The End

Hi Everybody,

Actually it's not the end......it's just the beginning of the rest of our lives.  How's that for starting our last official letter from the mission field with a cliche.  We've said many many times how quickly the time has gone but then we realize how many things have happened between April 1st of last year and September 18th of this and it a way we've been here forever.  And we're excited and sad at the same time but we really believe what we preach to the young Elders and Sisters and that is if we let the mission experience be a defining time of our lives, it will never be over.

So the goodbyes started last night and have gone strong today.  Our branch president and his wife treated us to a wonderful dinner at the Boatdock Grill on the edge of Cuyaga Lake.  Dad was glad to have a steak!  He can count the number of steaks he's had in the last 18 months on three fingers of one hand....we were slackards and never even used the little table top grill that was here when we came even once.  Today at Church we tried to tell the BP that since we were giving our testimonies we didn't need to give the opening and closing prayer as well....but that didn't work.  Then the Linger Longer turned out to be a surprise going away celebration.  That's a bit of an oxymoron.....celebrating when you leave.  But we did lots of celebrating of wonderful memories including one graduate student of the YSA giving us a box of photographs that he's taken of all the fun and games over the last 18 months (he's a great photographer).  Then another YSA gave us a wonderful "album" full of pictures and messages from those branch members past and present.  These are such good "kids!"  Now tonight we have visited a few more that aren't in the branch and have a couple of minutes breather until the apartment fills up with those who come for waffles and ice cream and the broadcast of the CES Devotional.  We will be kind of glad to be back on Mountain Standard Time with things that don't start late at night (like the BYU football game.....we're hoping for time to watch the highlights). 

We began this last week of wonderful craziness with the Mission Temple trip.  On Tuesday in Palmyra we met our Mission President and his wife and two other senior couples that are finishing their missions the end of this month as well and 4 young missionaries that will be going home in three weeks.  We attended a session in the Temple and then spent time at all the sites, the Sacred Grove, the Smith farm, the Grandin Blg., and the Hill Cumorah.  We've been many times but this was the first time for our young Elders and Sisters and they absolutely loved being there.  Here's another "it's a small world in the Church moment."  We were walking through the sacred grove when we met two Elders from the Rochester Mission with one of their members that they had brought to the Temple (the sites are in their mission so they get to come once a transfer.  "No fair" say our missionaries.  Anyway we met Elder Gibby from Idaho and he's Marilyn Tarkelson's (David) nephew.  Hardly a week goes by that something like that doesn't happen.

Monday Morning:  Well, last night's CES Devotional ended with the last person going home at 11:00 and by the time we cleaned up we fell into bed without finishing this.  We love it when the young people stay after an event and just talk and talk and talk and talk.  They have fun and they laugh and they figure out how to save the world and save themselves and they just know that they're all in "this" together.  This morning Dad went to play basketball and I went to the laundromat at 7:00 a.m. and we came home to find that our missionaries had come to our apartment and prepared us a surprise "transfer breakfast."  That's a tradition that we've done for them all these transfers and they paid us back.  It was so, so nice to eat something we didn't have to cook!

We'll miss going to Institute.  There have been nights these last 18 months when we've felt like total failures and nights when we say "This is why we NEEDED to be here."  The challenges the young adults face are huge and Satan is working on destroying their faith oh so hard.  Some of the comments and ideas blow us out of the water and we don't always do the best job in intellectually answering their questions but one thing we can do without equivocation is bare testimony and we feel the Spirit with us.  And there are ALWAYS young people in class who bare testimony as well with much more knowledge and faith and heart then we ever had at their age and we stand all amazed!  Again.....these new Institute lessons are absolutely the best in teaching doctrines and principles and transferring that knowledge from their heads to their hearts. 

We had our last meeting with Brother and Sister Turo and the Elders last week.  We will miss our Friday night standing appointments to read scriptures with them and Mike and Karen have become dear friends.  We've talked of them before....Mike is the former Special Forces sniper in the VietNam war, the recipient of 4 Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star.  Karen works two jobs to make ends meet and helps care for him in her spare time.  And after Viet Nam, Mike went to culinary school and is a fantastic cook (from his wheelchair).  They made us all dinner last Friday night and it was to die for!

And......we made it through our last Friday Forum ever in our entire lives!!  Oh my goodness, that is part of the assignment that has blessed us and made us happy (on Friday afternoon after the last dish was washed) but has been oh so hard.  We finished our last meal with 55 people there and again almost a dozen non-members.  The great LDSSA officers decorated the tables with Jolly Ranchers and gave us gifts which was so nice.....and we felt loved!  We hope that will continue for all the reasons we've talked about before but mostly for the time spent after when these young branch and ward members unite and  just linger and finish off the last dessert and again talk about life and living the Gospel and last week two non-members and a member were still talking long, long after the meal was over.  We'll be sad not to see the outcome of that conversation.....but such is life and moving on.  We are still so concerned about the interim time between when we leave in 5 days from now and when the new couple, Rick and Sandy Devlin from Pleasant Grove, come in a couple of months.   Supposedly a decision on who would be teaching was to be made last week jointly by the Mission President, Stake President, and CES but we haven't heard the plan yet and are worried we've rattled too many chains in the last few weeks so we're just patiently waiting.  We pray for these three people in the heavy decisions they have to make not only with our assignment but with many other challenges they face.  If all else fails, the young people in Cornell and the young Sisters in Owego will keep Institute going and we hope for the best for the rest!.

We'll conclude this "swan song" with a last wonderful, wonderful experience this week.  We were able to spend much of Saturday at the newly opened Aaronic Priesthood Restoration Site in what used to be Harmony, Pennsylvania.  As we said in our picture and text on that day.....Save your money so you can come back!  There is a beautiful chapel/visitors center there, the restoration of the Isaac and Elizabeth Hale home and the cabin that Joseph and Emma lived in while much of the Book of Mormon was being translated, and the sugar bush grove which has been determined through records to be the actual site of the Restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood.  Then there's the baptismal site on the Susquehannah River and the buriel site of Emma's parents and Joseph and Emma's first child that we saw a few weeks ago.  There is such a special feeling in that area.....much like in the Sacred Grove.  And there's a 20 minute or so new video of the events that took place in that area as though it were narrated by Oliver Cowdrey.  It is by far one of the best films the Church has ever made!

Time to finish this last of the last mission field letters.  We'll text you nightly as we're on the road just to let you know that the old folks aren't lost somewhere off in Maine or Montana.  We love you so much for all the reasons we've said in other letters.....and then some.  We'll miss serving with Carlee and Zac and Cade but we also know that there's others of you preparing. YAY!!!!  And as some of you used to say in your mission letters "Whoop-tee-do the Gospel's true!"

Bye for now......and we'll see you SOON!

Dad and Mom and Grandpa and Grandma and Elder and Elder-ette (Sister) Jolley