This past week I received a recommendation from a young man who is from Papua New Guinea. I always shudder just a bit when I get them from there as they are never filled out completely and I have to wait forever to have photos other information sent so I was not surprised when I found that the membership number was not correct. I went down and visited with my friend Stacey to have her help me. We had to look pretty hard to find him. Sometimes they are found with just their name but oftentimes we need to go into the ward memberships itself and go through all the names until we find one that matches. This was one of those but we finally were secure in the knowledge that we had the right record for the right man.
When I went to enter the recommendation with the membership number it came up with the prompt that he already had a recommendation in the system. So I then went into the part of the program where I can see all of the recommendations that have been started. Some are three years old but they have to be cancelled by a bishop before they disappear from the system and since bishops always hope, they remain. He was not in that file. The next are recommendations that have actually progressed to be in the bishops offices so to speak. Then there are those that are with the bishop but not complete, those with the stake president and those with the stake president that are no complete. I looked through all of those.
Then I sent a message to the service center and the mission office in Papua New Guinea to see if he had ever started one online and of course the answer was: NO. But I really knew that. There just is not access to computers there. So I gave up looking and called the missionary department. This is when it got really weird!
The woman I talked to seemed a bit mystified when I asked about him and then she said: "Not only has he done another recommendation but he is a full-time missionary right now serving in Papua New Guinea." You can well imagine my response. She gave me the details that he had had a date for the MTC in December 2011 but did not show up and she had no other information on what had happened.
That was when I wrote to the current mission president, President Kaufusi and asked. Not only is he the mission president that this young man was supposedly serving with he was also the priesthood leader who had signed his new papers as he lived in a district. In my message to the president I asked about this elder, did he show up in the online system that he was serving, who did he not go etc etc etc. He wrote back that night.
This young man had a call to serve in Papua New Guinea starting in the summer of 2011 but because he was on another island seeing family he missed the first MTC intake. They gave him another one for November 2011 and he missed that one too. The final one he was given was for December 2011 but his priesthood leader, President Fata said he could not serve. He never asked that the recommendation be cancelled and SL was never notified. President Kaufusi then inquired as to why he did not serve. What it a worthiness issue? The answer was: he could not read and the mission president/priesthood leader would not set him apart and let him serve. But nothing was done in the way of cancelling the papers or the call. President Kaufusi asked him if he could read now and he said: YES. I know how to read. I used the Book of Mormon. I have read it five times already! I can read! President told him then he could serve.
Elder Bertasso is in the process of getting all the information gathered up and it will be presented as a reinstatement and no new call will be made. He could be out way before anyone else putting in papers now. I am so excited for this elder and about this elder. I wonder if he will be assigned to a different mission too?
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