"Rejoice, for the Hour of Your Mission Is Come!"

After a six week wait, we are now scheduled to depart for the Philippines tomorrow, Wednesday, August 12! We'll fly from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles and then directly to Manila, landing early on August 14. After a Covid test at the airport, we'll quarantine at a Marriott hotel in Manila until we get our test results back, and assuming negative results, we'll then head to our mission home in Olongapo. I am feeling the truth of this scripture today: "Lift up your heart and rejoice, for the hour of your mission is come!" (D&C 31:3).

The miracle in this is that the Philippines is still closed to foreigners. Because of relationships that the Church has with leaders in the Philippine government, the five American mission couples heading to the Philippines have been granted an exemption to policy and the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs approved the Church's request for visas. Our visas were expedited last week at the embassy in Washington, DC and Steve flew to DC to pick them up. We feel blessed and grateful for this series of miracles and we acknowledge God's hand in all of this.

During our wait, we relocated to Park City, UT, where we've enjoyed the magnificent Rocky mountains of Utah and where we've been able to continue our mission preparation. I've immersed myself in Chapter 3 of Preach My Gospel, our missionary training manual, and have prepared personal note cards that I can use when teaching the principles of the gospel. I've even begun slowly translating my note cards into Tagalog, with much help from our MTC tutor. We've also had the privilege of participating in some of the online MTC training classes with the young missionaries. Our takeaway from this is that the young people in our church are remarkable, both the teachers and the missionaries, and that all we really need to do on our mission is let the young missionaries teach and lead.   

Over the past month, we said goodbye to our home in Johns Creek, GA. We'll return to our home at the end of our mission.

We spent time in GA with our two younger sons, Brandon and Kevin.

We spent time in Utah with our son Jared and his wife Eden and our two precious grandsons, Sterling and Bennett.

We spent time in Seattle with our daughter Meredith, her husband Trent and our darling grandson Hugh.

We were also privileged to spend time in Utah with the mission leaders who preceded us in the Philippines Olongapo mission, Pam and Ruel Lacanienta. Currently there are interim mission leaders, Jennipher and Jairus Perez, who are serving until we arrive. 

And we were able to meet some of our fellow mission leaders who will be traveling with us on Wednesday and who will be serving in other missions in the Philippines, Kara & Todd Liston and Linda & Brad Waddoups.

And lastly, with a true confession, I snuck back to GA for a haircut with the person I'll miss the most ... my hairdresser Chris Gray, who's been cutting my hair for 20 years!

I'd send the link to One Day More from Les Mis but that's a little dramatic and all of the lyrics don't apply but still ... it's how I'm feeling today. "Tomorrow we'll discover what our God in Heaven has in store. One more dawn. One more day. One day more."