Farewell and Walkabout

Joseph spoke in Sacrament meeting at church today. I've started a blog for him, and I posted his talk there. He is a great kid, and I know he's going to be a great missionary. It's exciting, and it will be hard, but he's ready to take it on (it helps that, like most missionaries, he doesn't know what's coming! He doesn't know what he doesn't know! But he's ready and willing and going forward with faith, knowing this is the right thing for him to be doing in his life right now.

After church, our family came over to visit with Joseph and to enjoy some lunch together. Joseph, the man of the hour, in the chair - Corey's parent's on the left, my dad on the right side.

Talking, visiting, enjoying time together.

This evening, to give our neighbors a chance to come wish him well, we volunteered to be one of the host homes for a neighborhood "walkabout" - something the neighborhood started a few years ago, where once a month, we get to walk around the neighborhood to visit with neighbors and enjoy simple refreshments at 2 or 3 host homes. Joseph and his friend Spencer were sitting outside our house ready to say hello - They look like missionaries ready to go share the gospel with people they meet!

Corey teased that it might make our neighbors who don't go to church with us, be a little wary to stop and say hello, that these two Missionary looking fellows are gonna put the pressure on them to read the Book of Mormon. But they were just back there to sit on the bench.

We moved the bench in front and it became less threatening. We had a nice turnout.

I had lots of food, and healthy options too (a veggie tray) but Corey went and stole the show by buying even more cookies than I already had (Oh great.... we're gonna be "snacking" on cookies for a week!) and he also got the ice cream filled sorbet things from Costco - you know the ones? Island Way Sorbet - with pink lemonade sorbet in the frozen half of a lemon rind, with coconut ice cream in the half of a coconut shell...

He must have bought like 8 boxes, he just kept bringing them out as the kids kept gobbling them up, with some kids (mostly ours) helping themselves several times. Yay. Well, we tried to make it a big day and a big deal. I think it was a hit. We worked Joseph hard this past week, the yard looks so nice right now, I wish our family had a work ethic system that would ensure it would stay this nice. Owen played in the dirt.

Now it's over, we have about 48 hours left with Joseph. Ready or not, here missionary life comes for all of us. We're excited to share this adventure with him.