Well, I'm home.....
My last couple days as a full time missionary were great!!! Monday night after p-day was over, we went to the baptism of Sis. Izzo... The assistants were teaching her. We taught the restoration after she was baptized. WOW... what an amazing lady!!! Her husband was able to baptize her, which was a REALLY special experience. The spirit was so strong. I cried through all the songs... a mixture of the words in the songs, the spirit, and the fact that I would be home in about 48 hours.
Tuesday morning I woke up at 1:30 am and couldn't fall back asleep... I still hadn't finished packing, I was nervous about having to recite "Our commission" (pg 1-2 of PMG) at transfer meeting, and the fact I was going to be going home....
When we got to the church, I had my departing interview with President Wilkey.... What a great experience. After the interview I felt really calm and peaceful!! GOOD THING! When transfer meeting started, I was a mess. We sang "Called to serve" with our third verse added... "Called to serve the people of New England, with the gospel of a loving God. Teaching, Preaching unto true repentance, holding to the Iron Rod...." then we stated our Purpose.... then it was my turn to recite our commission. Wow, the spirit was so strong. Those words really became real to me at that moment. I had a hard time controlling my emotion.... but so did a lot of the missionaries in the audience. The time to serve the Lord as a full time missionary is so short.... But it is some of the most important work that can be done. What a privilege it was to serve the people of New England. I didn't want to recite our commission, but I am SO grateful that President had me do it. All the testimonies of the departing missionaries were VERY powerful! Probably one of the best transfer meetings I have ever been at.
At 2:15 we headed to the Boston Temple!!!! It was such a beautiful day. We had some time to take pictures, and then we went and did a temple session. It was so nice to be in the temple again. After the session, we had dinner there, then drove back to the mission home. On the way home, we sang hymns the whole way. It was really neat!!!
When we got back to the mission home, we had ice cream, and then had some talks. We were given a temple recommend holder for our mission, an oil vial made out of wood from the JSM, and talked. It was really nice.
Wednesday morning we woke up, exercised, ate breakfast, had a big companionship study with all of us departing missionaries and the Wilkey's, then we headed to the airport. Boy, was that hard to say good bye to the Wilkey's.... We had about an hour and a half long flight to Detroit, then we had a 2 1/2 hour layover there... then it was our final flight to Utah... 4hrs. We were all so jittery on the flight... not used to sitting for that long... and we were about to see our families.
When we landed we were all so nervous... we walked as slow as we could to our families.
Last picture before seeing our families... E. Crump, E. Ashby, E. Roper, E. Manwaring, S. Hatch, S. Stradley, Me.
Then we tried to peek around the corner, but they saw us, so we went....
(I am trying to add more pictures, but it won't put them on.... so you will just have to check out facebook to see some pictures...)
It was super weird to be back in Utah.... It's so brown, there are no trees, but the mountains are huge.... I got released at 9pm... came home got ready for bed, and went to sleep.
