Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust

Here we go again! Nearly five years after returning from our last mission, we've decided we want to serve another mission. It was something we'd been considering (sort of off and on) since we returned home from England in January 2014, but somewhere during the middle of this summer, it just seemed to both of us that the time was right. We filled out and submitted our application in record time - maybe a week or ten days - and then started playing the waiting game which is probably THE hardest thing about going on a mission. Senior missionaries are allowed to submit 3 - 6 requests about where they would like to go and what type of mission they would like to serve. We definitely wanted to serve a temple mission this time and submitted a few requests to locations that have been near and dear to our hearts, knowing that the Church Missionary Department does try to accommodate senior missionaries because they need them so badly. Of course, we had promised our stake president that we would serve wherever needed and we did work hard to keep an open mind, but our hearts were really set on some of those temples that we love....

Boy, were we surprised when our call arrived!

Monday, August 6th, the big white envelope came in the mail just as we were loading our car for a family reunion in Park City, about an hour from our home. That night, with nearly all our kids and grandkids crammed into a rented condo, we opened the envelope.

"You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the California Anaheim Mission. Your primary assignment is to labor as a member and leader support missionary."

Our hearts skipped a beat. What? Our kids laughed and said, "Do they know this family?  They'll have a hard time keeping us from visiting you!" (We've since learned that our one bedroom apartment just 5 minutes from Disneyland won't be big enough for them to visit.) We grinned and reminded ourselves of the verse we learned in the MTC before leaving on our first mission:  Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape!

And from that moment on, we began to think of all the reasons why this might be the perfect call for us. I guess we probably won't really know until we have served for awhile or even until we are home again, but these are some of the reasons we've come up with so far:

1-We'll be leaving several months earlier than we expected, which means we'll be home several months before we expected, too. That's bringing it's own set of tender mercies already.

2-We'll be home just after Emily's baby is born. :))  On the day we opened our mission call, Josh and Emily announced that they will be having a second baby!

3-We'll be snowbirds this year, which means no snow for us! That wasn't what we planned, but we like it!

4-Having lived in Southern California, we're really familiar with the freeways and how to get around. After spending 2 years driving on the left side of the road last time, freeways sound easy!

5-We can take our own car packed full of lots of stuff. Two suitcases of clothes on a foreign mission can get really old.

6-We don't have to open new phone and bank accounts this time.

7-With only a one hour time difference, we won't be on Skype with our family in the middle of the night.

8-There'll be a Fosters' Freeze somewhere nearby. (You probably have to have grown up in California to get that one.)

9-We know and love many things about Southern California already and now we will have the opportunity to know and love some of it's people.

10-Any opportunity to serve and to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ, regardless of the location, is a privilege.

On the night we opened our call, our awesome 21-year-old grandson, Noah, said, "Grandma, you're going to need faith, trust, and pixie dust!"  I think he summed it up perfectly.
                                                                                                                                    - Pat -