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Sister Blythe W. is serving a mission in the California Irvine Mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She will serve from September 16, 2015 to March 2017.
a heart full of love before she leaves
Having our girlie leave for her mission is hard. Really hard. My emotions have been all over the map in the past couple of weeks and I have been grumpy more often than not. But today my heart has swelled up with gratitude. As I put her clothes in the washer today to clean for probably the last time, the past 19 years of memories swept across my mind’s eye and I started weeping with joy that I have been privileged to be this special girl’s mama. I am so grateful to have her for our daughter. I am grateful she is worthy and able to serve a mission. I am grateful she loves God. I am grateful she believes in and relies on the atonement of Jesus Christ. I am grateful she chooses good, uplifting, life-giving pursuits. I am grateful she loves and creates beautiful music. I am grateful her soul is drawn to stories of courage, sacrifice, liberty, and love. I am so grateful for the thousands of hours we have spent learning, reading, and discovering together. I am grateful, oh, so grateful for this precious time I have had her in my home.
Further up and Further In! It is time to grow ever closer to her Father and Savior, to learn to truly love her fellow man in her heart AND her actions, and to do hard things. I am so excited for her!
six days
Six days left with my girlie. It is hard to believe we are at this point and she is about to walk out of our home and embark on her adventure of serving the Lord as a missionary preaching the gospel and loving and serving the people of California.
I want to savor these last few days with her, but the truth is I am grumpy and overwhelmed at how much we still have to get done. I’m not that much fun to be with right now – every day I tell myself I am going to be cheerful and kind and helpful and every day this week I have failed. Every day I pray for help, pleading with God to help me have a soft heart and kind words and even with His help, the grumpiness comes out.
Part of me is grieving. This is the loss of our family unit as we know it. I know the next phase of life is going to be wonderful in its own way, but I am still grieving the loss of this time, this sacred time I have had to be a homeschooling mother of four precious souls. Earlier in this mission process, I mistakenly thought we wouldn’t really miss her, that since she has been working so much the past year and not in our home for many hours each day, we would be fine without her. But I was wrong. My heart is aching with pain at the thought of her being gone from our home. Giant alligator tears pour out of me every single day. Our family is changing. Forever. It will never be the same again. And while I am so, so excited for her and for the future, I am also deeply sad.
Part of me is worried…is she really ready? Will she be able to handle all that is thrown at her in the next 18 months? Have I failed her by not teaching her better? Will she get along with her companions? Will she turn to God? Will she thrive?
Part of me is overwhelmed. We still have so much to do, to buy, to find in our home, and to figure out how to make do with what we have. I think getting a missionary out the door is an expensive, stressful experience for everyone who does it. I think it has been a bit more challenging for us…but I could be totally wrong on that since I have no idea what it has been like for anyone else.
Challenge #1
We have a small and quite limited budget and we haven’t spent much of that budget on Blythe’s wardrobe for the past several years. She has survived just fine with hand-me-downs, thrift store finds, and the occasional super cute outfit bought by her grandma. But when we inspected her existing clothing options, none of it was mission appropriate, especially for the wealthy, professional area of California she is serving. Her clothes were faded, worn-out, looked like something a fourteen year old would wear, or were simply unattractive. She needed all new clothes, not just dresses and skirts and blouses, but everything. Her only pajamas were heavy, warm fleece, which is not quite what she will need in sunny California. Her exercise clothes were men’s basketball shorts which were once again not long enough to cover her knees while both standing and sitting, a mission requirement. Her robe was falling apart and not long enough to meet mission standards, her jeans were too tight, her bras were lacking in the support department, and her shoes were filthy, holey, and stinky. So she needed new everything. Quite the task to completely outfit her for her new life.
Challenge #2
Blythe has never lived on her own, so she didn’t have any of her own stuff. We all share clothes, curling irons, straighteners, makeup, hairspray, socks, etc. We have had to get all of that stuff for her. Well, to be honest, we still have to purchase some of it and some of it I am just sending with her from my things and will have to live without for awhile until I can afford to replace those items.
Challenge #3
Another budgeting challenge is that we have been getting her ready for her mission during the four months of the year that Richard doesn’t get paid from his regular job and we have to live off of savings and the small check he gets from his part-time job. There isn’t room for extras in our budget, so anything we have bought for her has to come out of our grocery budget and anything she has bought (which is the vast majority of the purchases) has had to be bought as she has earned the money. She didn’t go into this with a huge nest egg of money, so she has had to work hard earning the money she needs to outfit herself and to save a big chunk to pay towards the $400 monthly fee required of missionaries. So, she wasn’t able to just go out and purchase what she needed as she needed to earn a little, shop a little, earn some more, shop some more. I think if we could have just had a week of big shopping days, we could have kicked this out of the park back in June. For the things we are purchasing, we spent everything we could back in June and then have had to wait until now to get the rest of her things because we chose to take our annual camping trip in August. We survived on eggs for the entire month of August so we could save grocery money to buy items on her supply list and throw her an Ice Cream Fest the day of her farewell. This little bit at a time approach is working, but it is harder than just having a big list and checking it off. It’s all good and I am proud of her for working so hard to earn the money she needs, it’s just that our lack of ability to help much has complicated things.
Challenge #4
Between her work schedule and my body’s limited ability to shop for very long, it has been difficult for us to go shopping together. Endless phone calls, sending pictures back and forth, buying things and then returning them when one or both of us vetoes an item has been our life for the past 4 months.
Challenge #5
Blythe has many strengths, but getting stuff done in a timely or orderly fashion is not one of them. I really do wonder if I will be sane by next week as the packing and room cleaning jobs have been put off till the very last minute. I am much the same way and must have driven my mother absolutely bonkers with my procrastinating ways. Being the one waiting on the procrastinator is about the most frustrating experience ever and is playing a huge part in my grumpiness.
Somehow we will get it all done…or maybe we won’t and she will end up in California without the things she needs and will figure out a way to survive without them. Today is clean the room and make the list of anything we still need to beg, borrow, or buy. In the meantime, I will be singing hymns and trying to remember to smile and laugh and enjoy this girlie I love so much.
the love he gives
Conversation as Richard leaned down to kiss me before he leaves for work this morning.
Me feeling a bit unlovable as I have been more than a little grumpy lately: Is this just a daily duty on your to-do list?
R: No, not a duty. It is my privilege.
Magical words to soften my heart and bind us together. Oh, how I love this man.
p.s. I will try to write soon. Right now I am up to my eyeballs in getting my house purging projects finished so my guests coming to stay in the next few days have a place to eat, sleep, and sit.
yes, i know, silence isn’t golden
Oh my good heck, it is July 19. Serious problems blogging on any kind of regular basis over here. I’m pretty sure I will develop a more regular posting habit come fall, but at this point, I am not promising anything…because I hate breaking promises and I try not make a promise I am not 100% sure I can keep.
In the meantime, here is an update.
Health
I am doing pretty well. I am moving better and functioning better and it is visibly apparent to those around me. People give me high fives and big smiles when they see me walking at an almost normal pace in normal shoes. I have been out of my knee brace for several weeks and while my knee is still sore, it is improving. It still hurts to drive and it hurts to be up on it for a super long time, but it is good for the first hour or so. My face, neck, jaw, ribs, and back are still suffering from January’s car accident whiplash, but they are slowing improving as well.
As far as passing out goes, it is improving as well and I actually was starting to think it was a thing of the past, though I have had two small episodes in the past 24 hours, so now I don’t know what to think.
I have been exercising on the Elliptigo for a few weeks and am up to 3 minutes – BIG WAHOO! It feels absolutely amazing to feel my neglected muscles working and growing. Three minutes doesn’t sound like much, but it is hard. It about knocks me flat. Keziah gets on and rides for 30 minutes…someday, someday I will be there.
Mission
Blythe has been working her butt off all year putting money in the bank for her mission and we both have been searching and shopping for some fabulous mission clothes. We have most of what we need in that department and are now starting on the long list of other supplies – first aid kit, books, bags, sewing kit, pens, temple clothes, personal hygiene, and a gazillion other little things. It feels like we have very little time left to pull all of this together, but I am confident with Amazon Prime and some improvisation we can pull it off.
Home
We have undertaken a massive project this summer (which is primarily responsible for my poor blogging) and while there is light at the end of the tunnel, it is has kicked my butt and left our home in a terribly messy state of disarray. Ever since the summer of 2011 when we were dealing the breast lump, we have been in full-on survival mode – which means each day we try to love each other, teach each other, and feed each other…and not much else gets done. Stuff does not get dealt with. Stuff builds up. Stuff gets knocked over and left. Stuff takes too much time to sort and process and organize, so it gets shoved here and there for another day…and that other day doesn’t come and after awhile there is a garage and a storage room that are completely inaccessible to any human that values their life.
And that is where we are at…or were at a few months back. I started the Stuff Project by having every single piece of clothing currently in Fisher’s and Annesley’s rooms brought upstairs for me to sort into Keep, Give to Mikelle (my baby sister with wee babes), Give to DI, or Trash. That project was huge. We finished it the day before Swim Camp back in June.
Then we tackled the school room. We went through each book down there and did the same thing, Keep, Give to someone specific, Sell to a used book store, Give to DI, or Trash. Books are sacred to me and I don’t part with them easily, but we did it! We were able to get rid of 6 big boxes of books! We also created a new computer area for the big girls, moved my Elliptigo and deep cleaned the whole area.
With that success under our belt, I decided to hire Keziah to clean out the storage room. I really wish I had a before picture so you could see how awful it was because there are no words to do it justice. None. Picture a grocery store, special events store, and clothing store being on the fault line of an earthquake and then being abandoned to the survivors who would climb over the piles of stuff, dig through it for the treasure of the day, and knock more stuff over on their way back out. And then picture that earthquake happening several years back and the survivors risking their lives to go in and dig through everything to find a can of diced tomatoes or a pair of size 1 shoes or the Christmas decorations. Oh my, frightening, don’t you think?
Well, this job was ginormous. I offered Keziah $100 to clean, organize, and completely dejunkify. Really, it should have been about $500 for the amount of time she put in, but $100 was all I could come up with (and to be honest, I haven’t even paid her for it yet, she may have to wait until October when Richard starts getting paid again).
Miss Amazing did it. It took her several weeks of working around her other jobs and she completely filled the (once clean) school room with her storage room mess, but she did it. Our burn pile is in desperate need of being burnt to smithereens as we threw away SO MANY boxes. We went through every single pair of shoes in the earthquake residue and gave 163 pairs of shoes and 75 singles to Dando Amor. She reorganized all the food storage, Passover and Christmas items, and the preparedness supplies. She removed the filthy carpet, vacuumed and scrubbed, and then put all the stuff back inside. It looks and feels awesome. We can enter without risking life or limb. We can find things! We can walk around!
Part of the mess in the storage room was the 10 or so big bins of children’s clothes that have been buried and dug through for the past many years. I made the super painful decision that it was time to let those clothes go and to let Keziah sell what she could and give the rest to the thrift store. So she hauled all the bins upstairs and has been washing and sorting and folding the clothes for the past several weeks. So once again, we don’t have a usable dining room. The floor is almost completely covered with stacks of freshly-washed clothes. I still need to go through the clothes and figure out which ones are sellable and which ones need to go to DI.
Then last weekend, we started on the garage. Oh my. Oh my. What a disaster. Richard and I worked for about twelve hours and we probably have thirty more to go. Thirty hours we don’t have before he starts back at his school job again, which means, this job may get left until next summer when he has Saturdays off. Super sad, but that is the reality of only having a few Saturdays off a year – only a couple projects can get done in a year. We could have worked on it yesterday, but we decided our little ones’ emotional health was more important and that they needed to go fishing with their papa.
Throughout all of these dejunkifying projects, I have also been working on my room and closet which is one giant pile of disaster as well. I have been sorting through clothes and facing the strong possibility that I will never fit into my size 6 clothes again and if I do, they probably won’t be in style anyway, so they need to go. And probably the size 8’s as well. And probably the clothes that are too big for me, surely I won’t need those in the future, right? Every few days I send a small load of stuff to DI with Richard or Blythe and bit by bit I am making progress. The floor of our room is all clean along with our bathroom, I just need to finish the back of our closet and the purging decisions.
We still need to build water storage shelves in the garage, clean out the garage, improve the chicken coop, clean up the messes in our yard – the burn pile, the broken cars, and the weeds. I had big hopes of building some swings, staining the deck, and remodeling our camper, but I think those will have to be tabled until next summer as well.
But now all these projects are going to be put on hold because my mountains are calling to me.
It is that time of year when I go and get recharged by the glacier-fed waters and rugged mountains I love so much.
I will try to get back to the bringing-order-to-my-life-projects when we get back, but my guess is, it will probably be December when I have time to devote to it again as when we return from camping we will be busy with Blythe’s first temple trip, her mission farewell, and getting her on her mission. Then we will start our fall homeschool schedule of Learning Time, iFAMILY, and Homeschool Gymnastics. I am also starting a Liberty Girls group with Annesley and nine other little girls, which is probably a bigger commitment than I realize right now. I desperately want to wrap up all my summer organization projects, but I also have to be realistic about the capacity of my body to work, the needs of my family, and the lack of any extra funds to devote to the projects. It’s all good and I need to keep reminding myself that we have accomplished a massive amount of work already. We just need to get the house put back together so we can eat meals and play games in the dining room again.
So if you are wondering why I haven’t been posting much, this is why – a summer full of big projects and when I have a spare minute that I’m not flat on my back in bed with my ice packs, I take the kids to the lake for an afternoon of kayaking and swimming or curl up with them for read-alouds. I hardly see Blythe and Keziah at all. They are both busy working as hard as they can earning money and my job is to give them hugs and encouragement when they get home.
these things i know
There are some things I know – a few things that are rock solid in my soul. I came to know them in the aftermath of a difficult time when everything I thought I knew come crashing down around me.
Last night we watched The Cokeville Miracle and quite unexpectedly it brought back all the feelings of that long ago summer of 1986 – the summer my life and all the things I thought about the world were turned upside down.
In the twelve weeks following my twelfth birthday, a series of events occurred that broke my heart in a million pieces, changed my perspective, and sent me on a journey to discover what I really could depend upon.
First, my dad left. My hero. My favorite guy. My world. He drove away to a new life with a new woman far across the country. The gut-wrenching tears that racked my soul are indescribable. In spite of the fact that there were challenges in my parents’ marriage, our family being torn apart and ceasing to exist as a FAMILY had somehow not occurred to me as a real possibility. When it happened, when he actually drove away and stayed away, I no longer knew what was real, what I could depend on and what I couldn’t.
The next week, the tragedy in Cokeville happened. Even though it didn’t happen TO me, it did happen just 90 minutes away in a tiny, sleepy ranching town that seemed perfectly safe and secure. And it crumbled my remaining foundation a little bit more. If a madman could go into a school, a tiny, safe school very close to my home, hold children hostage and attempt to blow them up, and it could be on national TV, anything was possible. ANYTHING. In my young, twelve-year-old mind that was trying desperately to make sense of the world, it meant my little sleepy town might not be as safe as I thought. It meant it could happen in my school and my friends and I could be the ones living that nightmare. It meant the world was full of crazy people. It meant I might not be safe any longer.
A few weeks later, I went on a trip and was molested. Once again, my world turned on its axis and I had no idea which was up or down, good or bad. All the attention by an older boy was flattering and it certainly felt good, at least physically, but my soul was full of blackness and revulsion.
About a month after that I was sent across the country to visit my dad. It was wonderful and hard and scary all at the same time. It was so, so good to see him and to spend time with him. At the same time, I could see clearly that he had a whole new life and it didn’t include me, not really anyway. He had a girlfriend and a new job in a new state and I could see he wasn’t ever going to be standing behind the plate umpiring my games or playing football on Sunday afternoons or unloading the semi-truck full of goods at our family’s grocery store again. As I watched him in his new life, it became crystal clear that all of this wasn’t just a bad dream and he truly wasn’t coming back. That hard, cold, bitter truth sunk deep into my soul and I felt completely adrift from what I thought life was supposed to be like.
While I was gone to visit my dad, my mother was raped. A man from our church congregation, a man I KNEW, came into our home, MY HOME, a place I thought was safe, and dragged my mother out to the field and raped her. I cannot begin to comprehend the fear and pain my mother went through that night and for many years following. It is beyond imaginable to me.
However, I do know what I went through. Life no longer felt safe in any way. This penetration of the wall of safety of my home changed me, terrified me and hardened me all at the same time. Just a few months prior, I had a family, a home, a family business, a church, a community, and a state that felt safe, secure, and protective. Those things were full of loving, strong, moral people who loved me and on whom I could depend.
My mother’s rape was the final blow to that picture in my mind. I no longer had any idea who was safe, what was good, what was strong and permanent and dependable. My foundation was gone, blown away like dust in a windstorm.
On the outside, I still functioned. For the most part, I probably looked okay to many people. But inside, I had died. I had no idea what was real. If family and home and church were not what I thought they were, maybe God wasn’t real either. Maybe He was just an idea that people clung to without really knowing if he existed or not. Or maybe He did exist, but instead of the loving God I had imagined, was mean and vengeful. Or maybe He did reign supreme, but He simply didn’t care about me. Without anything solid to hold onto, I was like a puff of dandelion seeds, being blown to and fro, trying to find someplace to land and plant new roots.
It took years for me to allow God to rebuild my foundation. Piece by piece He gave me solid bits of truth to give a mooring to my soul.
Sometime in that twelfth year I stopped praying. I could not open my heart to a being I didn’t know was real or if he was real, wasn’t concerned enough with me to protect me. Then I stopped crying. I think it was an attempt to stop feeling. In some ways, it worked. I was able to go through life, get straight A’s, put on a show of happiness that almost convinced even myself, and succeed in all the quantifiable measures of life, but my heart was mostly dead to feeling the good things and underneath the surface, a volcano of anger boiled ready to explode whenever a person would make some comment about how wonderful men are or how I needed to spend more effort preparing for marriage. Then the anger would erupt and frighten me with its passionate vehemence.
Truth be told, I was a mess. I knew all the Sunday School answers and I had great hope that the idea of a loving Heavenly Father and eternal families were true, but the evidence around me told a very different story and my logical mind could not discard the proofs surrounding me that God didn’t care about me, that men were despicable, and that the only thing I could count on was myself.
Through that pain and pride and sorrow, God began to speak to me in quiet, almost imperceptible ways. He would send a feeling of comfort, an act of kindness, or a moment of inspiration. He told me clearly in the scriptures that He did love me and that He sent His son to die for me and all of His children…even the ones who had hurt me so terribly. I remember one day sitting in seminary and reading these words.
Behold, it is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.
Moses 1:39
As I read them, God spoke to me. He whispered powerfully to the deepest parts of my soul that His entire purpose in being is to bring His children home to Him and that He was doing exactly that with me. He filled me with a certainty of His goodness and sureness of His capability to do His work. I can’t adequately describe the pure knowledge that flowed into me. In those few moments, I felt His peace and His love and came to know that He knew me personally and would do everything He could to bring me home.
That experience stayed with me. It changed me. It gave me several solid pieces of my foundation. One, I knew God was real. Two, I knew he knew me. Three, I knew he loved me. Four, I knew He was in the process of and would continue to teach, purify, and redeem me. Those are some pretty solid foundations and they have carried me and given me strength for many years.
Throughout the years, those bedrock truths have been strengthened by many more experiences with the Spirit and God’s hand in my life. He has guided me through the forgiveness process and taken the anger and hatred out of my heart. He has taught me again and again that I can trust Him and I must depend on Him. He has taught me that He is greater than any other power or force. He has shown me both His goodness and His glory as He heals my heart and changes my nature. Those original foundations have been added to with pieces of trust and reliance and miracles and peace.
I don’t know everything and I still have a long, long way to go in understanding Him and becoming like Him, but I know He is real. I know He is a God of miracles. I know He lives and loves and heals and transforms.
Last night, I sobbed through most of the movie. My feelings of fear and pain and sorrow from that harrowing summer came to the surface and poured out of me. My heart ached for the little girl I was who was trying her best to make sense of the destruction of all she held dear. And then, my heart filled with gratitude for those months and years of searching for something I could truly stand on and know it would not move. God gave me a new foundation, much stronger than my little girl hopes and dreams. He gave me His goodness and plan for all His children and continues to show me He is able to do His work to bring me and each of us home.
celebrate good times, come on!
Can you hear me belting out those words from the old Kool and the Gang song? I have been singing those five words over and over all night.
There are a gazillion things I need to post about and I keep thinking I will get to Swim Camp, Jennifer leaving, my family reunion, my cruise, missionary shopping, Keziah’s play, and so many other things that have happened in the past two months, but tonight, instead of worrying about all that, I want to savor this momentous day.
I GET TO START EXERCISING!
For the first time since December 8, I have been cleared to ride my Elliptigo! Woot! Woot! I am so silly excited! Now I have to be super careful and only ride for a minute or so, but a minute is a huge sixty second improvement from the past 6+ months. And in the interest of full disclosure, I injured my inguinal ligament back on October 10 and was only able to start exercising after that injury on December 2.
This is huge.
It has been almost 9 months since I have been able to do any exercising at all and now it is here. The day I have been praying and yearning for for months.
Tonight I rode.
And it felt magnificent.
Imagine me holding up a lovely glass of sparkling cider.
To muscles!
yellow squash soup
Last summer when I couldn’t open my mouth to eat at all, my friend Sherry brought over this delicious soup. I have saved her handwritten recipe for the past 12 months and vowed to make it again, but I haven’t done it yet. My face has been hurting significantly since the January 31 car accident and last week a little toddler landed on my head in the swimming pool and now my face is swollen and needing to rest again, so I think I will make this soup soon.
Yellow Squash Soup
2 C. chopped yellow summer squash
1 C. chopped carrots
1 C. chopped onion
4 C. peeled potatoes
garlic – not sure of the amount here…maybe 1 clove?Boil in chicken or veggie broth. Add 1 can evaporated milk, salt & pepper, and cayenne. Blenderize till smooth.
how did we get to june already?
Oh my good heck, it is June 7 and has been over a month since I last posted. I guess I need to let y’all know I am alive.
Yes, I am alive and well. At least kind of well. I am happy and spending lots of time with my kiddos and loving the sunshine. I am also super sore from the blasted car accident back in January. If I do hardly anything at all and just lie around my house the ball at the base of my spine shrinks down to about softball size. If I try to drive or do laundry or cook a meal or sit at the computer or basically ANYTHING, it flares up and knocks me flat for a few hours or days until the inflammation goes down. We have made it through the past several months since the accident by having me do very, very little and having Keziah do very, very much. But all of that has changed over the past month and boy, howdy, am I sore. She is working her butt off trying to earn money to go to Europe and D.C. next year and is hardly ever home which leaves the bulk of the housework in my hands for the first time in over three years. And it hurts.
So, posting has fallen by the wayside. By the time bedtime hits each night I am covered in ice packs and completely exhausted from the tasks of the day…and I am not doing much. Not at all. My normal cleaning standards are quite low in most people’s books and they have fallen even lower over the past while, but somethings just need to be done. Laundry does need washed. Food does need to be prepared and cleaned up. Fisher and Annes have been making most of their own meals and Richard has been cooking most of the rest, but I really want to preparing some nutritious meals for my family and have a sit down dinner with inspiring, connecting conversation instead of the survival mode we have been living in for so long.
So, we are learning and adjusting and trying to figure out this new phase of life with the big girls gone and me unable to do much to keep this house running. It is a big transition and it is going to take some time for all of us to adjust – my hope is my back and neck will improve enough that I can do more and hurt less.
Other news in the last month? I went on a cruise!!!! YES, ME! The person who never goes anywhere actually went on a cruise. My cousin, Tami, took me and our other cousin, Camille, on a cruise to celebrate our 40th birthdays…which were last year, but we couldn’t celebrate it then because I was too injured. I need to do a whole post with all the beautiful pictures and stories from our adventure.
The same week Blythe opened her call, I celebrated my 41st birthday and Keziah had her play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which also deserves an entire post with heaps of pictures.
Now it is time for Swim Camp and a family reunion and I have no idea when I will be back on here to post again. We are living and loving and trying to get Blythe ready to leave on her mission.
opening the call!
Blythe’s mission call arrived on Monday, May 4th, which is an odd day since they usually come on Thursdays or Fridays. We weren’t expecting it to be in the mail that day and when I sent Fisher to the mailbox in between math and reading, I wondered, but didn’t really think it would be there. When he walked in the house and said in his deadpan voice, “Blythie’s mission call came,” I didn’t believe him.
But he was right!
She was hurriedly getting ready for work and quickly called her friends and grandparents to see if she could get everyone here that night for an “opening party.”
Around 9:20 p.m. many of our dear friends started pouring in and my heart filled up with gratitude for the love we are surrounded with. Ward members, former Young Women leaders, Richard’s parents, Amy and Sheri’s families, the other Sherry, Jada, and about forty of Blythe’s (and our’s – we love these youth!) friends all squished into our home.
Getting ready to open the big white envelope.
Starting to read. We had seven family members on various phones and are holding them all around her hoping they could all hear.
People cheering with excitement as she read the letter.
Here is the link to the video of her reading her letter. I can’t get it to display here, so you’ll have to click the link and watch it yourself.
trim.E49A7774-68C3-4502-B888-C68C7634BA9F
Love that hug at the end!
If you didn’t watch the video, she has been called to the California Irvine Mission! She reports to the Prove MTC on September 16 which is wonderful because she could have left as early as August 12 and we are really grateful for the extra month she has to work to earn money for her mission.
Here is what we know so far about her mission. It is tinsy…looks like about 10-15 miles wide and 20-30 miles long. It has great weather in the 60s to low 80s year round and the area is hilly, humid, and beautiful. From what we can find online, the area has a high percentage of Asians (40+%) and is safe, busy, and densely populated (3 million).
The California Irvine Mission is a relatively small mission with great weather and great people. The mission is filled with affluent people who are willing to speak with missionaries about the gospel. Southern Californians are generally professional people with a large majority of people who are successful in their jobs. However, there are many people in this mission who are middle- to lower-class.
Missionaries stay active in the Irvine Mission. The Newport Beach California Temple is now included in the mission boundaries. The temple was dedicated by Gordon B. Hinckley in 2005. There are many active members who are strong in the gospel and willing to help missionaries with whatever they can. Members frequently like to have missionaries over to their homes.
Taken from Mission Home.
We are so excited for her and so, so grateful for the journey we are embarking on.
Now we start the process of outfitting her with everything she will need in sunny, Southern California. She is such a hot-blooded person, her priority is to find some nice, breathable clothing that will work well with the humidity!
Miss Annes is super excited about this whole process, but she is also needing some extra snuggles and nurturing. She knows this is good and wants Blythe to share the message of Jesus Christ’s gospel, but she doesn’t really want her sister to leave. I keep finding her squished up against me or Blythe or Richard.
All of us in the midst of the excitement. Yes, Richard’s eyes are closed and Fisher isn’t looking at the camera, but hey, it’s a better pic than the ones we often get when we are actually trying to have a family photo taken.
Afterwords we stayed up super late (it was already late when we started the whole shebang!) and read everything we could find about the Irvine area, poured over her call packet, and talked and talked and talked. Such a special night!
I'm Tracy, a mama with big dreams, crazy ideas, loads of laughter, an insatiable desire to learn, and enormous piles of laundry.
