Mission Homecoming

Our mission officially ended on Tuesday, February 22, 2011.  We left Laie in the afternoon for a red-eye flight back to Utah, arriving on Wednesday morning 7:30 am.  We were welcomed by our family and drove from the airport to Mimi's for breakfast.  Nice to be home surrounded by our wonderful children, grandchildren and even a couple of great grandchildren!

While on our mission at the Laie Temple Visitors' Center a total of 161,480 guests visited the Center, nearly 9,000 per month.  Of these, 3,737 asked to have missionaries visit them and share the gospel, a little over 200 per month.  These numbers do not do justice to the overall mission of the VC and the thousands who come and leave with increased respect and attitudes towards the Church.

We were blessed to serve with 48 of the most wonderful sister missionaries you'd ever want to know, plus the District and Zone elders who served in the Laie Zone.  A special privilege was to serve with Elder and Sister Mark Eubank (Bountiful) and with the other Senior Couples: Elder & Sister Jay England from Draper, Elder & Sister Jay Peterson from Logan, Elder & Sister Stephen Tripp from Draper, Elder & Sister Wayne Nysetvold from Salt Lake City, Texas and Canada, and Elder & Sister Keith Crouch from Payson.  Elder Eubank is the Director of the VC and we enjoyed our association with he and Sister Eubank.

On our first Sunday home we were asked to speak in Church and all of our children were there, with spouses and children, except Steve and Karen who were in Escondido for the funeral of Jan Marler, Karen's mom who had died the week before.  We were so happy to see six former sister missionaries from the VC: Sisters Babcock, Bridge, Han, Larsen, Stringer and Smith; also  Elder and Sister Tripp.

We were honored to see President and Sister Stephen Peterson (who live in South Jordan) our former mission president who was released in July.  He now works as an IFR in the Missionary Department.

One of our favorite missionaries at the VC is Sister Graves who struggled with migraine headaches but has a great attitude and winning smile.  Her parents and a brother and sister came and it was nice to get acquainted.





Many have asked us if we are going on another mission, the latest being Dr. David Jack, our physician we saw a few days after returning home.  Donna's answer has been "Asking if we are going on another mission is like asking me if I will have another baby right after giving birth."  We don't honestly know the answer.  What we do know is that we have three grandchildren (out of 25) who are ten years old and we have been away from them five of those ten years, serving in the Church.  We also know that we love serving in the Kingdom, we love the feeling of being a full-time missionary, we love the Spirit we feel when we testify of the gospel and we love seeing lives change.  We also know that there are many opportunities to serve here at home and we hope that our health will allow us to be faithful and active servants for several more years.