Here We Go Again!

North of the Border

15 months ago we returned home from a wonderful mission in Mexico. Since that time we have visited all of our children and grandchildren (two born while we were in Mexico) and they have all visited us. We started off by flying to California from our mission to attend the baptism of our granddaughter Hadley

and meet our two new granddaughters.

We had a great family reunion in July at Pt. Reyes, California

and have cruised in the Caribbean with Janice's brother Randy and his wife Janet

and have gone off to Hawaii with our friends Bill and Carol.

In Hawaii we were able to visit with Larry's brother Mike and his wife Sally who live in Laie (Sally couldn't join us the day of the picture)

and with Janice's cousin Joan and her husband John who are currently serving a mission in Laie.

We have also had some great visits with friends, both from our past and recent friends we made in Mexico. Our last trip before we left was to California to see our son Patrick and his beautiful wife Monique sealed to each other and to their darling Braxton and Jada in the Newport Beach Temple.

In addition to all the partying, we have done a great deal of work around the house and dealt with some family issues. We have taught a class of nine darling 9 year old children in Primary and Larry has worked in the tri-stake family history library. We have packed much into this past while and now we are ready to serve again.

The road to this mission has been quite the wild ride. In the Spring we received a phone call and a visit from President and Sister Eric Jackson, recently called as the mission president to the Uganda Kampala mission. He had heard about Larry's background in Ethiopia (which is a part of the mission) from Miles' aunt and uncle who had served previously in Africa with the Jacksons. He wondered how we would feel about serving in Ethiopia. We told him we would be happy to serve. We started reading up on Ethiopia and Larry started brushing up on his Amharic, the national language of the country. We went through the interviews, the doctors and the dentist and our papers went in. They made it as far as the medical committee in the Missionary Department and there they stopped. Because of some of Larry's past medical problems, they felt he should go to an area with better medical care. So our papers were put back in the pile to be assigned. We got a phone call about costs, and from what we were asked we thought there were 7 missions we could be sent to. However, when the call finally came, it was none of them. It was the Canada Halifax Mission. Quite different from anything that we were expecting.

We soon heard from President Simpson of the Canada Halifax mission. He first asked if we would be willing to serve in the office. We assured him that would be fine. We started reading up on Halifax and Larry then started brushing up on his French with the help of a MTC tutor. Next we got a call from the Missionary Department instructing us to attend the office training at the MTC so that we could cover in the office only until another office couple arrived and we would be out in the field. President Simpson called again and said we would be going to Newfoundland. So we started to read up on Newfoundland and Larry continued his French study. The next time he called and said that the office couple were not coming after all so we would indeed be in the office.

We were scheduled to go into the MTC on February 21st and stay the 2nd week for the office training. On February 5th President Simpson called again to say Elder and Sister Tanner, whom we would be replacing in the office, had a family emergency and needed to get home as soon as possible so could we please come right away and not go to the MTC but come as soon as possible. The next day was Fast Sunday so we bore our testimonies and said our goodbyes, forgoing formal farewell talks. We found out after that Kathy and Heather had both bought plane tickets to fly to Salt Lake and surprise us for our farewell. Life offers some interesting challenges but we know we are where the Lord wants us to be.

After a week of packing and getting our house in order for Jeff and Shirley Duncan, two former members of our ward, to move in. We pulled away 8 days later on Saturday February 12th.

Shannon suggested we take a picture of each state we went through, we thought that was a good idea and we tried but since we were pretty much in the car ALL the time the pictures aren't too exciting. We started with a very full car. The trunk and the back seat were completely packed.

We made it to Wyoming our first night

Omaha Nebraska the second

Then through Indiana where we stayed right across from Notre Dame University

Then drove through Ohio

And Pennsylvania

And spent the night in Bath, New York

Then through Massachusetts

and New Hampshire

Then spent the night in Maine

Finally we entered Canada

Through New Brunswick

and finally Nova Scotia

Our primary driver did a great job but we were both pretty road weary by the time we arrived.

Not too tired to go to dinner with President and Sister Simpson and Elder and Sister Tanner