The last week has found me on line doing some research.  Most of the research has been reading blogs from others who either are serving, or have served, full time Senior Couple Missions.  It has been very rewarding in reading of their experiences and helps increase my desire and excitement about going.   Reading about others' experiences is a great way to figure out what we might expect and how we can best serve.

We have now received our instructions from our actual Mission and have been assigned a local Branch (congregation) to attend.  It is across the street from where we will be living and is made up of other missionaries who will be serving in the same Mission.  One interesting side note is that also within this particular Branch are several young elders who are also serving in our Mission.  We have already been given the name of one of these young elders who is  a friend of a couple we know in our Ward in Arizona.  Once we get to the Mission we will also receive two weeks of training before we receive our assigned work place.  I try not to get my hopes up too high as to what area I would like to be assigned so that I don't jinx the assignment. 

Five weeks from now we will begin our training at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, UT for five days.  It seems like it is so far away before we start and I fear once we start that our eighteen months will go by so fast and we won't be ready to go home.  Time is precious and I think as we get older we can either find ways to use our time in a productive and meaningful way, or we can waste it and be sorry that we haven't made the world a little better place.   Hopefully, through this mission and other endeavors, we will be in the former group.

Preparing to go on a full time Senior Couples Mission is like getting ready to get baptized, or getting married, or a hundred other major events in your life resulting in a myriad of problems, or setbacks or other feelings of doubt or other issues.  Now that we have made the major decision to serve a Mission and our making our preparations to go for an extended period of time.  We have had our share of these problems ranging from packing and moving out of one home mostly by ourselves so that it could be rented, to having to work diligently at being more patient with one another, to children who continue to struggle with their own problems which recently have increased, to spending a week with about 25 family members for a long anticipated vacation, to having a two year old jump off a table and break his elbow.

Lest you think that we are complaining about all these things, in actuality they become a testament we are doing the right thing by going to serve a Mission.  These problems are best described as minor and for our learning.  We expect to have a great time serving, but we know that all of our problems won't magically go away.  However, we also know that our family and friends and new friends and those whom we will be serving will be blessed because we have made the decision to serve.  Like only gets better when we find joy in serving others.

It seems when you are committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you have a tendency to view the ways you are serving in the Church to be so wonderful that you want others to feel the same way.  A few years ago after I retired from City Government I went and spoke to our Stake President and told him I wanted to volunteer at our local LDS Employment Services Center, but instead of just having me voluteer, he called me as a Service Missionary to labor there.  After serving for a short time, I tried to invite other retirees to do the same.  Subsequently, after Lorene retired we moved away and she and I were called as Service Missionaries at Deseret Industries.  Now, instead of just me being a recruiter, both of us began to tell our friends that a Service Mission is the best kept secret in the Church.  After that, we began to volunteer at our local Family History Center and again tried to tell our friends that they should join us there.

After some discussion, we have moved to the next phase of our lives.  We were recently called as full time Missionaries and are anxious to begin serving in the Family and Church History Headquarters Mission at the end of August.  We have not even started our Mission yet and we already feel that a full time Senior Couples Mission is the best kept secret in the Church.   At every opportunity we get, we tell everyone about our calling.  We also strongly encourage you as you read this to begin now to plan to serve at least one full time Senior Couples Mission.  We know of a surety that the Lord qualifies those whom He calls as we feel that we have much to learn as we will serve, but we also know that we have much to offer.  Now is the time to go, or the time to prepare.

As mentioned before, this past weekend was spent at a family reunion for the Joseph Smith Eggleston family.  At the conclusion of the reunion we went to Lorene's cousin's for dinner and then drove over four hours to get back home to Cedar City.   When we left, we both commented that our Mission Call would probably come while we were up north in Ogden.  It was with great anticipation that I opened our mail box late Sunday night and to my delight there was a large white envelop from the First Presidency addressed to Elder and Sister Walker.  Not to let the cat out of the bag, I threw the rest of the mail on the counter and told Lorene our call wasn't there. (It wasn't a lie, as I had left the envelope in the truck hidden in some towels which were a wedding gift for our granddaughter and her husband.).  We drove over to Cyndie's house and when Lorene unfolded the towels to show Cyndie the embroidered names, the envelope feel out.

After getting hit for withholding the Mission Call and getting our youngest daughter on the phone, Lorene and I opened our call.  Upon reading that we had been called to the Family and Church History Headquarters Mission, Lorene was overcome with tears of joy.  I might have preferred a call somewhere across the Country, but when you are called to serve you go where the Lord wants you to go, to do what He would have you do, and say what He would have you say.  Therefore, at the end of August we leave the comforts of home for an apartment in Salt Lake City for the next eighteen months.

Lorene and I have recently returned from a family reunion of the Joseph Smith Eggleston and Talitha Cuma Cheney Eggleston descendants held in Ogden Canyon.  It was the first major Eggleston reunion in over fifty years.  Eighteen out of the twenty-four surviving grandchildren were in attendance.  It was a great time for Lorene to get reacquainted with her cousins and their families.  We were fed to the point of being stuffed, had an opportunity to view the graves of Joe and Talitha and to see the town of Eden Utah memorial to those who served during World War Two.  It was a great time and there is talk about holding the next reunion in two years. After two nights sleeping on a hard mattress in a cramped van, it was good to get back home and sleep in our own bed.