Susan here. They left the MTC at this morning at 5 a.m., heading for the airport, and onto Germany!
In a letter from Mom & Dad to their children:
Final American installment
First, some reflections on the Physical matters of preparing to serve a mission:
We just have two more meetings here at the MTC in this beautiful Utah Valley in Utah before we move on in a big way. There is a meeting of all missionaries who will be leaving any time in the next week that we need to attend. Then, we need to do the final check-out. Before 05:00 tomorrow morning we must be completely ready to board the shuttle bus with all of our luggage. They will transport us out of Utah Valley to the airport in Salt Lake. There we will check in for a domestic flight to Dallas/Fort Worth and an international flight from DFW to Frankfurt, Germany. We will be traveling the same direction as the Earth’s rotation, so after about twelve hours of flying we will land in Germany in the early morning of Tuesday ready for the first day of our German installment. Well, we don’t know how ready we’ll be. We’ll have a full day ahead of us with lots of things to do, but we probably won’t have had a whole lot of sleep to prepare for it. Jet Lag! Here we come!
When we came into this beautiful valley we each had to claim two checked bags, that we had paid the airlines $25 each to check as airline baggage. In addition we each had a crammed carry-on bag. To save money, we had sent a box by FedEx, and had some other deliveries made to us at Susan’s address rather than to Columbus. (I shouldn’t give the impression that all that was planned – some of it was because we hadn’t been able to get the deliveries made to Columbus early enough to put it with the stuff we packed.)
Well, we have used some of the things we brought with us, so we haven’t had to pack that up for the next trip. But we have been to so many training programs where we picked up some really heavy reading. And we’ve even done a little shopping. So we’ve more than made up for the stuff we won’t be taking. The result is that we had to buy a great big suitcase (we found the “Rosy Roller” at the DI) and Jacob loaned us another bag of his. They are BOTH Full! We’ve readjusted the load a few times so that we can get the total weight under 50 pounds in each bag. We’ve got two at 49+ pounds, but they don’t trigger the 50 pound alarms. We will each check two bags (these are the ones that must be less than 50 pounds each), and we’ll each carry on one bag (which must be less than 40 pounds) and then we’ll carry on a “personal” bag (Pat’s former carry-on which has now been renamed “purse”) and the laptop computer. Again many thanks to Jacob for the loan of his bag, and for Susan’s multiple trips here and there and back here again so we could have what we need and get to where we needed or wanted to go.
And on a higher, more spiritual “family” note:
Yesterday was our Preparation Day, and we spent part of it at Uncle George and Aunt Elaine Puckett’s home in Springville, Utah. My Brother from Alaska, Bryce, and his wife, Sandi, came to Utah on other matters, and were luckily available to be there. Uncle Glen and Aunt Carol, as well as Uncle Jim and Aunt Lois also came. From the next generations, Susan and Jacob came with their kids, and one of Bryce and Sandi’s granddaughters and her husband came. There was a lot of conversation on several topics – a lot related to Family History issues, as that is fresh in our minds now as we prepare for our assignment in that area. There were several expressions of disappointment that there have been no E.G. and Ada S Howlett Family reunions that included all of the younger generations. If such reunions don’t begin while the immediate children are alive, they will never get started afterwards. Pat and I made a proposal that we needed to plan one now. The group didn’t want anything after school starts, and with us leaving for 23 months tomorrow, that made it necessary to push it back one more year or we wouldn’t be able to attend. We therefore settled on 2011 as the year for a Howlett Family Reunion to which all descendents of Ernest Golden and Ada Smith Howlett are invited. It will be in the Summer, and likely our family will be responsible to plan and carry it out. We want something a little like the Merrill Family Reunion in which we do all of the planning, fixing, arranging, and carrying-out. The purpose for that is to get all really involved in sharing time and effort toward its success. It could be a series of events over several days. WILL YOU ALL PLEASE start now to consider the summer of 2011, think of some things that could attract about 500 Howletts (baby owls)of all ages from baby baby owls to great-granfolk baby owls. Consider some venues. Let’s put together a plan to get this thing off the ground. Hmm, do you think we could take over the Draper Temple for two or three sessions? MAYBE, if we promised to bring our own ordinance workers we could have a private afternoon like we have done in the Canal Winchester Ward! Wouldn’t that be fun!
In a letter from Mom & Dad to their children:
Final American installment
First, some reflections on the Physical matters of preparing to serve a mission:
We just have two more meetings here at the MTC in this beautiful Utah Valley in Utah before we move on in a big way. There is a meeting of all missionaries who will be leaving any time in the next week that we need to attend. Then, we need to do the final check-out. Before 05:00 tomorrow morning we must be completely ready to board the shuttle bus with all of our luggage. They will transport us out of Utah Valley to the airport in Salt Lake. There we will check in for a domestic flight to Dallas/Fort Worth and an international flight from DFW to Frankfurt, Germany. We will be traveling the same direction as the Earth’s rotation, so after about twelve hours of flying we will land in Germany in the early morning of Tuesday ready for the first day of our German installment. Well, we don’t know how ready we’ll be. We’ll have a full day ahead of us with lots of things to do, but we probably won’t have had a whole lot of sleep to prepare for it. Jet Lag! Here we come!
When we came into this beautiful valley we each had to claim two checked bags, that we had paid the airlines $25 each to check as airline baggage. In addition we each had a crammed carry-on bag. To save money, we had sent a box by FedEx, and had some other deliveries made to us at Susan’s address rather than to Columbus. (I shouldn’t give the impression that all that was planned – some of it was because we hadn’t been able to get the deliveries made to Columbus early enough to put it with the stuff we packed.)
Well, we have used some of the things we brought with us, so we haven’t had to pack that up for the next trip. But we have been to so many training programs where we picked up some really heavy reading. And we’ve even done a little shopping. So we’ve more than made up for the stuff we won’t be taking. The result is that we had to buy a great big suitcase (we found the “Rosy Roller” at the DI) and Jacob loaned us another bag of his. They are BOTH Full! We’ve readjusted the load a few times so that we can get the total weight under 50 pounds in each bag. We’ve got two at 49+ pounds, but they don’t trigger the 50 pound alarms. We will each check two bags (these are the ones that must be less than 50 pounds each), and we’ll each carry on one bag (which must be less than 40 pounds) and then we’ll carry on a “personal” bag (Pat’s former carry-on which has now been renamed “purse”) and the laptop computer. Again many thanks to Jacob for the loan of his bag, and for Susan’s multiple trips here and there and back here again so we could have what we need and get to where we needed or wanted to go.
And on a higher, more spiritual “family” note:
Yesterday was our Preparation Day, and we spent part of it at Uncle George and Aunt Elaine Puckett’s home in Springville, Utah. My Brother from Alaska, Bryce, and his wife, Sandi, came to Utah on other matters, and were luckily available to be there. Uncle Glen and Aunt Carol, as well as Uncle Jim and Aunt Lois also came. From the next generations, Susan and Jacob came with their kids, and one of Bryce and Sandi’s granddaughters and her husband came. There was a lot of conversation on several topics – a lot related to Family History issues, as that is fresh in our minds now as we prepare for our assignment in that area. There were several expressions of disappointment that there have been no E.G. and Ada S Howlett Family reunions that included all of the younger generations. If such reunions don’t begin while the immediate children are alive, they will never get started afterwards. Pat and I made a proposal that we needed to plan one now. The group didn’t want anything after school starts, and with us leaving for 23 months tomorrow, that made it necessary to push it back one more year or we wouldn’t be able to attend. We therefore settled on 2011 as the year for a Howlett Family Reunion to which all descendents of Ernest Golden and Ada Smith Howlett are invited. It will be in the Summer, and likely our family will be responsible to plan and carry it out. We want something a little like the Merrill Family Reunion in which we do all of the planning, fixing, arranging, and carrying-out. The purpose for that is to get all really involved in sharing time and effort toward its success. It could be a series of events over several days. WILL YOU ALL PLEASE start now to consider the summer of 2011, think of some things that could attract about 500 Howletts (baby owls)of all ages from baby baby owls to great-granfolk baby owls. Consider some venues. Let’s put together a plan to get this thing off the ground. Hmm, do you think we could take over the Draper Temple for two or three sessions? MAYBE, if we promised to bring our own ordinance workers we could have a private afternoon like we have done in the Canal Winchester Ward! Wouldn’t that be fun!
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