Evacuation Efforts

Evacuation efforts continue to move forward.  I have received information that they are working to get the missionaries and the Mission President out of Sierra Leone via chartered airplanes and regularly scheduled flights.  However, the report is that most of the missionaries and the Mission President are still in Sierra Leone.  I believe Cody might be one of the first to leave because of a cute picture that one of the mom's was able to get today from her son's camera.  Her son has a camera with Wi-Fi on it which downloaded some pictures.  She shared 3 of them on Facebook with us, and Cody happens to be in one of the pictures.  The first one was of the two missionaries.  Several hours later, she posted the one with Cody in it.  Yea.  Made my day.  What are the odds that the 3 pictures she posted of her son and only 3 other missionaries are included, one of them would be Cody.  Perfect.

They cross the Sierra Leone River to get to the airport.  This means that Cody is obviously headed to the airport.  They couldn't take all the missionaries over at once, so they are probably taking the ones they think are leaving first.  Hopefully we will have some contact with him soon.

Here is a very funny story.  Jenessa, Cody’s sister, is in Tonga right now doing her student teaching.  Yesterday she saw a man she thought looked familiar but she couldn’t place him.  She spoke with him and they realized he was in the administration at Churchill Jr. when she was a student there. Her school burned down when she was at Wasatch Jr. so they combined both schools in the Churchill building for a couple of years while they rebuilt the Wasatch Jr building.  Anyway, he is a missionary in Tonga with his wife.  Out of the blue he mentioned to Jenessa that they would be receiving some additional missionaries from West Africa soon because they were being evacuated due to the Ebola Virus.  Jenessa told him that her brother was one of the missionaries getting evacuated.  She has her fingers crossed that Cody will be one of the missionaries transferred to Tonga.  We'll see how her luck holds out.  There is a 1 in 274 chance of that happening (or better depending on how many missionaries go to Tonga), but she isn’t holding her breath.  I'm sure she is crossing her fingers though. 

Hopefully the next update will include Cody's new mission location with some fascinating stories and pictures.