T Minus 30 and Counting

Yesterday was May 20. We will move out of our home on June 20. Only 30 days to go...

I've started re-reading and re-studying Preach My Gospel from the beginning. It's an excellent training manual. It is so rich and well constructed. Joyce and I are finding that our memorization skills are very rusty. This will require extra diligence and practice!

We started cleaning out the house last week. Storage room, laundry room, bedrooms, etc. All the things we no longer need are being placed in our gym where we're having a non-stop garage sale. All items are free. We would probably get rid of more things if we would let people know about this amazing non-stop sale.

Other signs of the times: The moving company send a guy over to figure out how many boxes they should bring in a few weeks when they load up their moving van. And the septic tank company came and pumped out our septic tank. I was chastised for not doing this regularly -- as in every 2.5 years.

Our friends Lee and Shawna Hilton hosted a small dinner party on Friday night where they served a scrumptuous multi-course meal and paid tribute to Joyce and me. It was a very emotional and loving night -- one that I'll probably never forget.

Disneyland or Else

Our 4 year old grandson Mikey asked us a couple months ago if we would take him to Disneyland before we left for our mission. This was a no-brainer for us. Of course we would!!

We picked Mikey up on Wednesday afternoon and flew to Los Angeles along with our son Blake and his new wife Tianna. We stayed at the venerable Disneyland Hotel and took Mikey shopping that evening. The food was surprisingly good at the various restaurants on the street between the hotel and the park entrance.

Thursday was spent with Mikey and Mickey (Mouse) and all the rides. Mikey's favorite was Pirates of the Caribbean. The music of It's a Small World still acts like sticky glue in my mind. I'm quite sure it could be used as a means of getting secret information from prisoners of war. Forcing a person to listen to that song for more than 15-20 minutes would easily cause all the beans to be spilled!

What fun it was to be at Disneyland with a bright, inquisitive and clever four year old. This was a great trip.

Lunch Meeting in SLC - May 11

Joyce and I attended a luncheon at Church Headquarters on May 11 sponsored by Elder Earl C. Tingey, one of the seven presidents of the Quorum of the Seventy. In attendance were 11 other new mission presidents and their wives who will all be serving in missions that are located in the northeast of the US and Canada. Elder Tingey has oversight responsibility for all of these missions. Elder M. Russell Ballard, one of the Twelve Apostles, also attended with his wife. A question and answer session was held after we had eaten lunch. Elders Tingey and Ballard took turns answering questions and providing insight into our assignments.

Elder Ballard and I have known each other from prior work that I did on a number of church projects in the 1990s. It was good to see him again. My friend Bob Gay, who is just finishing up his mission president assignment in Ghana, Africa, is also a friend of Elder Ballard.

The days are moving very quickly. We'll be leaving Redmond on June 20. There is still alot of household clean-up and sorting to do.