Till We Meet Again...

For those who don't know, when you take your missionary to the MTC, you unload the car and a missionary is there to help take his luggage in and show him where to go.  

You don't go with him.  

You say goodbye, see you later, bye-bye at the curb!

I pictured in my mind that this would be an overly emotional awful experience.  

Luckily, it wasn't.

This is taken on the corner of the MTC.  If you look at the street signs, it says, "MTC Entrance".  They no longer have the sign on the wall outside so this was the only "sign" we could get a picture with.

The day Scott reported, there were about 570 new missionaries reporting that day.  There are normally about 250.  Normally families get to spend about 10 minutes saying their goodbyes but because of the amount of new missionaries coming that day,

we had a whole 2 1/2 minutes!  

This is why I was SO thankful we spend so much time together earlier in the day!

Basically, we drove up and were directed to where we needed to go, got out together, gave Scott one last hug, and he walked away into the MTC ready to get started on his mission.

And that was that.

It was hard to see him go but he was so ready so that made it a little easier.

Don't get me wrong, there were tears (and lots of them!) but we were all happy.

It's hard to explain.

It's kinda like when you rip a bandaid off.

It hurts but it's quick.

We were sad to see him go but we all knew he was doing what he needed to do.

I know for me, it was an incredible experience knowing that my son was going to be doing a great work and he was so willing to do it.  

I felt a peace come over me and I just knew.

Tears still come and I'm sure they will often throughout these next two years, but

  I do know he's where he needs to be.

Till we meet again...

We love you Elder Houghton!!!