Senior Stampede!

Let the games begin!

Since the age was changed for missionaries, the church will forever be overwhelmed by 6 to 9 months' worth of freshly turned (or soon to turn) 18-year-olds that will be graduating high school and racing to get their mission papers turned in by Jan. 23. (The rule is that you can turn them in 4 months before you are able to leave for a mission which is 18 years old and graduated. Graduation is on May 22nd.)

Gone are the days that there are a handful of people a month turning the necessary age for a mission and putting in the papers randomly.

Everyone from late Kindergarten starters (boys AND girls who turned 18 before their Senior year started) to late May and June birthdays will be scrambling to get to their Bishops in the next 2 weeks to get their mission papers started and turned in.

Right now in my current ward (my ward has changed 11 times in 21 years while living in the same house), there are 16 missionaries out. Half of them are girls.

By the end of May, I expect to be financing 10% of the 20 missionaries from my ward!

Get it?

Kyson got trampled by the age change and the Senior Stampede from last year, and it would have set his schooling and his only scholarship off by a whole year to get home mid November had he turned them in last year.

Not only were all the freshly turning 19 year old boys and freshly turning 21 year old girls putting in their paperwork one year ago, but also ALL the girls already 19 and 20 and, it seems, every male high school senior. There's not that many beds for all those interested at once, so that put departure dates 6 months out for a lot of kids.

Kyson is now determined to beat the Senior Stampede to the MTC. His schooling is done May 7ish. 

Koby, despite my anxious pleas to not to, won't be far behind.

They gotta do what they gotta do, but I am not fond of them making me grow up.

Let the internet paperworking/Bishop interviewing/girl heart-breaking games begin!