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| Photos by SCOTT GULLEDGE / Scroll |
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Jim Keller
Occupation: professor
Department: religious education
Mission: San Francisco Calif.
Wife’s name: Janice |
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Roger Hoggan
Occupation: professor, department chair
Department: geology
Mission: Brazil Belem
Wife’s name: Karen |
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Gary Marshall
Occupation: professor
Department: history/geography/political science
Mission: Micronesia Guam
Wife’s name: Ramona |
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When Geology Department Chairman Roger Hoggan was a missionary in the Brazil South Mission 45 years ago, there were only two missions in that country. Now there are 26, and in July, Hoggan will be going to the Brazil Belem Mission — this time as a mission president for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Several BYU-I faculty and their wives will say goodbye to Rexburg this summer to be mission presidents. In addition to Hoggan and his wife, Karen, Gary Marshall of the History/Geography/Political Science Department and his wife, Ramona, will preside over the Micronesia Guam Mission; and Jim Keller, religion faculty, with his wife, Janice, have been called to direct the California San Francisco Mission.
Each of these men served a mission in their youth and all have expressed mixed emotions about their calls to preside over young men and women engaged in missionary work.
Keller served in the French East Mission as a young man and said this call brings back a flood of good memories, but is a weighty responsibility.
Keller explained that he and his wife know they have been called of the Lord and are grateful for the opportunity to serve, but are anxious, and while he and his wife are anxious, they intend to be anxiously engaged.
Marshall speaks German, which he learned on his mission to Switzerland, and is excited to again be immersed in missionary work and to be with his wife every moment of every day.
He is anxious too. He also said he is “deeply humbled.”
“I don’t know if I’ve ever been more concerned about my capacity to do it,” Marshall said.
The Marshall family is very close. All of the children live near Marshall and his wife except two, a daughter in Boise and a son in Provo, Utah. Marshall said it would be hard for him, his wife, their seven children and their 19 grandchildren.
“[Our children] want us to go, but they don’t want to be without us,” Marshall said.
For Hoggan, the call came from President James E. Faust last December. It was then that President Faust asked him to preside over one of the Church’s 341 missions. The only detail President Faust could give at that time was that it would be a Portuguese-speaking mission.
Since then Hoggan has been studying, but is still nervous.
“We haven’t slept well since we got the call,” Hoggan said.
Hoggan, who still speaks some Portuguese, is currently reading the Book of Mormon in Portuguese in preparation for the three years he and his wife will spend abroad.
His wife, on the other hand, doesn’t speak the language at all.
“I stick little notes [in Portuguese] around the house to help her learn basic vocabulary,” Hoggan said. “I think it’s harder on wives, especially when
language is involved.”
For Hoggan, like many, his mission was a turning point in his life and he attributes much of that to his mission president. President Faust told Hoggan over the phone that his success as a mission president will not be determined by the number of converts his missionaries baptize.
Rather, the quality of his missionaries’ lives when they get home will determine his success.
