ELDER PAGE IS SWITCHING GEARS

I can't believe the news we received Sunday about Dallin, how exciting it is to be apart of such a great work. He is very excited and scared, but knows that the Lord is incharge and will help him to learn quickly. Here is his email for this week as he shares his experience first hand. Everyone have a great week and please keeep Elder Page in your prayers.

Hey Family,

Well, I'm glad that you guys were able to hear the big news yesterday. I am still kind of
unsure about most of the details but I will tell you everything that I know. First of
all, this all started this past Tuesday at Zone Conference when President Harmsen asked
if he could talk to me. All he told me when we talked was that he was he wanted to call
an elder to a new position in the mission and that it would be really challenging,
life-changing, and that it required good people skills and good language skills. After we
talked about me and my personality and school before the mission and stuff like that he
told me that he was going to talk to 2 other elders and pray about his decision and then
he would get back to me. So this past week I was kind of side-tracked wondering what the
new calling would be and if he would ask me. I just prayed for President every night that
he would be guided by the spirit and that if he asked me that I would be prepared to do
whatever he asked of me. And then on Friday night he called and asked me to come to the
mission home at 7:30 the next morning for an interview. So of course I couldn't sleep
friday night. And on Saturday morning when he asked me if I would be a Persian-speaking
elder I almost fell over. Never in a thousand years would I have guessed that I would be
asked to learn Pharsee. Anyways, he told me to go home and decide what I wanted to do and
then to call him back that evening. So I prayed about it and I just felt like this is
what I need to be doing right now. And so I told him I wanted to do it and so as of today
the CA Anaheim Mission has a Persian Program making it the 8th language in this mission.
It is going to be pretty different b/c I will be in the Irvine 5th ward for the rest of
my mission, I will be with my new companion Elder Cunningham for the next 14 months until
he goes home and then I will have one more companion for the rest of my mission until I
go home who I will help teach the persian language to. You see the problem is that there
is no Persian program at the MTC so until there are enough persian baptisms we are pretty
much on our own when it comes to learning the language. From what I know there is program
called Daily Dose that the missionaries do to help teach people different languages and
so we will use that to teach each other Persian and English and I think that there is also
a member here who speaks Pharsee who will be helping us pretty closely but other than
that I'm not really too sure what we're going to do. President might have already might
have told you when he called but he said that there are only 4 missionaries in the world
that have been called to speak Pharsee--me and elder cunningham and 2 elders in toronto,
canada so all this is extremely new as you probably already realize. Anyways, I am really
excited and even more scared. It is kind of hard to have to shift gears from Spanish to
Persian, especially since I am just starting to feel pretty good about spanish but I know
that this is where i need to be and so it'll all work out. I want to try and keep my
spanish up if possible but we'll see how that goes. Well, I've got a little more packing
to do before transfers at 3:00 so I better get going but know that I love you and that
you are always in my prayers. If you have any questions about all this just let me know.
I'll be getting more information probably in the next week so hopefully I'll be able to
tell you a little more later but that is pretty much all I know for now. Until, next
week, take care. I love you.

Elder Page

p.s. something pretty cool that I just remembered...Elder Song is going to be my new
District Leader down in Irvine and he'll be living in the same apartment as me so that
should be really awesome.