From Salt Lake City to Madrid

I went to bed at 12:15 a.m. this morning after packing. I was totally tired, but I didn't get to sleep for probably half an hour. Then Hermana Eastman and I woke up at 3 a.m. to go see our elders off, but they wouldn't let us go see them. Then we packed and cleaned until 5 a.m. and then we went to get ready to go.

We got our plane tickets, put our luggage on the buses and drove to Salt Lake. Right as I stepped off the bus, Jaim, Jordan, Carrie, and Aunt Karen were waiting there for me. We got my ticket and we're walking down to my terminal, when I saw Markus, Crystal and Kit. When I got down to the terminal waiting area, Grandpa, Aunt Joy, Rochelle, and Marla were there.

Then I saw Todd's mom walk by and she said they had something for me. Then I looked over and saw Todd walking toward me, smiling. As he stepped up to me, he started crying. We embraced and he gave me a Kleenex. I didn't cry right then. I just felt NUMB - apathetic, excited, scared, nervous, a little sad. So we went and sat down and chatted. Todd's mobility and speech are excellent. His voice is still a little weird and I don't know if his brain is completely healed yet, but he's a miracle. I know he's been blessed. I had kind of a weird feeling sitting next to him. I couldn't describe it. Kind of yucky, but I just don't know why. Because I never felt that way at the hospital or before the accident.

It was awesome seeing Markus. It was kind of a trip - a blast from the past. Evan showed up late - 20 minutes before my plane left. I'm glad I got to see him. He took several pictures and brought me Post-it notes for my charlas. Jaim and Markus gave me letters. Joy gave me a package with chocolates, paper, money and games to play on the plane. It was cool. I got a little scared and choked up right before I stepped on the plane.

 

On the flight to St Louis, I BRT’d a lady named Laurie from Salt Lake. She has had a lot of contact with the church and has a good opinion of Latter-day Saints, but she was very set in her Catholic ways. She is a vice president of a huge corporation and was very classy and business-like. It was cool. She said she will think about me for a year.

 

 You can see the Twin Towers in the distance in this photo. 

This was about 3 1/2 years before they came down.

On the flight to New York, I gave a book of Mormon to Dan, who is a single man from Tennessee? Kentucky? South Carolina? He loves Native American culture and promised to read it.

The flight to Madrid was in a gigantic airplane, the biggest I'd seen up to that point in my life. 

Elder Rueckert is right in the middle.

On the flight to Madrid, I slept only half an hour maybe, making two nights of no sleep. I had no one sitting next to me, so I wrote letters to Todd and Markus. I felt really homesick and scared about halfway and cried, using Todd's Kleenex. It was really weird. I just got really emotional. We landed in Madrid, 20 minutes before our plane to Las Palmas left. We busted through customs and ran down the airport with all of our stuff - probably a mile. It's a very big, really nice airport. We missed our plane to Las Palmas, so we got another flight for 3 hours later.