March 15-16 2008

March 15-16, 2008

This morning we drove back to Idaho for the first time in 18 months. It still felt good to be there. All the time you’re on a mission you think about what it will be like when you get home and today was the day we found out.

We drove to Idaho Falls with Cade and Andi. Andi had planned a birthday party for her mother’s 50th birthday today. Robert and Cade went to a movie with Larry, Matt and Matt’s two boys. Since they had the little boys with them, they saw “Horton Hears a Who.” Andi and I dressed up and wore hats and went to the Stillwater Mansion for “high tea.” This was a complete surprise for Janelle and very fun to do. After the tea we went to Janelle’s mother’s house and Janelle’s sisters had dinner for us there. We left a little early with Cade and Andi and went to St. Anthony, where we visited Jerry and Maxine and Bob and Lynda. It was so good to see our “old” friends again.

Sunday morning we met with the High Council at 7:00 AM. They asked both of us to give our impressions of the mission and bear our testimonies. After that it’s traditional to walk around the room and shake every high councilman’s hand, along with the Stake Presidency, as they welcome you back home. This was a great experience. All the members of this Stake Presidency are good friends (Rod Nichols, Lee Miller and Joe Thueson) and many of the high council members are also men we know very well. These are a good group of men and we felt a special spirit there with them. We really wanted to keep our remarks positive. When Robert shook Keith Walker’s hand, Keith said he’d always felt like he couldn’t go to a reservation mission, but after listening to us he now thinks. Guess we succeeded in sticking to the good stuff to report.

President Nichols asked us to come back at 8:30 to officially release us. We thought he would tell us not to wear our missionary badge any more but he said it would be OK to wear them when we reported if we wanted to, and we did. We were more comfortable speaking with the badges on.

We had a delightful visit with President Nichols then headed over to 2nd Ward for our report. We arrived about 9:00 and thought we’d have time to go over our talks before the meeting started, but the minute we walked through the door we were greeted by people and had so many friends to talk to Jim Hunter had to tell Robert to come up to the stand so he could start the meeting. We were overwhelmed by the number of people who came. Everyone from Robert’s Special Services office was there. Mr. Gee, the principal I worked with, was there with his wife, Toni and Mary Schmitt, the secretary at Central, and her husband Richard. Robert’s sister, Pat, came and her son Mark and all his family. Lila Martindale, a teacher I went to Reading Recovery Training with, came. Of course all of Andi’s family was there and Fred and Liz Hossner. Fred doesn’t make it to many church meetings (like ever????) so their attendance was quite a surprise. Jerry and Maxine, of course, and all 3 members of the Stake Presidency, along with many, many others. We can’t remember everyone but the chapel and cultural hall were filled. It was a very fulfilling homecoming. We felt such love from all our friends and the members of 2nd ward. Second ward will always be our home ward, no matter where we go in our lives. Neither one of us can remember what we said in our talks, but the time went by quickly and we hope we represented the Apache people well.

Janelle had a lovely open house at her home for us. They had tons of food and people stopped by all afternoon. We finally got ready to leave about 6:00 and Gloria Winters called and said she didn’t make it but would like to see us next time we’re around. Bishop Powell called and asked us to stop by his home on our way out of town. We had a nice visit with JoAnn and him. We got home late and tired, but happy. Our homecoming couldn’t have been nicer.