Halfway Here & Halfway Home

It's pretty hard to believe that, as of today, we've actually served half of our mission. Wow!

Elder Borget, one of our visa waiters who's been waiting forever or maybe a year, actually left today for Brazil! We'll miss him but know how excited he is to be heading to South America, even though he's loved serving in LA. He's recently been Elder Adkins' companion, so we had the pleasure of having Elder A with us while he stays with the Office Elders until he gets a new companion tomorrow at Transfers. What fun to have him back. He fits here like a glove and gets in and helps--just like in days gone by. 

Here are the before and after shots of Sister Lindstrom's new perm. She and Sister Baba came flying in the office after a morning at the hairdresser. She was sure the perm was fine, but when Barbara (yes, the one I recommended) started to brush her hair out, Sister L knew she was in trouble. She decided the office was the closest place to come to try to reconstruct her new do. Personally, I think she's adorable no matter what! Barbara also took 6" from Sister Baba's locks. That girl has some seriously beautiful, long hair!

After the taming of the hair Sister L and Sister B went with us to lunch then Sam's Club where Elder L picked up tables and chairs for some of our new apartments and I took the sisters on a shopping spree. We just told them to get whatever they like that they normally wouldn't. It took some coaxing, and they certainly weren't greedy, but they managed to get some staples and a few splurges. Now that was fun!

Just a comment on the 22 new missionaries who arrived today. Sadly their flight out of SLC was delayed for over an hour, which meant that they wouldn't make their connecting flight somewhere in Texas. On the first email from the SL travel office, one of the options was to return them all to the MTC and start over tomorrow. OH NO! That is not a good plan. But what else do you do with 20 missionaries all going to the same location. (The other 2 came from Mexico City, arrived on time, and had no problems.) Fortunately they were able to send them on other flights--mostly through Atlanta. They're all here now, but it took meeting 5 different flights to do it. Yay! All are here safe and sound and ready to meet their first in-field compantions tomorrow.