I have decided to create a blog while we're on our mission so that we can share our experiences with our family and friends in "one fell swoop". So off we go!
About 3 years ago Michael and I decided to send in our mission papers. We had been looking forward for years to be able to serve a mission for our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Michael was already retired and so I retired from my job. Soon after starting the long and arduous process of filling out our applications, SURPRISE!, Michael received a three year calling to serve as an assistant recorder in the Fresno Temple......followed by a call to serve as the Young Men's President in our ward! Of course he accepted and to fast forward three years, we resumed preparing our mission applications in June and submitted them on July 4th of this year. On August 16 we received our call to the Frankfurt, Germany Mission, to serve in the Stake Young Single Adult Program. Our original start date was October 27, 2014. Due to a little surgery on my knee and some health issues for Michael, or start date was postponed to December 1.And so, here we are, babes in the woods, preparing to leave our home to live and serve in Germany for 18 months. Decisions about what to take, what to leave, what to do with our home in our absence, how to pay our bills from abroad, arranging our financial affairs, procuring our prescriptions and the list goes on. As many of my nearest and dearest family members know, I am a ditherer. Give me one assignment or project and I can accomplish it with the greatest of ease, but faced with a myriad of them I seem to run around like a chicken with my head cut off. We are gradually getting everything on our to do lists checked off- this blog being one of them. We fly to Salt Lake City on Wednesday, November 26 so that we can spend Thanksgiving with at least two of our children's families. We actually enter the Provo MTC on Monday, December 1. We have a week of training there with Preach My Gospel and then a couple of days of Institute Training the following week. We will fly to Frankfurt, Germany on Wednesday, December 10. YIKES! I can't believe it is finally in our sights. We are so grateful for the prayers, fasting and blessings of so many that have enabled us to reach this point. It was looking rather doubtful there for a while. We know our Father has a plan for us and has cleared our path.
The rest of today's agenda includes finishing my mormon.org profile, purchasing all our vitamins we need to take with us, buying baptism cards and gifts for six grandchildren that will be baptized next year, a few more birthday gifts for family with birthdays in December and studying German.