Nine Years Ago…

I’ve been thinking a lot about my mission lately, mostly because I have become pretty good friends with the Bishop and his family, and tomorrow afternoon their oldest daughter returns from her mission. And I realized it was exactly nine years ago this week that I returned to Omaha after my 18-month stint in Montreal…

I loved my mission, but I was ready to come home. Maybe because I was older (I turned 25 three weeks after I came home), maybe because I had never in my life been so sick so often as those months in Quebec, maybe because I have an appreciation for the idea that everything has its season, maybe because we had so many major family events immediately following my return that it was impossible to not be excited to be home.

I arrived in Omaha July 1. July 3 we went to the St. Louis temple. July 7 my dad retired from the Air Force. July 11 was my sister’s bridal shower, followed two weeks later by her wedding in Utah, and by the end of the month my other sister moved her family to Maryland so my brother-in-law could begin his surgical career. All that activity made it hard to really pine for my mission and its accompanying lifestyle, but I think that was exactly the re-introduction to society that I needed.