Dearest Loved Ones...
Our mission is drawing to a close. In eight short days we'll be wending our way back to our homeland. This last week has been filled with the deepest of love and tender good'byes.
Last Sunday we spent our final Sunday in Ayutthaya with our beloved branch members. If you can imagine LIVING the closing, parting scene portrayed in "The Other Side of Heaven," that is what we experienced. As we finally drove away, to their gathered tears and bobbing waves, our bodies couldn't contain the depth of our emotion. Elder Lindorf commented simply, "That's the hardest thing we've had to do on our mission!"
Then last Tuesday was Zone Conference and a farewell dinner at President Wisit's home. I felt like we spent from 6:30 AM to 9:30 PM in tears, pictures, and hugs. Of course, we have had the privilege of bearing our testimonies at each of these gatherings. There is no greater parting gift.
This "chapter closing" season continues with saying our good-byes to the Service Center tomorrow and to our local Pakkrett Branch on Sunday. Then we pick up Elder and Sister Laing at the airport on Sunday afternoon. In the midst of a busy week of training for them, we will have another farewell dinner with the Senior Missionaries on Monday and at the Mission Home on Wednesday. They weren't kidding when they said that "leaving" is harder than "staying!"
One of the things that eases this transition is that there is one person I DO NOT have to leave... that is my beloved companion. There is something uniquely wonderful about serving "our" mission. It's not my mission, or his mission, but "our" mission. Everything about it is exceptionally ours to love, to hold and to cherish. During the course of our mission the Lord has unified us and knit our hearts together in beautiful, new ways.
We are humbly grateful to you, who have patiently and lovingly followed this journey with us. Your letters and prayers have been a great blessing to us and to the Lord's precious work. We are grateful that the Lord continues to enlarge our hearts, so that we can fit in it all the people we love so dearly. Those people, who have become family to us, span the oceans and will come back to us, again and again, as the waves upon the sand.
Yours always,
Sister Lindorf
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