From today's Deseret News:
Wild horses couldn't have kept Kent and Sue Mohlman of Murray from traveling to Argentina to pick up their son, Richard, from his LDS mission.
But a volcano could.
"We were in the air," Kent Mohlman said, "flying to Los Angeles where we were going to make a connection to South America, when the decision was announced."
That decision was one of many that resulted in the cancellation of hundreds of flights in and out of South America and elsewhere following the June 4 eruption of Chile's Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano chain.
With huge clouds of ash billowing up to 30,000 feet and traveling literally around the world, the volcano has impacted airline travel as far away as Australia, where dozens of flights have been canceled due to concern that the fine particles in the ash could damage jet engines. For spectacular photos of the volcano and the ash clouds spewing from it, please clickhere.
Among the canceled flights are a number that were scheduled to carry LDS missionaries to or from their missionary assignments.
In Los Angeles, for example, the Mohlmans learned that their flight on Chile's Lan Airlines had been canceled, and that there was no way of knowing when the flight would be restored.
"They told us they could fly us to Lima, Peru, where we could join 4,000 other people waiting for flights from there to Argentina," Mohlman said. "That didn't sound like a lot of fun to us, especially since they couldn't give us any assurance of when or if we would be able to make a connection down there. So we just stayed overnight in Los Angeles and came home."
The Mohlmans are not concerned about Richard's safety. Although Argentina's Agriculture Ministry has declared a state of emergency in three provinces due to thick blankets of ash threatening livestock and wreaking havoc with the country's tourist industry, there are no immediate threats to the people who live there.
"He's fine," Mohlman said of Richard, the fourth of his children to serve an LDS mission. "We haven't spoken to him, but we've spoken with the Argentina Resistencia Mission office. We have every confidence he's being well taken care of."
Scott Trotter, spokesperson for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said "the church has secured temporary accommodations or made alternate travel arrangements for missionaries impacted by delays."
For Elder Richard Mohlman, it looks like those "alternate travel arrangements" will get him home next Wednesday.
"That's the theory," his father said. When informed that the last time the Peyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano erupted in 1960, ash spewed into the atmosphere for almost two months, he chuckled.
"We're confident he'll be back," Mohlman said. "We just don't for sure know when."
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