And so the process begins...

We had always planned to serve a mission for the Lord after our children were raised and grown - our target date was 2010. We had often read through the list of opportunities for senior missionaries considering the various kinds of missions we could serve. But as life goes a variety of events delayed our plans.

Finally in February of 2016 we were able to begin the application process. The online site had  a rather lengthy application form requiring our medical history, our experiences and many other details. We visited our doctors and dentist to get medical and dental clearance. We began a regime of booster shots and various immunization shots. We had pictures taken and posted to the online application, giving our availability date as August 15, 2016.

Then on March 19, 2016 after about 6 weeks of hard work we submitted the application to our Bishop. He sent it on to the Stake President who interviewed us on March 23, 2016. He sent it on to the Missionary Department in Salt Lake City on March 26, 2016. And then we waited!!!

We chose not to request a specific type of mission nor a specific place to serve our mission because we wanted to be sure that we would go where the Lord wanted us to go.

And then we waited, and waited!!

If you know me well you will know that I like to have my "ducks lined up". It was hard for me to wait because we had some major decisions to make that would be affected by when and where we would be assigned. Our car has almost 330,000 miles and we had been nursing it along. If we went State side we knew we would have to buy a more dependable car. If we went out of country we would not need to buy a car. Our phones were eligible for replacement which would mean another 2-year plan which we did not want if we would be out of country. And we kept waiting!

And we needed to figure out what to do with our house. It did not feel right to sell it so we are renting. That requires a massive effort to organize, discard and pack up our remaining belongings. With so may things to think about it began to seem like our call would never come!