She's Home!!!!

 On January 11th our sweet sister missionary returned home after 545 days (18-months) of serving the Lord in the Salt Lake City-West mission. 

Here's my Facebook post from that day:  "WELCOME HOME, EMMA!!! In the past month, we’ve welcomed our first grandbaby, visited the grandbaby twice, adopted a new puppy, celebrated Christmas, gave talks in church, hosted my sister and her family for a week, got COVID, quarantined for 10 days, marked the 10th anniversary of Spencer’s cancer diagnosis, and today welcomed home our missionary after 18-months of serving the Lord! Now time to take a deep breath and enjoy our sweet girl being back in the nest again for a while! So proud of you, Hermana Goold!" 

She was originally called to serve as a Spanish speaking missionary in the Toronto Canada mission, but was reassigned to serve in Salt Lake City-West while she was still in the Home MTC.  We thought for sure that she'd eventually make it to Canada, but, alas, the Canadian borders didn't open up until just after she'd been permanently reassigned to stay in SLCW just after she passed her year mark.   She was a little nervous when we told her we'd be moving to Utah while she was still serving, but we promised her up and down that we would never try to see her and we kept that promise.   We did hand-deliver  a couple packages to the mission office, rather than sending them through the mail, but we made sure we delivered them when we knew she wouldn't be around!  

It was crazy that we just got to drive less than 30 minutes to her mission president's home to pick her up...no airports or public transportation needed!  We LOVE having her home and love that Ellie doesn't have to be the lonely only for a few months!   Between the arrival of Denali onto the scene...

 and Emma's return home...the volume level of our home has increased significantly over the last few weeks! 

 (see video for  Exhibit A)

We appreciate the example she set by consecrating a year and a half of her life to bringing people closer to Christ and we love having her home now. We love you, Emma!