Leaving our mission

Yes, I have been a blog slacker, thanks to Instagram and Facebook. But I've repented and am  back into the world of blogging. I've got a lot of catching up to do, starting with  Dec. 10,  2013, the day we left our missionary apartment in Brockport, N.Y. and traveled back home to Texas.

We left the NY Rochester Mission a week earlier than planned, due to predicted bad weather. On Dec. 10, we loaded the car on what would be the last sunny day in many weeks. The following day was icy and very snowy. So, we left just in time. 

 While Carl was hauling all our belongings to the car, I was finishing cleaning our missionary apartment. As we were getting ready to leave, the senior couple replacing us showed up on our doorstep. They helped haul out the last of our bags and Elder Ray took this photo of us.

Looking at this photo, I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. We felt like the Beverly Hillbillies going on a long road trip. How Carl managed to cram everything in is a major miracle -- looks like a pile of junk to me. It took my aging body a long time to recover from that car trip. I was so crammed in; there was little room to move. When we got to Houston, I was hurting and feeling like an old lady.

As we passed through Buffalo, NY that afternoon on Dec. 10, snow was starting to fall. We were a day ahead of  the Arctic Vortex which held upstate New York in a tight grip for most of the winter. The previous two winters of our mission were unseasonably mild .  I warned everyone that when we leave, we would be taking the mild weather back to Texas with us.

A huge  feeling of  relief engulfed me as we headed back home. Our missionary assignment was quite strenuous and demanding, and after 23 months of working very hard, it was good to be heading home. We would miss our associations with dear friends and missionaries, being close to the sacred sites, and the wild beauty of upstate New York. But we were more than ready to 

 hand our assignment over to the capable hands of Elder and Sister Ray. 

We drove through just a small amount of  falling snow on our way home, the last snow we will see for a long time. This part of the country was soon to be above its neck in snow and ice.

Our smiles were as big as the Texas sky as we crossed the Louisiana border and entered the Lone Star State.

The first thing we did, once we entered Texas, was to visit the grandchildren in Vidor, which was on our route back to Friendswood. (Dario is missing from this photo.)

It was especially joyful to be reunited with little Dahlia, who was blessed with the gift of a heart transplant while we were serving our mission. She was in our prayers everyday and we feel she has been blessed by the Lord to be doing so well.