Charlie's brother Jason has been staying in Provo for the past couple weeks. He has been helping his sister Nicole fix up their house here. But mostly he's here to just get some new experiences before he goes on his mission. He put his papers in just before he came. Well, a few days ago, Nicole's fiancée messaged me on Facebook to say that his call had arrived. So we planned to gather at my house during lunch time so Charlie could come too. As soon as everyone arrived we set up two computers with Skype, one for Charlie's other sister Melissa in New Mexico, and one for Charlie's parents in Bolivia. At the house in Bolivia they set up a projector and invited grandparents and the Bishop. We got them on the phone too, just to be sure we wouldn't lose them halfway through (their internet there isn't the fastest or the most reliable.) We had a full devotional with the whole family including prayers and songs. The singing was funny, since we were all singing in different languages at my house (we had one Spanish hymn book, one English, one Portuguese and one Chinese) and also the timing was different for every location, but it was a blast.
He got his call to the Canada Calgary mission. Wow, I did not see that coming. Thats where my dad went too (back when it was called Western Canada) and my future brother in law went there so he immediately started crying when the call was read. For me, besides the joy of knowing what my brother in law had to look forward to, and being excited for him, I also felt such gratitude for the technology that allowed all that to happen. We were able to share a spiritual family gathering together, even though were half the world apart. 100 years ago, we wouldn't even have been able to contact each other without it taking a couple days. Now we can instant message and video chat for free. So cool. Technology has its ills, no doubt about it. There is a lot of distraction and even evil to be found there. But I truly believe that technology can be a blessing as well.
