May 4, 2009
Today Austin got his mission call to the Florida Tampa Spanish speaking mission.
We were so happy that he was excited to go to Florida and especially excited about learning to speak Spanish. He was still at BYU-I when he got his call on General Conference weekend. He had the call sent home for fear he would leave school to move home and it would be lost between Phx and Rexburg. I overnighted the package to his apt as soon as it arrived in Phx. He was worried he would miss the FedEx guy if he made an early morning delivery that he pulled his mattress off his bed and slept on the living room floor waiting the the delivery.
When it arrived, he took it went to the Rexburg Temple grounds to open it. We had planned on getting on the computer webcam so he could tell us where he was going but he called and was so excited and said he couldn't get the computer to work and he couldn't wait to tell us. He was so excited and we were so excited for him.
It was kind of interesting to guess and speculate where in the world he would be sent. Strangely, I was kind of neutral about where he would go. I had always teased him and told him he would be going to Tulsa and was honestly relieved when that was not where he was sent. It was fun doing the guessing game with friends and family but looking back was surprised when that very morning he entered his guess as Florida.
About 2 weeks before his call arrived I had the strangest dream. I woke up at 4am with a start after having had one of the most vivid dreams I have ever had. In the dream Austin was walking down a beach, in front of a "dirty" ocean wearing black pants, a short sleeve white shirt, black tie and a buzz haircut. Well, anyone who knows Austin knows that he HATES short sleeve white shirts and up to that point I was unaware that he had had Holden buzz off all his curls. When I woke up and told Tony about the dream he told me to write it down and someday I might want to show it to Austin. It was several days after he got his mission call that I put two and two together and realized I had already been shown where he was going. I am not what I would call a highly perceptive or intuitive person but the last dream like that I had was 18 years ago. I had been trying for 5 years to get pregnant and woke up at 4am with a dream of blue balls bouncing all over the place. After a moment of analyzation, I realized that the pregnancy tests I had in the house were positive when the balls turned blue! I flew out of bed, took the test, balls turned blue...and now we have Austin.
I have been rather lax on keeping up with Austin's scrap book over the years. Up until age 8 he has fantastic scrapbooks but the following 10 years....not so much. I decided to document his mission from our end and perspective.
