Our American Elders Are Returning!

This morning we received this photo sent from the Paris Airport.  Our Americans are beginning to return to Cote d’Ivoire!!  We are so excited.  Our beloved African missionaries have been amazing here, holding down the fort while so many were evacuated during the COVID pandemic.

We’ve recently been sending missionaries serving here temporarily to the countries of their original assignments so our numbers, in the last year since COVID struck, have gone from 180 missionaries down to about 76.  We are slowly building back up again and this week we’ll reach about 115 or so.

We spent most of today staring at the transfer board, helping the Bendixsens figure out the best place to put each arriving missionary.  It’s a big job with so many variables to consider.

Then tonight we went to the airport to greet the 16 arriving missionaries.  What an exciting time–for them, for their families, and for us!

We were missing one Elder this evening–Elder Lindsay.  He is still in Paris with quite a story to tell.  I’ll share that story in an upcoming post.

After all the luggage and missionaries were loaded (think tetras) into our 3 mission vehicles, we took the Elders to the hotel in our neighborhood where they spent the night, armed with sack lunch/dinners.  These are a happy bunch of worn out travelers, come home.