Hermana Dayna

My niece Dayna, who lives on the East coast, reported to the MTC in Provo last week and we were blessed to get to have her at our house for a few days beforehand, and to bring her to the MTC.  It was so great to have her here and spend quality time with her.  I asked her when she arrived if she'd rather be busy or just enjoy taking it easy for a few days before the busyness of missionary life began.  She wanted to be busy, which was fine with us!  We had some fun adventures, most of which are represented below.  Things that are not shown are Cat's basketball game; a trip to Swig, per Dayna's request; and a trip to Shirley's Bakery, per my request, where I introduced Dayna to Shirley's raspberry rolls, which she said changed her life.  It feels good to make a difference for someone.

We did have some good down time too, though.  In addition to the girls' beauty salon (below), we decided to have some missionary-appropriate non-Church-sponsored screen time (Dayna was already set apart when she arrived) that included Victor Borge sketches (she hadn't seen any of them before so we loved introducing her to him) and The Sound of Music.

When the day finally arrived for Dayna to report to the MTC (she was getting anxious!), we ran a last-minute errand, then I took her to the (outside of the) MTC and the Provo Temple for a little photo shoot.  These are my favorites:

Next we went home so she could finish up her packing and load the car.  Then we picked the kids up from school and Ben met us at Cafe Zupas for lunch, per Dayna's request.  Mmmm.  From there we drove straight to the MTC.  It was so exciting to be there, surrounded by other families dropping off their missionaries - 540 that day!  Cat kept saying over and over again how she wanted to come back as a missionary.

Dayna had heard that getting dropped off in the parking garage would be traumatic, with missionaries grabbing your luggage and dragging you out of the car, without any last-minute hugs or anything.  That wasn't at all what happened.  There were lots of missionaries waving and greeting us along the way when we pulled in, with one Sister meeting us at our car.  She told us we could get out and say goodbye and even take some pictures, so of course we did.  After a few minutes, we watched Dayna and her helper walk away with the luggage, then we got back in the car and left.  It wasn't traumatic at all (well, not for us, but I don't think Dayna was traumatized either).

It really was a cool experience, both the drop-off and the days leading up to it as we were talking about missionary life and missionary work with Dayna and our kids.  What a blessing!

...last lunch without a nametag

Driving through the gate.

...last group picture

...last hugs

...last look

One thing that helped us not to be too sad when we dropped off Dayna, other than the fact that she's going to be a fantastic missionary and she'll have a great experience, is that she'll be serving in our neck of the woods, so there's a chance we'll get to see her around town.  She'll be a Spanish-speaking missionary, so she'll never be in our ward, but we'll still look out for her!