Saying goodbye

You'd think since I've only been in this area for a little over a year, that we wouldn't have had to say goodbye too much. Wrong, wrong, wrong! As soon as we got here, nice families started leaving our church family to go on to new jobs and new adventures. Michael's boss whom he really admired was promoted and moved away. And since then, we've said goodbye to a long string of folks. The latest parting was with a cute family; the father of the family served as my substitute pianist when I was on vacation. As part of our jobs in our ward, Michael and I work particularly closely with the missionaries. And, of course, we get to know them and love them and then they move away.

Today was particularly poignant. We had to say goodbye to one of our great missionaries who is going back home after honorably serving for two years. He's been in our congregation for quite some time. We admire him very much. He's going back home to be a piano performance major and I never even got to hear him play. And we also said goodbye to a young single adult named Brad. He has been serving as a member of our bishopric. He is the kind of quality young person that the world needs a lot more of. We have found him to be not only multi-talented and hard-working but also very compassionate and kind. I got to meet his parents today. They've recently returned from a church mission in Ghana. Quality folks as well. Apples don't fall far from trees as we all know.

And, of course, after having my daughter M here for a month, saying goodbye to them last week was also hard. I miss the kids all the time. What delightful little people. They really charmed themselves into our hearts.

I thought the big goodbye to Texas was hard. Today a young lady introduced herself to me. They're fairly new here and she's from McKinney, Texas. That's just down the road from Denton! I practically kissed her. Maybe I get to say goodbye to Wilkes-Barre at some point. But I've learned that no matter where you live, you find yourself missing folks. You're never immune from a nostalgic longing for old friends and old places--what the Portuguese call "saudade."