibly leave until October because of finances (and the beach). He said that would be fine.


After my interview I should have guessed something was up when he said, “Why don’t you go right over to the Stake Presidents office and get that interview out of the way?” So I went over and completed the stake interview without thinking much about it. I wasn’t even worried when the Stake President said that one of the high councilmen was a doctor and he could give me a physical right away. Back then the physicals weren’t as involved as they are now and it took just a minute and I was done.


I didn’t think anymore about the events of the day before because it was just the first week of June and I wasn’t going anywhere until October.

Wednesday at the Beach I was teasing Mike Bivins, reminding him that, the next Monday, he would be in the MTC in Salt Lake and I would be laying on the beach in southern California. I was feeling pretty good.


I went to bed that night not knowing that my world was about to get turned upside down.


The next morning at 7:00 a.m. I answered the doorbell. There stood the mailman. He asked if I was Garth Larry Haws because he had a “Special delivery” letter for me. I opened it and read that I had been called to the serve in the Florida Mission. My first thought was, “Great! It should be nice in Florida in October.”

But then I kept reading… right up to the part that said I would report to the MTC on Monday (the same day as Mike). Panic! Sick! Scared!


I hadn’t even told my Dad (who was very inactive) I had been interviewed because I wasn’t going anywhere until October. It was a long day waiting for my father to get home to break the news that I needed $125 on Sunday and $125 a month for the next two years. To my surprise he took it well, except for trying to talk me into joining the Air Force instead. But he agreed, and we went downtown on Saturday to get my mission clothes. We only were able to get one suit: a dark green Penney’s machine wash and wear special.


After my farewell on Sunday night (exactly one week after the day of my interviews), Mike and I flew to Salt Lake City and checked into Covey’s motel for the night. We planned to walk to the MTC in time for the 1:00 check-in the next day.

They first clue that I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing was that I had packed a swimming suit to take on a mission….

To be continued...