Months of preparation

More paperwork--applications for visas, communication with the travel office, concerns about health insurance. More immunizations--just two of our nine required immunizations cost us $1520! Over the next several months, we were immunized for the following diseases: influenza, hepatitis A & B, pneumonia, meningitis, Tdap (Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussis), typhoid, Japanese Encephalitis, and shingles. We had no idea!

When we first signed in to our missionary portal on the internet, we saw: you have 148 days until you report to the Missionary Training Center! It sounded a long time away, but we had many things to keep us busy over the next few months. Our pre-MTC training included: read the Book of Mormon from beginning to end, study chapter 3 of Preach My Gospel, watch six episodes of "The District" (a reality show about missionary work), learn about family history work and prepare a four-generation pedigree chart and gather stories about our ancestors, set up a profile on Mormon.org, read the part of the Missionary Handbook that applies to senior couples, and go to the temple (okay, so some of these are things we work on any way, but now it was a much more concentrated effort with a time constraint).

Jeanene also contacted senior missionary language training at the MTC and started twice-weekly personal Thai language lessons via Skype. Several weeks later, Ray started language lessons as well. Our teacher was a young returned Thailand missionary, married, a hard-working student, and Elders Quorum president in his ward. He became our dear friend and we appreciated his encouragement and patience as we tried to develop our language skills.

In the meantime, Ray was still employed full-time and Jeanene still had all her responsibilities at home. We were still Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, members of our extended family, friends and neighbors, ward missionaries--making visits during the week and teaching Sunday School classes on Sunday (Gospel Principles and Marriage and Family Relations), visiting and home teachers, etc., etc. So much to think about! It was exciting to be preparing for such a great adventure, but the reality of leaving our family hadn't quite set in. It was an amazingly busy time, and mostly we loved it!