The final acts of leaving and moving on.

Commitment, commission, committed

It is now 4 days before we leave for the Missionary Training Center in Provo.  Our days are hectic and harried to say the least.  Decisions of what to pack, what not to pack, trying to guess the weather we will encounter and the various activities that await us.  It is projected to be cooler in Provo than here in Prescott so I guess it is goodbye to the heat of the high desert in Arizona, and hello to the coolness of the high desert in Utah, further north.  I wonder if the leaves have started to turn in Maine? 

Our commitment to do missionary work has been an ever present condition since the day we joined the church.  Our desire is that our family and friends also enjoy the spiritual peace and contentment that we have experienced these past 40 years or so.  Evidence of our commitment to these principles is in the execution of our church responsibilities.  For Bill this has been a constant pursuit as well as for myself.  In the recent past he has been the membership clerk for 12 years and I have been the Family History consultant for the past 12 years.  We have tried very hard to do what has been asked of us in these positions, among others that we have held from time to time.

We received our commission as missionaries under the hand of President Steven Campbell on Wednesday , 7^th September 2011.  Our lives have been forever changed as a result.  It is not a monumental shift in our journey through life, but more of a course correction.  A correction that will enhance our future together and it will bless our lives and the lives of our family members as we go forth to serve.  The records that we will be asked to preserve, will become available online at a future date and will be a great blessing to those who seek information about their ancestors who lived in this part of the nation.   Already I have personally been involved in genealogical research in the state of New Hampshire while helping Cindy Hall here in Prescott, research her ancestry over there.

We had a farewell service at church on September 11, 2011, and many friends came to join in the opportunity to wish us well as we begin this next phase of our lives.  I was asked to deliver a talk on Genealogy and Family History.  The difference between the two is significant.  Genealogy is a collection of facts like birth date and place, marriage date and place and death date and place.  This is sort of the nuts and bolts of a person’s life.  However, Family History, on the other hand, is a fleshing out of the person and his/her accomplishments.  I used George Eiser as my example.  By the time he was 17 months old, his birth father died and by the time he was 12 years old his mother had also died and by the time he was 21, Otto Von Bismark was flexing his muscles trying to cobble together an army so that he could take over some territory.  George was of the age where conscription was a reality, so he got on a ship bound for Australia – a land that has the most poisonous spiders and venomous snakes in the world and a plethora of animals that look like they were constructed from leftover pieces from another creation.  The best part is that the trip from Germany to Australia is long and arduous but to his delight, a young lady who was traveling with her sister and family caught his eye and one year after arriving in Australia, they married.  Such fleshing out of the story puts meat on the bones and infuses life into the person and allows us to appreciate what our ancestors endured in order for us to be here today.  Bill was assigned to talk about temple work and how that gives the participants grounding and a solid base for personal as well as family growth.

So now, as we pack our suitcases and finish up on tidying up the house etc., the time has come to say that we are committed to the mission and all that it brings.  The reality of that commitment will be when we step onto the plane in Prescott to begin our journey to Utah for missionary training.