Its been an interesting week with lots going on. A big thanks to the several young men from church who came over on Wednesday and helped load up all of our packed boxes into a couple of pickups, a van and a suburban and put them into storage. Our storage will be at our friends' house who have graciously offered a room for us to store our belongings. With those boxes and our futon out of the house we now have more room to put more packed boxes ;) It is crazy how many boxes are filled with our bits and pieces. I keep hoping we are packing the things we really want to come home to and discarding the things we really don't need.
I began to pack up the wall decorations and little things on shelves. Funny how those things bring back memories. The string of rocks with holes in the middle- a gift from my cousin- when we went to Denmark where I was born. The holes are caused when organic matter is washed out. What fun it was to find them and also various fossils as we walked along the coast on the Island of Mors. Then the carved wooden love spoon from the museum gift shop in Cardiff, Wales when we were learning about my husband's heritage. And the little picture of a tree with all of the leaves made of small pieces of amber given to me by a friend on the Ilse of Rügen when we explored another of my ancestral homes, and other little things that were gifts from children and grandchildren.
Memories are interesting. My mind was flooded with all kinds of thoughts while packing up the small china tea set that was first my mother's and then mine. The little cream picture that was pieced and glued together long before it was mine, the sugar bowl with the chipped lid, the tea pot and 5 cups and saucers. At one time surely there must have been at least 6 cups and saucers? I remember birthday parties when my friends and I drank Koolaid from those small cups. And that made me think of the birthday cakes with wax paper covered coins randomly secreted under the frosting.
Our little bits and pieces are not of great monetary value but they each represent a small piece of our life.
By the end of August we plan to have almost every non-essential item packed. Bring on the paper plates!
But then there are projects we need to finish before we can really finish packing and move forward:
-A couple of major family history projects to complete.
-Scanning and putting away LOTS and LOTS of family negatives and pictures. How is it possible that we have almost 50 years of photos in boxes and not organized? I just never seemed to have the right equipment or binders or folders and so...
-Writing some more installments for Our Miraculous Journey book which consists of chronological stories of the miracles we have experienced in our lives with our family. We have tried to give our children and grandchildren new stories every year for Christmas but our lives have been so crazy we have skipped the past couple of years so we must write something before we leave on our mission.
-Working in the Vancouver Temple every Friday and trying to attend the temple at least one other day during the week.
-And so on.
When we got our mission call in April it seemed like November 28 was a LONG way off. As is always the case Heavenly Father knows exactly what we need including the best timing. Various things popped up in our life that have required more of our time so it would have been very difficult for us to have left sooner. But I am confident that we will have everything ready for us to leave at our appointed time.
And yes, we are still learning about the Self-Reliance program. It is amazing and can bless so many people's lives. There are so many wonderful things the Church does to help the less fortunate and much of the world does not really even know about those wonderful things.
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