It all began with a desire and a goal set many, many years ago! Then Cal retired July of 2013 and the mission journey began! We sold our house, moved to Georgetown and talked to Bishop Williams about our mission desires. We received our mission call packet about 2 weeks after April conference of 2014. We opened it at Mike's house and began to read...WAIT, WHAT?! MADAGASCAR!!
We are so excited to serve a Welfare mission in Madagascar!
We spoke in the Mesquite Ward on Mother's Day. The Grants came to be with us! It was a wonderful day filled with old friends and family!
The next Sunday we spoke in the Georgetown Ward! We were so excited to have Kjirsten and her family, Mike and his family, and Brett with us! Our good friends from Mesquite (The Aaneruds and the Taylors) also came! It was a wonderful day with old friends, family, our new Georgetown friends, and some of the children and grandchildren of our great friends, the Fluckigers.
Before leaving for the MTC on May 22, our Stake President, President Huntsman, set us apart and we became an official missionary couple!
Mike, Caroline, Josh, Zach, Savannah, Bella, Lily, and Brett were with us.
The famous MTC map and us pointing to Madagascar
This is our District. Elder and Sister Edwards, us, and Elder and Sister Blanda (Cal was our DL)
This is our whole group, 14 couples and 5 single sisters! Everyone was so wonderful! It's amazing what wonderful friends you can become in just one weeks time!
We made a couple of trips to the Provo Temple
This is our District with our two sets of instructers! They were wonderful! We learned so much! We LOVED our week with them and all that we learned in the Preach My Gospel class. It was a week of learning and growing spiritually! A special time indeed!
While in Utah at the MTC we were also able to spend some special time with Sarah and Carrie and their families! It was so fun to see them all! We had a great visit in Rock Springs, Wyoming and in Pleasant Grove, Utah. On our last Friday, We all got together for a picnic, some time at the splash pad, and nice cool, yummy ice cream!
These are some more friends we made! One couple is going to Australia, one to Johannesburg, and Sister Sutton is going to Rome!
The first picture is of Honivah who is our Skype teacher for Malagasy! It was so fun to see her in person! The next picture is of Sister Radamason. She just arrived from Madagascar and will be serving at Temple Square when her time in the MTC is over!
The first picture is of the couple who went through Welfare training with us! Elder and Sister Smith are amazing and it was so fun getting to know them and spend so much time with them! We toured Welfare Square, had a special lunch at the Joseph building in SLC and attended many classes together. We will be going through many similar experiences - although they will also be auditors and making a minimum of 50 flights to many islands duing their 18 month mission to Vanuatu! The other picture is Elder and Sister Palfreyman. They are in charge of Welfare training at the MTC. They were so friendly and nice! Like us, they like to travel, perhaps we will see them on a cruise some day? :)
During our lunch in SLC we met Elder Evans, on the right. Elder Evans has a son serving in Madagascar right now! Turns out, he is also the brother of a very good friend of ours in Sunnyvale (Susan Foote, she and her husband are serving their second mission in Boston right now).
We loved our MTC apartment. Besides this comfy bed we also had a table and chairs, dresser, sink area, nice closet, and bathroom!
So there you have it! Our MTC experience in pictures and words :) More, I'm sure than you needed to know, but it will be good for my short memory to look back on and read and remember :)
We will leave on June 29 for Madagascar and arrive on July 1! We are so excited! We hope this will be a good way to keep in touch with so many people that we love so much! Thank you all for being so important to us! Hopefully I will post again in two weeks - we'll see how good I am at this!
