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After months of planning, testing and preparing, we received our call the first week of December 2007 to report to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah on December 31. Happy New Year's Eve!!
Our 10-day training there was followed by a 5-day journey east in our red Honda Odyssey van, loaded with a year's worth of clothing, spices, bedding, household items (including our matching salt shaker and pepper grinder), leaving our beloved family, friend and neighbors behind! We ventured through nine icy states before coming to a stop at the New York New York South Mission office in Elmhurst (Queens) NY on Friday, January 15, 2007.
The significance of the salt and pepper shakers is that our (barely) 4-year-old granddaughter, Alexa, was having Sunday dinner with her family at our home in Highland, Utah after we left for New York. She noticed things were not as they had always been and she was rather put out. In a phone conversation a day or two later she promptly requested of her Grandma - "Would you please bring the salt and pepper shakers back home?" It's so nice to be missed!
As we gathered in our beautiful little Bay Shore Ward chapel with ward members and fulltime missionaries to watch the funeral proceedings of President Gordon B. Hinckley via satellite, we felt a sense of awe and gratitude for the life of this unique human being. We have received many calls to serve from this servant of the Lord. Our present mission is one of them. We love him dearly. His passing will leave a void in our hearts. We'll just have to fill it with greater love and service to others.
Some of our warmest memories are of President Hinckley's sense of humor? What can you remember? Here's one. The Tabernacle Choir was invited to sing at the dedication of the Tuacahn Amphitheatre and Center for the Performing Arts in St. Goerge, Utah. The month was June, but the weather was unseasonably cold and windy on the Sunday morning the choir was to do the live broadcast of Music and the Spoken Word.
It was, in fact, so cold that we could hardly sing. Within a few minute, the local hostesses came in to the auditorium with armloads of blankets and quilts which we passed around and spread over us during the rehearsal. Just before the broadcast run-through was to begin, President Hinckley walked on stage to say a few words to us. He stood at the microphone, looked throughout the choir, then with a twinkle in his eye, he spoke. "My goodness, you look like an unmade bed!"
Click here to see Glenn Beck's tribute to President Hinckley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z58eHBnEHhk
Share a favorite memory of yours (click comments:-)
After months of planning, testing and preparing, we received our call the first week of December 2007 to report to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah on December 31. Happy New Year's Eve!!
