Great Day of Role Playing

Another great day with Sandy. I'm so glad she is my companion--I loved having her as my partner in our role playing exercise today. She is really good at it. I love that we think alike, that we can finish each other's thoughts and sentences if needed.

And, we even made some new friends today--from Blanding! He grew up with all my cousins--amazing!

Ainsley made dinner for us tonight and it was so good!

And, Scott got his dental license approved for the state of Nevada--a real miracle. Prayers are being answered.

Tender Day

Wow! Sandy and I had a pretty moving day. We are tired, but it's kind of funny how the Spirit hits us both at the same time and we look at each other and we're both in tears. Happened today a couple of times. We both feel a bit like we're having an out-of-body experience; we feel so fortunate to be living this incredible experience.

Our first day in the MTC! I'm not gonna' lie to you--we feel a little on the young side! So great! The food was fabulous. Mostly administrative stuff today, but it was all so inspiring to hear from all the other senior missionaries and see their testimonies and comittment to the Gospel. We escaped at the end of the day and went to watch Stevey slack line and we had dinner with him. It was a good day.

Today was a momentous day for us. We were set apart for our mission to Ecuador by the Stake Presidency. We enter the MTC in Provo tomorrow. We're not really sure what to do with ourselves tonight. We've been getting ready since December, putting things away, taking myriad trips to the DI, making endless arrangements for our finances, mail, etc. I worry about our yard--so hard to leave it right now with it looking so pretty and green with the advent of Spring. We sold the Porsche and have rented our house--tender mercies for which we are very grateful. Tutoring via Skype with the MTC has been a blessing. Plus, I read the newspaper from Quito nearly every day and a talk from General Conference in Spanish most days. Sandy spoke a little Spanish in her talk last night at Stake Conference and that was exciting.

The house is looking empty. Most of the furniture except for a few big pieces has been moved out; no plates or flatware left. We enjoy eating out and today, Ainsley made a wonderful dinner and we loved eating at her house.

We had a wonderful Easter dinner at Hilary and Sam's house. Whitney surprised us and came all the way from Durango for our farewell and Tom and Dana came from Albuquerque. Plus, so many dear friends came--so humbling and touching.

We had decided that we would not be weepy from the pulpit during our farewell. We took advice from Cher's Moonstruck, i.e., whenever we felt like crying we would just say "snap out of it!" It worked great for me until I saw 2.5 rows of my dear Apple peeps sitting in the chapel. Wow! So humbling.