OUR EXIT FROM LIMBO

When we moved to our daughter's home in mid November we thought we would stay there for 10 days. Instead, our stay turned out to be almost 3 months long. What a sweet time for us to enjoy their company and get to know them even better! But sweet as it was, it was still LIMBO as we waited to know when we would leave on our mission.

But we trusted in the Lord's timing and know that for many amazing reasons our delay was needed. We can already pinpoint some great reasons but look forward to learning more reasons. 

On Sunday we were 'set apart' by our Stake President. That means we were given a special blessing with special promises to begin our mission and we are now officially Elder and Sister Jenkins! We are just missing our names tags which we will receive when we get to the MTC. We are excited and anxious to begin our service as Self Reliance Missionaries.

Sunday evening we were able to say goodbye to so many of our great friends!

After packing and squeezing everything into our suitcases we got to the Bellingham Airport to have our luggage weighed and checked in..  Our check-through luggage had a 50 weight limit for each piece. And we were so close!!! They weighed in at 49.7 pounds, 49.9 pounds, 50.2 pounds and 52.1 pounds. Because we mentioned we were traveling to Australia the agent said she would tag our heavier suitcase  as "heavy" but would not charge us extra - so kind of her. But she cautioned us that we had better make sure that we were at or under 50 pounds for our flight to Australia.

We had to line everything up before we went in.

We needed tags!!!

We flew safely to Utah. And all of our luggage made it. Our carryons and backpacks were so heavy I was worried about getting them on the plane. But it worked from Bellingham to Seattle and then since the flight to Salt Lake was only half full we were able to put both carryons and both backpacks in the overhead bins. We have a few things to leave in Utah so our load will be slightly less going forward. but then there will be some printed materials to consider. The rental car was barely big enough to fit all of our luggage!

This will be a busy week leading up to our entry into the Mission Training Center on Monday. We are enjoying our stay with our son and his family. They are always so kind to allow us to stay in their home,  to come and go as we need. Tuesday we had a delightful meeting with a long lost niece and her family. Wednesday  we met  with  "Elder Jenkins" brother and sister and their spouses for lunch. What a sweet experience! And it was our grandson's birthday. Today is Thursday and we will play with the family of another of our sons. 

We are so blessed to have such a loving family. The days are passing quickly but in some respects it still is surreal that we will actually enter the Mission Training Center on Monday to begin our mission. I guess our Limbo will not be officially over until we actually check into the MTC.