A Close Call

Hope you can stand a little more "family history".  I was gathering up some stuff this afternoon to put away in a more permanent place when I came across this postcard I sent home from my mission.  The story behind this card is kind of funny the way it turned out but it came close to being sort of tragic.

As my mission drew to a close I was packing and getting all ready to leave my last city.  Although no one actually said it would happen, I had just kind of figured all along that the mission office, or maybe the church in Sale Lake City, would send my parents the information about when I was getting home and all that jazz.  It seemed so obvious to me that I hadn't said anything to them even though I had known for a couple of weeks by that time.  But then, as we were walking out the door so I could head to the train station, I thought maybe I ought to send my parents something with my arrival time, just in case.  I wasn't sure, however, that at this point, it would even get there in time.  Our apartment was on the fourth floor of a building on the main market square several blocks from the center of town.  On the ground floor was a stationary store.  One that sold office supplies and all kinds of that stuff.  As we got down the stairs and walked passed the office supply store I said to my companion I wanted to stop quick and buy a post card.  So we did and then headed for the train station.

On the front of the postcard was a picture of the train station we were headed to, a place I was already very familiar with after eight months in that city.  Once we got there I wrote a quick note on the back side with my arrival time.  At the station was a post office so we went in, bought the postage, and put it in the mail.  Then I got on the train and left my last city.

That was in the morning.  I traveled to the mission office and got there in the early afternoon.  Then I spent the day getting a final interview with my mission president, making sure all my papers and ticket were in order, having dinner, and waiting around while the three or four other missionaries that were traveling home with me also got their final interviews and checked out.  We spent the night in a motel there in town and early the next morning we all hopped on a plane headed for London, New York, and home.

When we landed in New York, back on American soil for the first time in nearly two years, we each bought a fudgesicle because it had been nearly two years since any of us had one - you couldn't get them in Germany, at least not in the British sector where I had spent my mission.  Then it was catch another plane and on Chicago and to home.

As the postcard said, my plane landed at about 8:35 pm on what felt to me like two days after I had sent it, though I'm sure that I crossed enough time zones coming home that it was actually longer. And there was my family, my immediate family plus several members of my extended family, all smiling and happy to see me after two years gone.  It was a very good reunion.  On the way home my Dad told me that earlier in the afternoon, as he had been coming home from work, he had stopped to get the mail at the post office and there was my postcard, the only notice they had received of when I was arriving home.  So he hustled home and grabbed everybody from there, got word to a few aunts, uncles, and cousins, and headed almost immediately for the airport to be able to be there in time to meet my flight.  I came that close to not having anyone there at the airport to greet me when I got home.  That would really have been something.  Maybe that little postcard had some help making the trip in record time.  Who knows!