I thought I should give an update on what's going on with us, as we are
not officially starting our mission until May 12. We sold the boat in
November, the house in December with a rent back for six weeks, and
since January 31 we have been on the road,
first spending a week at our friend, Christine’s apartment in New York
(thanks Christine) then 3 weeks in the basement of our oldest son, Robert’s
house. He, Hilary and the girls, Mikaela, Caitlin, and Saoirse, were
the first to host us. Next, we spent a couple of weeks in our
daughter’s basement before we headed down to Myrtle Beach to our little
timeshare at Jade Tree Cove the last two weeks of
March. Marie, Jake, and the boys, Tom, Joe, Greg, and Will
hosted us for another week after that. Both families live in Leesburg,
Virginia so it was an easy transition and their basement guest spaces
are very comfortable.
This
allowed us to consolidate our worldly goods already packed in a 10x15
storage unit as well as a 5x10 space in the basement of Robert’s
house. This included packing and unpacking for each trip and change of
location, clearing out old papers, and deciding what we would take to
Montreal. We passed on our 17-year-old Honda CRV to Robert's girls (he
expects
to have 3 girls competing for 2 of their 4 cars by this summer) and
replaced it with a Toyota RAV 4 with a winter package for Montreal. We
reconsidered taking the Toyota Prius after seeing a YouTube video about
snow removal there [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7obwyqdnIM].
We
had packed winter stuff, regular stuff, and spring stuff, although
Myrtle Beach didn't actually warm up this time--usually the second week
gets a little summery. A lot of that would go into storage, so now we had to get serious. Everything that went
west with us to our daughter, Ellie, and Kyle's house in Terre Haute, Indiana
had to either fit into a large suitcase and carry on or be left behind in
Terre Haute. Because the next leg of our journey goeth thusly:
Drove
to Terre Haute April 6&7 with a stop for sightseeing in Ohio,
driving the Prius. Turn the Prius over to Ellie and Kyle. Stay with them
in their cleverly designed guest space in Terre
Haute until April 26, enjoying some time with grandkids, Eowyn, and
twins, Aurora and Artem before flying to Salt Lake City, Utah. Our son,
Dan, and wife,
Jess, will pick us up at the airport and we will stay with them and our
grandson, James, in their basement guest space until we enter the MTC
on May 12. We spend about 10
days there and then Dan picks us up May 21 to spend
the night at his house, so he can take us to the airport early on May 22
to fly to
Montreal. We go through customs there in order to get our certificate
allowing us to stay in Montreal for the duration of our mission, 18
months. We stay overnight in a motel and then fly to Dulles
Washington Airport where we pick up the RAV and drive up to
Montreal on May 27. Why didn’t we just drive up? you may ask. Well,
getting the certificate by driving across the border can take days. So
our church has learned to do this approach instead. We pack the RAV with
the rest of our supplies and then we finally
get to start our mission.
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