Trained and Drained!

We have learned so much over the past two weeks, week one at the MTC and week two (Monday - Thursday) was spent at the Hyatt House in Salt Lake City in medical orientation.  What a wonderful week working with the Church missionary medical group.  The church has so many great tools and resources.  We also met some other great missionary couples that will be serving in various medical callings throughout the world.

Friday and Saturday we finished up our packing and cleaning the house.  We will attend Stake conference tomorrow and see who's in the new Stake presidency.  We have so much love and appreciation for President Martin, President Wuthrich and President Ferrell.  These good men love the Lord and our testimonies and faith have grown greatly under their leadership.  We will continue to pray for them and the new presidency (whomever the may be) and hope they feel of our love and appreciation.  We hope to say a few more goodbyes at Stake conference tomorrow.

It already seems like a lifetime since we first received our call in September.  We have been able to spend time with most of our immediate family over the past month and weeks and we know they will be blessed while we are away serving the Lord.

L-R, Skyler, Lindsay, Cory, Jersey, Jewels, Paige

Due to inclement weather we cancelled our dinner with Lindsay and Cory and their family tonight but decided it was a good time to test Skype.  This is a photo of our iPad Skype session (Skyler, Lindsay, Cory, Jersey -the brown neck-collar, Jewels the white doggy and toothless Paige (only one photo this week).

We are so happy that we will be able to video chat with family while we are in Tonga.  Somehow, it seems like seeing faces makes things better.

We shed a few tears and probably have a few more to go as we finally leave on Monday headed for Tonga.

Packing for two years into a few suitcases due to the strict guidelines of Air New Zealand has been a bit challenging for us but we think we're ready to go now.  Others have managed before us so we had some good guidance and communications from others already serving in Tonga.  We appreciate all the words of encouragement and prayers from our family and friends.

God Bless you all!