Upright and Breathing

Last Monday, June 28, 2010, which also happened to be Bruce's 55th birthday, we moved into our new home here in Salt Lake City, Utah. We now live at 4129 Colt Haven Circle. It's a beautiful home on a lovely, quiet street, and we are thrilled to be here! The former mission president and his wife met with us for a little over an hour, telling us all the most important things, like where the best dry cleaner is, and which urgent care place to send the missionaries to when they are injured playing basketball. Then they climbed into their car and drove away. I'm not sure if they were crying or laughing when they waved good-bye. Probably both.

That morning, we had a staff meeting at the mission office, followed by some unpacking of our belongings from our dusty Expedition, followed by a meeting with the two young Assistants to the President, Elder Nelson and Elder Campbell. It's their job to train us. I do not envy them. We are old dogs, and don't learn new tricks very quickly. But they are doing their best. On Tuesday morning, at the crack of dawn they picked us up and we started five straight days of dawn to dusk appointments to meet all of the 196 missionaries that are currently serving in the Utah Salt Lake City mission. We went from apartment to apartment, meeting them two at a time. What we found is that there are 196 bright, cheerful, intelligent, charming, dedicated, unselfish, spiritual giants serving with us here. According to Bruce, it was the "funnest" week of his life. I keep telling him that "funnest" isn't a word. He keeps telling me that marrying me was fun, having children was "funner", but this is the "funnest" thing of all! I give up.

Tuesday night, our neighbors from Provo drove up for a visit. It's really great to have them so close! They say it's weird for them to not have their other siblings and the grandchildren around, just to have us to themselves.....well, except for the 196 missionaries!

Bruce even got to take his suit off for a few minutes. But only a few.

One of our missionaries has amazing talent making balloon creations. He made me a welcome bouquet of flowers. It was just the nicest thing ever!

Our poor Elder Nelson and Elder Campbell had to be with us all day. Every day. They had to listen to the same tale all day long as we introduced ourselves to the missionaries and told them about our family. They were bored out of their minds, though they were very polite and tried not to fall asleep on us. I did my best to keep them entertained. At every apartment, I told a different story about a prank that I had played on Bruce one time.......and I never had to tell the same story twice. They were impressed!

The week finally ended. We were both exhausted. We were very impressed by the young people we met. We are also clueless as to what we are supposed to be doing, and just how to do it, but there were several little victories that kept us going. For example, we figured out which day was trash day, and took the can to the curb, so we got our trash picked up. We finally got all of our things put away. Sort of. Almost. I went running a few times, and always found my way back home. Finally. With the help of the GPS on my phone. We've both learned how to turn our new cell phones on. I've learned my new address. We've been here a week, and we're only about a month behind. And, we're upright and breathing.

Kristi and Ryan came to visit us over the Fourth of July weekend to help us celebrate our country's birthday and our first week in the mission. That was a treat.

And we get letters and pictures and phone calls and video clips and emails and prayers from our loved ones in Delaware, which makes life all the better. I guess upright and breathing is pretty good, all in all.