Your mission assignment is ready!

December 14, 1985 was a Saturday. Whitney Houston’s single, 'Saving all my love for you’ was the most popular love song that month. December 14th was a day our lives changed course, because that’s the day Gary proposed to me, at a Christmas party with our family and friends. 

Fast forward 35 years. 

December 14, 2020.  

Another day our lives turned on a dime. 

At 11:10am our email inboxes both pinged. 

Your mission assignment is ready!

35 years to the day.

We decided to text the kids and set up a zoom call for later that night. We wanted to tell Gary’s mom, but didn’t want to stress her out by holding this information all day. We watched the hands on the clock tick by, pretending everything was normal. After pushing dinner around on our plates, we called her and said we’d be stopping by while we were running errands. Parker joined us and we showed up on her doorstep in our Sunday clothes and opened our call in her living room.

When we learned this call was coming, Gary quickly did the research and found the missions where new leaders would be needed in 2021. President Eyring told us we would most likely be going to an English speaking mission. The odds were 60/40. There was a 60% chance we would serve somewhere in the states. 40%, out of the country. We’d been having lots of conversations with the kids that sounded something like this, “We’re not dying! Don’t worry, wherever we are - California, Texas, Idaho, Nevada - we’ll just get a big airbnb for everyone to spend the holidays and still be together. It's gonna be OK.”

Of all the missions on the list we'd looked at and thought...maybe? We can honestly say that not once did our eyes rest on Zimbabwe. Most of our kids jumped off the zoom call quickly. One of our goals was to debunk the temptation of an expectation for them to react in a 'certain way' to this call, and give everyone space to feel all of the emotions, in an honest and real way. We are trying to do the same. It's just so far away. Tonight, we are feeling all the emotions. Every. Single. One.