Mission Farewell - July 10, 2016

Our Mission Farewell was today, July 10,2016.  We were so happy that all of our children and their spouses were able to attend.  We also had most of our 35 grandchildren there and this one little great-grandchild.  We are truly blessed to have such a supportive and loving family.  They all love each other and love us, and they will never know how much we love each of them.

We are going to miss this beautiful group of people, and so many special family events in the next two years, but we know that we have been called by the Lord to do His work and we are thankful for that blessing.  It will bless their lives as well.

Our grandchildren sang a song, "Army of Helaman", a beautiful song about missionaries, ( "we are as the Army of Helaman, we have been taught in our youth, and we will be the Lord's missionaries, to bring the world His truth,")  As we listened we were touched with the thought that they are the future of the church, they are truly some of the Army of Helaman.

The scripture that we chose for our missionary plaque is from D&C 84:88

"And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face.  I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up."

This scripture is very meaningful as we contemplate serving a mission.  It is a blessing to realize that the Lord will be by our side and His Spirit will be in our hearts.  That He will go before us to prepare the people so that we will be able to touch them.  It is also amazing to realize that angels both seen and unseen will be there by our side to help us.  We will never be left to do it on our own.  With this in mind, I think we can do it.

Our eternal friend, Ed Lindquist, surprised us by attending our farewell.  He and Sally live in Alaska, but he was in California on church business and decided to come to our farewell and surprise us.  That he did!!

We met Ed and Sally when we first moved to Phoenix, and we have been close friends ever since.  Even though they moved their family to Alaska, we have kept in contact and visited whenever we could.  Thanks Ed for coming, it meant a lot to us.