I hope they call me on a mission!

We are off again!
Even before we completed our mission in Germany in July of 2010 we were planning for another mission as soon as possible. We had already filled out the application forms online before we left Germany, so what remained to be done was to complete the medical and dental stuff and the interviews with the bishop and stake president. And the waiting! Once back home from Germany and from our visits to our family, the most important dates on our calendar were those of the steps needed to complete our mission papers. It took us about four months to get all of that completed - or at least scheduled to be completed before Christmas – so we were able to have an interview with our bishop, and soon thereafter another with the stake president. Finally the paperwork was sent to Church Headquarters. We felt that the fastest possible response would be around two weeks, but were not surprised when nothing came then. Before we submitted our papers we had learned of our son Jacob’s engagement to Melanie Vaughn, so we had indicated that we wouldn’t be available until January, but we hoped to know about our assignment as soon as possible so we could take appropriate things with us when we went to the wedding on 30 December 2010. We wanted to take things to Utah during this wedding trip so we wouldn’t have to pay extra costs to take them with us as baggage when we were to go to the MTC. That had been a problem when we were going to Germany.

We weren’t very patient as we waited for our call to come. This picture shows the front of our house with our mailbox. We have a new door and new windows as a result of the work we have been doing on our house. Every day we met the postman when he came to our door - at least until we received our call.

One day we were quite certain that enough time had passed that it was possible for the call to come that day, but instead of getting a mission call, we got a telephone call asking us to supply some more information about our “preferences.” We filled out the form via the Internet, and thought we had submitted it that day, but we knew that we must now essentially start over on our countdown to the time we should receive our call. A week later, another call came from the missionary office, and they said they had received Pat’s preferences, but not Grant’s. He filled them out again, and this time made certain that they were submitted; and again we started our countdown all over again.

Eventually we began to worry that we wouldn’t know soon enough to be able to make the preparations by the time we were to leave for the Utah wedding. Both the bishop and the stake president talked to us to find out if we had received anything, and they both said they could access the system and find out what the status was. Soon we got a message from the bishop saying that our call had been sent on Friday. It was already the end of the first week in December, so we were happy to know that we should get our call in the next few days. But it took a whole additional week. Apparently “being sent” meant being moved from the General Authorities to the Missionary department. Each day we met the mailman at our door, but not until it was almost the middle of December did our call arrive.

We were called to serve in the Colorado Colorado Springs mission to work with member and leaders support, which is a new name for proselyting. We were to enter the MTC on 10 January 2011.

This presented a whole new picture regarding what we needed to take with us as we went to Utah for the wedding. Since we would be serving stateside, we would be taking our car, and that meant we didn’t have to worry about extra luggage on the airplanes. We didn’t have to take extra luggage to be left in storage until we went to the MTC. On the other hand, there was so little time between the marriage on 30 December and our entering the MTC on 10 January that it really didn’t make sense to make two trips across the country. We were already committed to drive our car to Utah for Jacob’s wedding and take Emma with us. It didn’t take long to recognize that when we left Ohio to attend the wedding we should just plan to stay until our MTC training was complete. That meant we needed to be ready to leave for our mission in only nine days from the day we received the call! We called our stake president (Benjamin Ogles) and explained our situation. He agreed to meet us in the Canal Winchester building at 0800 in the morning of 26 December to set us apart. We would then attend Sacrament meeting in the Canal Winchester ward, then leave immediately for the trip to Utah, taking everything we needed for the wedding and for our mission. As Emma had already planned to go with us to the wedding, we had to arrange for her to fly home. Earlier Chloe had planned to go with us, but she had already changed her plans, and was instead going to stay with her mother and step-father. We discussed our proposals with everyone, and the plan was approved.

We had only about 9 days to prepare to leave. We made plans of all the things that needed to be completed, and had our last day in our own ward on the Sunday before Christmas. Then on Monday, Grant came down with one-day stomach flu. He could do nothing the whole day.

Friday would be Christmas Eve with all of its special activities in our family, including an evening of caroling, and Saturday would be Christmas day. We seemed to have a tremendous amount of preparation to make and very little time to complete it. Nevertheless, we kept working at it, and by the end of Christmas day we had only the last part of packing the car to do before we could leave. It was hard to say good-bye to our Ohio family, but we thoroughly enjoyed our Christmas day party.


The Ohio Howlett Family gathering on Christmas day. Back row: Missi Howlett, Gwinnie Howlett, Wayne Howlett, Molly Howlett, John Oberting, Third row: Clarissa Howlett, Eric Howlett, Harmony Howlett, Grant Howlett, Pat Howlett, Emma oberting, Karlton Howlett, Second Row: Christina Howlett, Michael Howlett, Joseph Howlett, Peter Howlett, Minda Howlett, Jon Howlett, Kierstin Howlett, First row: Corey Howlett, Quinton Howlett, Alex Howlett, Adam Howlett, Eliza Howlett, Christopher Howlett and Max the dog.

We met President Ogles at 08:00 Sunday morning and were set apart as missionaries. President Ogles gave us very wonderful blessings. We then attended the Sacrament meeting in the Canal Winchester ward (where we got to say goodbye to many who had been our own ward members before the ward was split) then went home to the last hour of packing the car. By noon we were in the car ready to start the trip to the wedding with a car filled to the brim with wedding preparations, mission stuff, Emma’s stuff, and enough travel stuff so we wouldn’t have to stop for anything but gas on Sunday. The trunk closed only by means of a hard push, and Emma was wedged into the back seat so tightly she couldn’t even put on a seat belt.

Winter had whitened Ohio a few days before Christmas, and as we started west, another snow storm was beginning (This storm was to develop into a major storm in states to the east of Ohio.) Snow fell, and the winds blew strongly across the road, but we were able to maintain a fairly steady speed across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Crossing into Missouri near St. Louis we were finally getting to the edge of the storm. This had been our minimal travel objective for the day, but it was still early enough that we pushed on westward hoping to make it to Kansas City if possible. We just kept pushing and made it to Kansas City and beyond a few miles into Kansas before stopping a little before 10:00 PM for a night’s rest in a hotel. We had been blessed, and we hoped the clear weather would continue on Monday.

The weather was still clear on Monday, and we crossed Kansas and Eastern Colorado getting to Denver in the late afternoon. (Little did we know at the time that we were traveling through what would become our neighborhood for the next eighteen months.)



Here is an Eastern Colorado sky taken to show the long road of flat lands like we had on I-70 across Missouri, Kansas and Eastern Colorado.

As a result of talks with several people we had planned to stay on Interstate 70 west of Denver through the Rocky Mountains into Utah, but we had some reservations about the plan. Getting to Denver had taken us a long time, and it was soon going to get dark. We could get past that city and start up into the mountains in the daylight, but the weather was now changing to the west, it was getting colder, and we weren’t sure we could get through the worst part of that road after dark when it became colder and possibly snowy.

At this point our GPS recommended an alternate route around Denver, and we soon discovered we were on the road North toward Wyoming. This gave us a little unexpected satisfaction, since that route goes around the high Colorado Rockies rather than through them. We would still have to contend with the high elevations of Wyoming, but that seemed a better choice than the high mountains of Colorado. We continued on the route the GPS had put us on. We made it into Wyoming before stopping for dinner and gas, but when we started again there was quite a strong wind driving falling snow as we began to cross the high elevations of Wyoming. We saw several signs advising that unloaded trucks should not continue in the face of the road conditions, but nothing told us that we couldn’t proceed in a heavily loaded car. The worst part of our road was in Eastern Wyoming, and we didn’t have an easy time anywhere from then on, but we were certainly glad that we weren’t trying to cross the mountains of Western Colorado. (Later as we crossed those mountains going from the MTC to our Mission Home we realized that this change of route was a great blessing for us. Those mountains would have been treacherous that night.)

With caution and help from the Lord we finally descended out of the higher part of the road to where it was a little safer. From there on through the rest of Wyoming it was still winter, but less treacherous. As we got into Utah, the weather changed to fog and snow. There wasn’t much traffic on the road in that weather and at that time of night, so we were able to continue steadily through it, but it was good we had a GPS guiding us, because even this part of the road appeared very strange and unfamiliar in those conditions. It was past midnight before we arrived at Nels and Susan’s house in American Fork, Utah where most of the family was awake and waiting for us. We were ready to go into the house and go to bed. During the night it became much colder, and there was a deep layer of snow by morning. We had been just ahead of the stormy weather throughout the majority of the trip.