We drove to Provo Utah this morning (August 24, 2016) at 10 AM and arrived about 11 AM. Tyler, his mom and dad, and Grandpa Don were all present. As we were driving down, Jill (Tyler's mom) announced that she had left her cellphone at home (more on that later!)
We went to the local Brick Oven restaurant for a quick lunch, where Tyler got his meal for free as a new missionary entering the MTC. Our waiter, Chris, was from Australia, and really helped make Tyler feel more at ease. Tyler had the soup. pasta and salad bar, and we were all quite full.
Next we drove to the Provo Temple grounds to take some pictures. The Temple grounds were beautiful and peaceful, and we sat on a bench under a tree to rest and wait for Tyler's drop-off time of 1:00 PM.
When the time came, we left and drove to the drop-off area where we waited for 20 minutes for traffic to enter the MTC. Once past the guard shack, we went to the South drop-off area to give our final goodbyes and unloaded Tyler's luggage. Tyler saw one of his friends from school who was helping new arrivals to unload luggage and help them into the MTC. It was good to see that Tyler knew someone, and my last view of Tyler was him hugging his friend in greeting. I was instantly put to ease knowing that he had someone he knew to help him to adjust to missionary life.
Dropping off a missionary is bittersweet. You know that they are doing the right thing, and they are in the best of hands. You know the Lord will bless and watch-over them, and that they will have the experience of a lifetime. All things you would want for your son or daughter. However, our emotions from our mortal life take hold, and you know you will miss them dearly.
All I can say is that this was one of the hardest days of my life, to let him go. But it is also one of the most rewarding knowing that he is doing something that he wants to do, and that he is doing the Lords work. I know that I will adjust some as time goes on, but I will miss my son and I will be praying for him every day, every hour, and he will always be in my heart.
Before leaving home this morning, Jill had some last minute items to place into Tyler's luggage. She gave them to me to put into one of the side pockets of his big suitcase, which I did without looking at the contents. As I said earlier, Jill couldn't find her cellphone as we were driving down, and she assumed that she had left it at home.
Upon arriving at home, we searched the house everywhere, but could not locate Jill's cellphone. We called the restaurant to see if by chance it fell out of the car in the parking lot, but they were not able to locate it. We continued to retrace our steps of the morning, reflecting on when we remembered having the phone and where we were at in the house. Still no phone surfaced.
Then Jill remembered handing me the packet of items to place in Tyler's suitcase. We thought...could we have inadvertently placed the cellphone in Tyler's luggage! We called the MTC and asked the attendant who answered if they could check Tyler's luggage for the miss-place cellphone. They said that Tyler was in a big meeting, and they would check with him once the meeting let out and they would call us back with the results.
Shortly after 5 PM the MTC attendant called and notified us that the cellphone had been recovered in Tyler's luggage, and that it would be at the front desk for pick-up. So we jumped in the car and made our second drive to Provo to get the cellphone.
Embarrassingly that cellphone must have rang several times while in the luggage as we were calling it to try and hear it ring to find it. We don't know what was happening on the other end, but if anyone was around the luggage they must have thought something crazy was going on since cellphones are banned at the MTC. Our only hope in this story is that Tyler wasn't completely devastated when he had to go back to his luggage to find his mother's cellphone. We hope he had a good chuckle over this, and realized that his parents were total nut cases and put the phone in there by mistake. It will be a story he can tell on us over and over again as he reflects back on his first day in the MTC.
