And they're off...

...to school, and mission, and college!

Everything happened in matter of a couple of weeks.  Owen and Weston started school on Monday August 19th.  Owen is in 10th grade at the High School.  He is still able to walk to school, but he goes to seminary scripture study class from 7:00-7:50am at the church before school each day (although he has also had some morning basketball practices that have conflicted with seminary).  Weston is in 8th grade at the Junior High.  He rides the bus home in the afternoons and on Wednesday morning.  We take him the other mornings for 0-period advanced band.  Savannah started 6th grade on Wednesday the 21st at the Elementary School.  Alex or I usually walk the few blocks to school with her.  Her first day of school was also the day Jared headed off for his mission.  

Jared started home MTC on Monday August 12th, which was a little tough since we still had family in town for a couple more days.  He was definitely on a different schedule than everyone else.  He was operating on Peru time, so he had to wake up at 4:30am to be able to exercise and get ready for his online training to start at 6:30am.  He had lunch around 10:30am and dinner at 3:00-4:00, so I had to prepare dinner around 2:45pm.  

I got up with him and ran 2 of the mornings at 4:30am since he had to have someone with him to leave the house.  It wasn't very fun running in the dark, but I appreciated the last couple of times to spend a little bit of time with Jared.  On the first run, we headed for the bike path, which usually has lights, but they weren't on.  We decided to head back to the school, where I thought we could run on the track.  Well, the gate wasn't open for the track (nor were there lights on), but we were able to squeeze through the side of the gate.  At least the surface was predictable as we ran with a flashlight on the track.  And Jared didn't have to run my pace.  Jared ended up running full on into a spiderweb on the way back home.  The 2nd morning we ran, the moon was bright, so we did a few miles on the bike path.  After our run, we had a nice chat about Captain Moroni and his preparations for war and how Alma and the sons of Mosiah were still out preaching.  They couldn't rest.  I taught the youth Sunday School lesson on Sunday on that topic.  Jared came into my class and was a good contributor to the lesson, particularly how he's prepared for his mission.  We've had to do a lot to prepare physically, but the main part was his spiritual preparation.  He's put in the extra work to strengthen his testimony and work on weaknesses.  One of the things he did was bear his testimony every month in fast and testimony meeting for the last year.  That helped with his confidence in public speaking and sharing as the spirit directed.  It was also a great blessing for me and our ward to hear from him.  He inspired some of the other youth to share their testimonies often too.  

Speaking of preparation, it's amazing the number of things required to do to prepare for a mission, with so many things to gather and paperwork and medical stuff.  One of his pieces of luggage arrived just a couple days before he left.  We still had to get Jared set up with a credit / debit card that would work in Paraguay, and we had to get $160 in crisp bills for the Visa as he entered Paraguay.  The bills were supposed to be free of any marks or folds - basically uncirculated pristine bills.  We waited until the day before to try to find those, and that proved to be an impossible task.  Alex ended up going to over 15 banks in search of these bills, and they were nowhere to be found.  All of them had a fold down the middle, from being sent through machines at the bank.  We eventually gave up and hoped that somehow they would be good enough and not rejected.  Jared took the carefully placed bills in a protective plastic sleeve.  That was one of my biggest worries sending him off - would the money be rejected?  I just hoped and prayed that they would be good enough, that maybe the Lord could somehow remove the folds in the bills.  What's interesting is that a bit of a miracle did occur with the process, but not what I expected.  It turns out the church has been working with Paraguay to get that fee removed for the missionaries (or maybe handled in some other way), and they didn't even need the money to enter.  Instead Jared had a representative from the church there with him as he entered, basically an advocate for him that he was who he said he was and serving for the church.  So he ended up taking the cash with him and didn't even need it for entry into the country.  That was a tender mercy!

Anyway, we had our pancake breakfast the morning that Jared headed off.  It wasn't any easier to say "bye" to Jared than it was for Nathan - still just as hard and ripped out a piece of my heart to watch him walk away for the next 2 years.  I was in tears off and on most of the morning after he left.  I had to come home and finish cleaning out his room so that Owen could move his stuff in there.  Owen was excited to have his own room finally.  Weston would have been fine either way, but he now has his own room too.  My friend Carrie dropped off a "missionary mom" necklace for me, which I love.  I'm sharing the letter I wrote to Jared.  

Jared flew to Atlanta first and then on to Lima, Peru where he spent 5 weeks at the Missionary Training Center.  Another tender mercy was a photo we received from a random church member at the airport in Atlanta.  He snapped a photo of Jared and 4 other missionaries who were flying together to Peru.  Jared didn't have a phone for travel, so it was nice to get an update.  We did send Jared with Air Tags, so we were able to track him based on where his luggage was during his traveling.   

Jared's MTC companion was Elder Bourgeous - they got along well and both are runners too.  He's quite a bit taller than Jared though (as seen in the photo below where you'll see Elder Bourgeous in the light blue pullover).  

After we sent Jared off, we had one more week with Nathan, which was spent going to the temple and gathering the last bit of things he needed for college (mostly clothes).  It worked out well to pile up Jaden's car when he was here and have him take most of Nathan's stuff with him.  That allowed us to put Nathan on a flight to Utah, with a couple suitcases full of clothes and shoes.  I initially wanted to be there to help him move in, but then it didn't seem necessary after the option to send stuff with Jaden.  Jaden was a huge help, as he also picked up Nathan from the airport in Salt Lake City and dropped him and his stuff off in Provo. I didn't cry when sending Nathan off to college, because I know I'll see and chat with him quite often. It was a little odd sending a kid off to college though - am I really old enough to have a college kid?  Welcome to a new season of life!