Sleep-over at the Winns!

There were many, many years when the announcement "Sleep-over at the Winns!" was a weekly occurrence. In fact, there were many, many summers when that announcement was made several times a week, all summer long! But it's been a while since that was commonplace. Wednesday, August 11th, though, the battle cry returned. All those missionaries who were ready to go home had new companionships in their apartments, new people sleeping in their beds and no place to stay. Since they all had flights leaving out of the Salt Lake Airport first thing on Thursday morning, there was a sleep-over at the Winns. Fortunately, the Batcave doubles as a Marriott! A good time was had by all, nobody missed their flights, and there were some pretty happy mothers and fathers and families waiting on the other end of those airplane rides!

Elder Barnett shined everyone's shoes for them on Wednesday night. He put a finishing polish on Elder Norton's shoes on the way out the door.

There's a story behind that. When President Winn arrived in the mission seven weeks ago, he recounted to Elder Barnett a story on the first day we met him. The story was one we heard in the MTC, about two apostles traveling together. One of them woke up every morning to find that his shoes had been shined during the night by the other apostle. What an example of humble service! Elder Barnett took the story to heart, and literally aligned his life with that of the apostle. Every night for the last seven weeks, he shined the shoes of his companion, Elder Warczak. On the last night of his mission, he wanted to finish strong and steadfast, so he polished all the shoes in our house. He accidentally left his shoe shining kit here when he left on Thursday, so as his legacy, we're going to pass it to another elder each transfer to continue the tradition of service. As King Benjamin teaches us in the Book of Mormon, "When ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God."

And we loaded them all up, and took them to the airport.

Elder Blanco's parents came from Spain to pick him up here, his brother up in Boise, Idaho where he had just completed his mission, and have a family vacation before they headed home to Spain. Elder Blanco was the last good-bye.