Here is a picture of our district of senior couples. In this group, in addition to our service in Italy, we had couples going off to serve on military bases in Washington, Wisconsin and Georgia, and others going to support leaders and members in Australia, Chile, Russia and Florida (That young guy in the middle was our instructor, Brother Lystrup.)
When we returned on Monday after conference, we received two and a half days of training from the Seminary and Institute Department, as we may be called upon to teach seminary or institute in Italy. We had a little different group on those days for this special CES training.
On Wednesday afternoon, we completed our MTC training. We drove to Brigham City and had dinner with Darren and Larynn and their two wonderful children, Reese and Jack. As Darryl had done in the prior few days with our other four children, Darryl had the special privilege to give Darren a father's blessing before we departed for Italy. After dinner we drove to a nearby chapel, where Darryl gave Darren a blessing and we said our goodbyes to this sweet family. It was hard saying goodbye to such wonderful grandchildren.
After a great evening with Darren and his family, we returned home for one last night in our own bed before boarding the great big bird for Italy. When we got home we spent a few minutes with Kara and Chris and little Olivia, who was sporting her first pigtails.
After a night of packing and a morning of final preparations, we spent some time with Bonnie's Mom and talked about how best to approach and teach those we meet in Italy. She gave us some great counsel.
Daniel, Tara and Ellie came down to pick us up and take us to the airport. We filled the whole bed of the truck with luggage, and we hoped that we could get all that stuff to the airport, on the plane, and in the cars or trains that would take us to Siena. Before we left our home for the last time for about 18 months, we had to hug our two youngest grandkids one last time. It was hard saying goodbye, but we know we are doing what the Lord wants us to do right now.
Daniel, Tara and Ellie drove us to the airport and dropped us off. We got through the airport lines in good shape, and all of our bags got on the plane. We took off from Salt Lake City at about 2:30 pm and flew to Dallas. We had about 50 minutes to catch our next plane to London, and we barely made it. When we arrived in London after an all-night flight, we had only 25 minutes to catch our final plan to Milan. With the added security and the fact that we had to go to a different terminal, needless to say, we didn't make that last flight. But, British Airways got us on a flight that left a few hours later, and we finally did arrive in Milan on Friday, October 11 at about 4:00 pm.
More about our first few days in Italy in the next post.
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