Meeting Our Future Mission President

Through our son Jon and a series of fortunate circumstances, Nancy and I were invited to meet Elder Henry Kosak, our future mission president (as of July, 2012), when he spoke at a UVU devotional. He and his wife were in town for conference. We traveled to UVU leaving four of our grandkids with Marcie and her two children while she was in the midst of preparing her home for the move to our home.  (We were tending for Janet & Chet while they took a well-earned anniversary trip planned well in advance of our mission call)   We knew leaving them with Marcie was a real imposition, but she always says “yes”.

We arrived at  UVU a bit early and sat down. We were anxious to greet brother and sister Kosac.  We knew they had been serving in Russia and that they were both born in Germany.  We figured Joey ought to at least try to introduce us in German.  Brother Kosak was just moving to the podium ten minutes before the meeting was to start.   Joey introduced us and mentioned that we would be serving under him in the Germany Berlin Mission. He put his arms around him and said how grateful he was to meet us and both he and his wife chatted with us briefly before they had to take their seats on the stand.  Joey told him that he had served a mission in Berlin fifty years earlier.  Brother Kosak then remarked that he would have been three years old at that time.  We realized that were definitely senior missionaries.  They made us feel like we were old friends.  He even jokingly suggested that since we would be in Berlin before him, that we should meet them at the airport when he comes.  Subsequently, he asked someone on the stand to invite us to lunch after the devotional.  We wanted to go, but thought about Marcie with the kids and our German tutoring lesson scheduled for an hour from then.  There was no way we would make lunch, pick up the kids, and make it home in time for our lesson.  But, we decided to accept anyway, figuring we would somehow make peace with Marcie and Sister Jensen, our sweet tutor. 

We listened to Pres. Kosak and were impressed both with his subject, and also his ability to endear himself with the audience and certainly with us.  At lunch we listened to each person invited introduce themselves and relate how they knew Pres. Kosak.   We heard some touching testimonies from some who knew Pres. Kosak from his work in Russia.  He and sister Kosak served there for seven to eight years and during that time he was bishop of one of the wards as well as CES Coordinator for the church.  We came away on a spiritual high and though we had some explaining to do to Marcie and our sweet tutor.  They both understood and were glad we took the opportunity.

Though we were privileged to meet brother and sister Kosak, we are equally enthusiastic about meeting Pres. and Sister Pimentel our current mission president and his wife .  Sister Jensen, our German tutor served under them six months ago and has said many times how much she loves and appreciates them both.