It’s been a while since I’ve updated you all on what Tomas is doing these days, so I thought I’d rectify that issue today. First, yes, I’ve asked him now and then if he’d be up for writing another letter or two to fill everyone in on the details himself, but he’s been flat out busy for the last long while, and I just don’t see it in the cards. So instead, you get me. We still talk to him as a family each week for an hour or so, so while I may not know everything he’s up to, I at least know the general points.
A question many keep asking me is when he’ll be home. His release date is November 20th, so it’s coming right up. Yes, he officially started his mission September 19th, which means that this will end up being a 26 month mission, not a 24 month. It turns out release dates are a bit more restrictive than you’d think. He had a choice between coming home September 5th (so . . . last week) or in November. After a fair bit of mulling it over, he went with November for a few reasons. First, if he were to have gone home earlier, his mission would have needed to close an area. Second, he realized that the number of things there are to do in western Maine for four months are “limited” to say the least. So when it came to which choice would actually have the best impact on him and others, he decided to go with November.
Our plan at the moment is for him to come home and then we’ll all head down to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. That means he’ll likely be talking in church on December 8th, if you’ll be in the area. I’ll see about whether we can get a Zoom link for that as well. He’ll then be home with us until he heads out to BYU in early January. He still wants to major in Mechanical Engineering, though he’ll have to apply to the program first.
But that’s all in the future. What’s he up to in the here and now? For a week, he was back in Żilina, the city he started in. At the time, he figured that would be where he’d end his mission as well. But a week later, he was transferred again to Banska Bystrica. That was actually the site of the Slovak National Uprising back in 1944, one of the largest anti-Nazi events in Europe. He was there for the 80th anniversary of it, and saw a huge military parade and a bunch of Slovak bigwigs.
He’s been called as the Zone Leader, which in his mission means he and his companion (also a Zone Leader) are in charge of training and overseeing the efforts of all the missionaries in a specific region. In his case, the zone is all of Slovakia. As part of that, he goes to visit the different missionaries in their areas, which means he also has the only car missionaries get to drive in Slovakia. It had been well over a year since he’d driven, so it was a slight learning curve getting used to it again, but he’s doing well. Overall, being a ZL has made him much busier than before, but it also involves a lot of different sort of work, and I think he’s enjoyed the shift as well.
Anyway. That’s all that comes to mind at the moment. We’re definitely very much looking forward to having him come home, but also very proud of all he’s accomplished (and is still accomplishing) over in Slovakia.