We arrived at the Salt Lake Airport on January 28th which seems like just yesterday. Time to get back into posting a bit more often! Much has happened and it’s easy to forget. We’re staying at our daughter’s home in North Salt Lake, Utah, which is high up on the hillside overlooking Bountiful and the Great Salt Lake. It’s a beautiful home with breath-taking views. It is delightful being here with out daughter’s family … one of whom will be delivering our first great-grandchild any day now (the due date is February 17th).

So, what have we been up to? As little as possible in some ways. It’s been good not to have a heavy, tight schedule. So, here’s a brief recap:

Final Mission Activities

Our daughter Heather drove us up to Pocatello on January 31st to retrieve our cars and so we could meet with President Kim Smith, the Pocatello Stake President, to be released. The release process takes about twenty seconds … “You’re released!” he says, we take off our badges, and we’re officially no longer missionaries. We visited with him for more than an hour and had a very nice conversation about the mission.

On Sunday, February 12th, Nina and I reported on our mission to the Pocatello Stake High Council at 7:50am and then spoke in the Juniper Hills sacrament meeting, our old home ward. With that, all of our mission obligations were completed. We’ll have our membership records moved to Heather’s ward for the time being.

Rescuing Our Cars

When we left on the mission, we put both of our cars (a 2006 Toyota Avalon and a 2013 Toyota Rav4) in storage in the old navy gun plant in Pocatello along with our 2003 twenty-four foot motor home. On the 31st we got both cars running, drove them over to a nearby Walmart, and had the batteries replaced and the tires filled up with air. Amazingly, both cars started right up with a battery booster and ran just fine. The tires weren’t flat, either, as I had expected them to be … they were down to around 15 pounds of pressure, enough to drive them over to Walmart.

The Avalon, however, wasn’t driving very well. Nina took it into the shop where we found that the CV joints needed replacing along with the rack and pinion steering. The Rav4 seems to have survived with no other issues.

The motorhome is still in storage, but I’ll need to retrieve it before the end of February (or else pay another month’s storage fees). I’m thinking that I’ll locate a place here in North Salt Lake and move it down here so I can get it ready for a trip out east later this spring.

RootsTech 2017

I’ve wanted to go to this genealogy conference for several years. It has grown to be quite massive; more than 30,000 registered attendees this year. Many were there for only the Saturday sessions, but every day was crowded at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City. Both Nina and I registered and attended sessions all four days. I learned a lot and had a great time. My cousin Ted Larsen (I knew him as Barry growing up) from New Mexico came up for the conference and we were able to spend some time together.

Genealogical DNA was the BIG TOPIC for the conference. We both picked up testing kits from Ancestry and are looking forward to seeing what comes back from the test. We also picked up a gravestone marker kit from a new startup Living Tags. This is a aluminum marker to put on a gravestone (I think it could be used to mark just about anything, not just gravestones). The marker has a QR code which goes to a website which can be custom built for the dead person. Sometime later this week we’ll start building up the information so we can put the marker on Trevor’s gravestone. If it works out and looks OK, I think I’ll order one to put on mother and dad’s grave.

Salt Lake Veterans Medical Center

Now that I’m no longer in Hawaii, I needed to transfer my medical care from the Honolulu VA Center to Salt Lake. I was able to quickly get an appointment to do the intake processing. I now have several upcoming appointments to continue the care I was getting in Hawaii. I had an excellent primary care physician at the VAMC in Honolulu and felt like I ended my mission in better physical condition than when I started. I’m hopeful we can continue that here in Salt Lake City.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to the past two weeks. It’s nice to be back on the mainland and in North Salt Lake. We’re acclimating to the altitude and the cold weather. Fortunately, spring isn’t very far away!

‘Til next time … ta ta for now!