Our Senior Mission Call

May 27, 2016

It took me almost two years to finish blogging about our trip to China and Bali — here's hoping I'll do a better job of keeping it updated from here. . .

This will be our "home" for a couple of years, beginning in August

 For a number of years Bob and I have discussed serving a full-time senior mission for the Church, and in January, this year, we decided it was time. We had our initial interview with our bishop (Keegan Hill) on Jan 17, then began completing the on-line forms and scheduled our physicals. Once we completed our physicals, and all the paperwork from the doctor and the dentist was received by the bishop, we had another interview with him (on Feb 28).

We saw our stake president (Ray Runyan) on March 3rd for our final interview. At that time, he hadn't yet seen the paperwork that was supposed to be forwarded from the bishop, but said he'd let us know when he had everything. Later that week, one of the stake clerks discovered that a couple of pieces of information had not been completed on my medical forms. Fortunately, I could access my on-line medical records and print out the information so those blanks could be filled in. We got word that our mission application papers were finally submitted on March 19th.

Then, we waited. . .

On Monday, April 18, our mission calls arrived!! We invited all our kids and grandkids who live locally over that evening (and included Laura and her family on Facetime) to reveal our mission call to them. (We actually opened the envelope as soon as we got it, but, revealed it to the family that evening.)
We've been called to serve in the Family and Church History Headquarters Mission in Salt Lake City, Utah for a period of 23 months!! We're very excited!!! We report to the Mission Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utah on August 29 and will be there for one week. Then we report to Salt Lake City to get our housing and begin all the orientation and training for our mission.
We plan to leave NC on Aug 10 and take our time driving to Utah. We'll visit family along the way and take in some tourist sites (like Mt. Rushmore) as well. . .  (We learned that if our stake president authorizes it [and he said he would] we can be set apart after we get to the MTC instead of having that done before we leave. That will make traveling a little less restrictive, I think.)

We decided to sell our home in Fuquay-Varina so we could serve our mission "unencumbered"

In the meantime, we've also been using the time since January to get our house ready to sell. We painted a few rooms, packed up a bunch of stuff to put in storage (for staging), got rid of stuff, and finished up the spring landscaping tasks. We have loved living in this home and it has been a blessing to us, but, we felt it was best to sell it so we didn't have to worry about managing it (with renters, etc) while we were gone. (Then, when we return, we can downsize into something smaller.)

The house was officially listed on April 6th and was on the market for 38 days. After some negotiating back and forth, we agreed on a price, and were under contract on May 14, 2016.
We've now had the inspection and the appraisal and are waiting to hear what the findings are. Hopefully, there will be no big surprises.
I donated a whole load of excess furnishings (mostly from the upstairs) to a local refugee services agency and have been doing more packing. The movers will be here on June 22 and everything will go into storage. We're not yet sure where we'll be living for the six weeks between moving out of the house and leaving for the mission, but it will work out.
The Lord has blessed us in every way to prepare to serve this mission! We have much to be grateful for!