My parents have been called to serve a mission!  They'll be away for 18 months and I figure that blogging will be a good way to keep them informed about the comings and goings in the Shelton family.  I've needed an excuse to start blogging again.  I intend to use it keep a family history and (eventually) publish some blog books for posterity.  But blogging (especially editing and uploading pictures) was becoming tiresome for me and so I let the events of our recent move get me out of the habit.  A lot has happened since my last post (not to mention a lot that happened between posts that I wish I'd recorded better.)  I have a lot of catching up to do.  So lets get started...

My parents have been called to serve a mission!  So has my babyest sister.  (I figure I can call her that since I've had six baby sisters in my lifetime and she was the last one. heehee.)   Amy will be serving in Micronesia Guam and enters the MTC on Wednesday, July 25th. 

Deborah (second to babyest sister), Mom and Dad, Amy

The date that Mom and Dad leave keeps changing.  They recieved their call to serve in the West Indies Mission and enter the MTC on Monday, July 23rd.  Then the mission president called to ask if they would come a month early so that the couple who they will replace in the education center (perpetual education) could give them a week of training before they depart.  Dad wasn't even going to retire til June 30th, but they worked things out so that they would get two days of training in Salt Lake on the Perpetual Education Program and then fly out to their mission on June 23rd to train for a week with the departing couple. They were going to have to skip the MTC to do that, which they were a little sad about, but figured the on-the-job training would be important enough to make it worth going out early for.  Then last Friday (June 8th) the mission office called again to inform them that the couple had to leave early for a medical emergency.  They asked if Mom and Dad would do their Salt Lake training even earlier and then go to the Dominican Rebuplic to be trained by the person who presides over all of the education centers in the area.  I guess the settled plan now is for them to train all of next week (June 18-22) in Salt Lake and then fly to the Dominan Rebuplic to train for two days with their instructor and then go to their assigned center in ...... on the island of....  (have to fill in those blanks after I ask where again they are going.)

Dad had all kinds of projects around the house and on the Phillips property that he wanted to take care of.  Mary says that he had a project planned for every day before they leave. Problem is each project would really take a week to do rather than a day.  Then to top it off, last week Dad offered to let a young couple rent the house next school year while the wife does a middle school math internship.  So now they are emptying the upstairs rooms (leaving furniture, but emptying kitchen and closet stuff) to make room for the renters.  When I called Mom on Tuesday she was sorting through stuff in the pink room and Dad was at the school cleaning out his office.  They give their farewell talk in church on Sunday, get set-apart as missionaries that evening at 5 pm, and then depart for Salt Lake that same evening to be ready to start their training the next morning.  They won't go back home before they fly out.  Wow, I don't know how they are doing it!  I didn't know that couple missions could be so dramatic....

Did I mention that this is slightly traumatic for me...well it is... slightly.  That's all I have to say right now.