Hail and Farewell: Starting to say goodbye

We have now been here long enough that we are learning that people do actually leave when their missions are over. It is a strange thing to learn to say goodbye to people with whom we have built a relationship. The problem is that I now have a relationship with some of these people. I like them. We laugh together, sing together, experience little miracles and share them with each other. We see them everyday. We work with them everyday. Will our paths ever cross again? How will I know what is going on in their lives, what is happening to their children or their aging parents? Then I think of what it is like with my friends back home in Texas and I remember what it was like a few weeks ago to reconnect with my Thai friends. It will be like that. What a great feeling to know that friends are never lost. We are here doing this work so that families are never lost either. What a great place to be!

Each month we join with the British Zone (after all it is their floor of the library)to say "Hail" to any new missionaries who have joined the zones and "Farewell" to any who are leaving. We have a little meeting and hear from those missionaries and then we all join together in a wonderful pot luck lunch in the little lunchroom. There is lots of great food that the missionaries bring and it is fun to "oooo" and "ahhhh" about the exotic food that is prepared and shared.

We haven't been here very long really, but already I can feel how fast the time is passing by. Each day there is so much to do and we are kept so busy that it makes the time fly. I am realizing that if we only stay for a one year mission, a quarter of it is already gone! This next week we have another Temple Devotional. Elder Maynes of the Seventy will be speaking to us. Friday we have a special fireside where Elder Ballard will be speaking to us. We have just been getting out our calendars to put in some of the missionary activities during the holidays and we have so many things happening it is thrilling. We did not, however, get tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Special with David Archuleta, but....I'm okay with that. We have many other things going on here that will be great fun.

It has struck me this past week that we are really enjoying the style of living that we have right now. We are so happy living with so much less in the way of stuff. It has made us re-evaluate our personal situation. Reading Pres. Uchtdorf's talk from conference about what matters most has brought some new thoughts into our heads. We can feel ourselves changing as we get more into our mission and our work.

On Tuesday last week we were in our prayer meeting as always and we began singing the opening song, "On This Day of Joy and Gladness". When we came to the chorus, "Alleluia, Alleluia,
Bright and clear our voices ring,
Singing songs of exultation
To our Maker, Lord, and King!"
All of a sudden I couldn't sing. I choked up and tears just streamed down my face.
Here we were in a little basement room with about 20 other missionaries at 7:45am beginning our day with a song of praise. I was so happy to be there at that moment. There is nowhere else I would rather be. It is wonderful to be involved in such a great work with such great people, all of whom are wonderful.

As far as the work goes, we received the African records we have been waiting for and along with them we received a new Church Service Missionary. This Sister has been working on auditing the records from Ghana and South Africa for a year now. She comes in two days a week and now she will spend those days with us and help get those records ready to go up on "Community Trees" along with the other Oral Genealogies that are going up. She was sad to leave her former area but by the end of the day as we showed her what we were doing and what she would be doing she was very excited. We love it when people catch the vision of what we are all about in "Hysterical Families"! hahaha

The weather has been relatively nice. There has been more snow in the mountains and it rained here in the valley today and probably will tomorrow as well, but it has been so mild for us we are very happy. It has been more cloudy each night so I haven't seen the great sunsets that we saw over the last couple of months.

We did go out yesterday and buy a few things for the Christmas holiday. I'm hoping the icicle lights we bought for the balcony will help keep the pigeons away. They still keep trying to settle on the balcony and I keep chasing them away. I am mean, I know, but I really don't like cleaning up after them.

I have had a few successes with my personal family research this past week. I am getting to know how to get problems solved by having the right sources to share with the Help Center. I like this system. There are going to be some changes coming in the next month or so that will help out a lot. I am really liking the new beta family search site. There are a lot of people working very hard to make things better. I appreciate how hard that is now that I am doing things on the internet.

NEWS FLASH FOR MY CHILDREN: I have actually learned how to do some html coding this week. It is very exciting. Who would have thought I would get excited over being able to talk the computer into putting something up on an internet site in bold orange letters and put spaces in the right places! HA!