Here We Go Again

Well, after almost two years home, here we go again, bound for South America where Marsh will serve as president of the Brazil Campinas Mission. We packed up the house, sold our cars, got a multitude of scary sounding injections and bid tearful good-byes to our beloved parents, brothers and sisters, kids, grandkids and friends and flew to Utah where we entered the Missionary Training Center in Provo this past Tuesday evening, June 22nd. We have spent all of four jam-packed days learning just what it is we will be doing on our mission and training to do it better. Tomorrow we board American flight #1392 for Dallas and then on to Sao Paulo, Brazil.

I will miss sweet summer corn dripping in butter, English, libraries and bookstores full of books that I can read, stores with clothes that fit me, and In-N-Out. I will miss wide, straight, well-lit streets and freeways, central heating, a good car that's ready to take me wherever I care to go, and friends that I love and love me. I will miss Mexican food of every kind, drives along the coast, watching the sunset over the ocean, Costco and Office Depot, peanut butter and chocolate chips, hugging and kissing our little grandkids, and waking up in my pleasant light bedroom to the sound of birdsong. I will miss our kids, our parents and all our wonderful family, the Tanner Fourth of July Hollywood Bowl bash and our family Christmas party and many, many other things.

But I am also looking forward to experiencing again the things I came to love while we were in Brazil the last time. Juicy sweet mangos, Maracuja pudding, pao de queijo (chewy puff cheese bread), and real Brazilian rice and beans. I look forward to our dear Brazilian friends, samba music on the beach, rain, thunder and lightning storms that leave you awestruck. To tall fields of swaying sugar cane, forests of yellow, red and purple flowering trees. Flocks of green squawking short-tailed parrots, parking in either direction on the street, running red lights if no traffic and Portuguese. I look forward to working so closely with Marsh on our mission, to meeting and coming to love our missionaries, to getting to know many more good people, and for all the experiences that I know we will have these next three years. We'll give it our best. So thank heavens for email, Skype, Vontage and all the other things that will let us keep in touch. We will see you all in just 25, six-week transfers. Ate lago!