Mission Call to Argentina

A Senior Mission to Argentina

We are very excited to have been called to a Church Service Mission for 18 months to serve in the Office of General Counsel in the South America South area office in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Dennis will serve as Associate Area Legal Counsel and Robyn will serve as an administrative assistant. We enter the Provo Mission Training Center on October 10, 2016, then, after a few days’ training in Salt Lake City, we will fly out to Argentina on October 20. We have been planning and preparing to serve a mission together for many years and it is finally about to begin. We started this blog to make it easier to keep family and friends who are interested informed about our experiences and we hope you will check back here from time to time.

The Mission Call

When we submitted our mission papers we didn’t express a preference for an assignment. However, we did visit some folks at Church headquarters about possibilities. One was the Military Relations Office, because Dennis is retired military and we both have military ID cards that would permit us to easily get on military bases. The other was the Office of General Counsel because of Dennis’s legal degree and experience. Over the years, Dennis has come into contact with church lawyers on numerous occasions. The first time was in 1967 in Venezuela shortly after Venezuela was organized as part of the Colombia-Venezuela mission where Dennis was serving as his first mission. A lawyer for the Church was in Venezuela to register the Church’s official organizations and he invited Dennis and his companion, who was the Zone Leader, to breakfast. Later, Dennis crossed paths with the Church’s Associate General Counsel for international matters, Bill Atkin, on several occasions, including functions of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, where the Church’s Area Legal Counsel told inspiring accounts of such things as securing the land for the Rome Temple, working to remove squatters from Church land in Brazil, narrowly avoiding nationalization of LDS chapels in Venezuela for government use as schools, working with legislatures in Polynesia to fight restrictive laws that would severely impact the number of missionaries that could enter the country, and a number of other faith promoting experiences that were done without fanfare. Later, he ran into an old friend who was serving as Area Legal Counsel in Buenos Aires at the time, and he encouraged Dennis to apply for such a position. Although Dennis and Robyn discussed it, they never followed up. However, the seed had been planted and earlier this year, after Robyn retired, we arranged to visit with Bill Atkin in his office in Salt Lake to explore the possibility of service as an Associate Area Legal Counsel. We hit it off immediately and visited for nearly an hour. Bill asked us to stay in touch and let him know when we submitted our mission application, which we did. In mid-July we received a phone call from the secretary of Elder Lance Wickman, an emeritus member of the First Quorum of the Seventy and the Church’s General Counsel, that he wanted to meet with us. We made an appointment to go to Salt Lake the following week and had a delightful visit. During our interview, Elder Wickman read to us from Section 44 of the Doctrine & Covenants. In February of 1831, the Lord directed Joseph Smith that all of the elders of the newly organized Church be called together for a conference. That direction, which became Section 44, states, in part:

 2 And it shall come to pass, that inasmuch as they are faithful, and exercise faith in me, I will pour out my Spirit upon them in the day that they assemble themselves together.

3 And it shall come to pass that they shall go forth into the regions round about, and preach repentance unto the people.

4 And many shall be converted, insomuch that ye shall obtain power to organize yourselves according to the laws of man;

 5 That your enemies may not have power over you; that you may be preserved in all things; that you may be enabled to keep my laws; that every bond may be broken wherewith the enemy seeketh to destroy my people.

In other words, the Lord’s Church is to comply with the law of the land so its enemies will not be able to impede it from keeping the Lord’s law and fulfilling its mission to invite all to come unto Christ (1 Peter 2:13-16 has a similar message). This means that the Church needs lawyers. In fact, four of the present members of the Quorum of the Twelve are former lawyers, as are a significant number of the 70.

We were fascinated as Elder Wickman recounted his sacred experience of receiving the assignment from President Hinckley to reorganize and modernize the legal representation of the Church. At the time, Elder Wickman was a trial lawyer and a partner in a large law firm in California. However, he accepted the assignment and, in the end, President Hinckley and the First Presidency approved an in-house General Counsel with two Assistant General Counsel, one for domestic matters and one for international, much like the presidency of a quorum. In addition, he approved a worldwide organization of four paid Regional Legal Counsel, who live in Salt Lake City, and 13 paid Area Legal Counsel, who live throughout the world in most of the cities where MTCs are located. The Area Legal Counsel are 3-year positions and, although they are compensated, they are all consummate lawyers who agree to serve for 3 years for much less than they could be making at home. Such positions are really more like a calling. In addition, about 30 couples are called to serve Church Service missions as Associate Area Legal Counsel for a period of 18 months, each in one of the same locations as Area Legal Counsel.

At the end of our interview, Elder Wickman invited us to accept an assignment as Associate Area Legal Counsel, probably in Buenos Aires, if we were interested. Otherwise, he promised that our missionary application would be directed through the usual process for more a traditional assignment. We were enchanted and very surprised, as we thought no positions were open in Buenos Aires, and we called the next morning to let Elder Wickman know that we were excited to accept his invitation. We subsequently received our call letter from the First Presidency for Dennis to serve as Associate Area Legal Counsel and for Robyn to receive her assignment from the Area President. She has since been assigned by the Area President, Elder Teixeira, to serve as Administrative Assistant in the Buenos Aires Office of General Counsel. Her assignment came after we had a wonderful phone conversation with Brother Brent Gardner, the Areal Legal Counsel we will serve with, who, we found out, also has 8 children, sings, and is a ham radio operator. He was very excited when he learned of Robyn’s office experience and skills.

What Will We Be Doing?

Our mission is to the Office of General Counsel in the South America South Area with primary headquarters in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and secondary headquarters in Santiago, Chile. The South America South Area consists of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and the Falkland Islands. Together, these countries have a land mass of just over 50% that of the 48 contiguous United States with a population of about 72.25 million. Argentina alone makes up about 2/3 of the land in the Area and has a population of nearly 44 million, of which about 14 million live in the Buenos Aires metro area. It is about the 21^st largest city in the world in terms of population and if it were in the United States, only New York and Los Angeles would be larger.

Within the South America South Area there are nearly 1.25 million Church members, 6 temples, 181 stakes, 58 districts, 1,074 wards and 567 branches. In addition, there are 28 missions with more than 3,000 missionaries, 2 Missionary Training Centers and there are approximately 200 Church employees. As a result, Dennis’s work will include review of contracts, such as apartment and building rentals, purchase and sale of property agreements, construction contracts; registration of the Church and its legal organizations in the various countries; monitoring of legislation; review of employment actions, such as discipline, discharge, benefits, etc. We have been told Chile is in the process of revising its constitution and an Associate Area Legal Counsel who just returned home has been involved in dialogs with about 25 influential religious leaders relative to the religious protection provisions. There is a large religious freedom conference scheduled for November in Chile with Elder Rasband and we will have an opportunity to help schedule similar conferences in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. We received a wonderful PowerPoint presentation about the Church’s history in Chile and Bro. Gardner wants Sister Love to gather similar histories for the other countries in the Area.

So, we are anxiously preparing. We have been in contact with a number of returned senior couples who served in Buenos Aires and some who are currently serving there and every single one has told us we are in for a real treat. Robyn is learning Spanish and is progressing wonderfully. She has born her testimony in Spanish a couple of times in Church and can pray in Spanish and she has held her own in conversations with native speakers to learn about them and their families and tell them about hers. Until next post, please keep us in your prayers. Hasta pronto.