When my 2 year mission was over my parents came out to pick me up. We toured my mission for three days. They met some of the people I had worked with. It was a unique experience for them because they had never done much traveling before.
Before they left home to come out to my mission, I sent Texaco Corp. a letter and asked them to show me the best direct route from Utah to Virginia. Instead of telling me the best route, they showed me the straightest route. My parents were approaching Denver, and they were going up over the Continental Divide. It snowed early that September. They had to go back down another 50 miles and buy some chains to put on the car because they were required to go up over that mountain, which was covered with snow. By the time they did that and got back up there, the snow had melted, and they didn’t need the chains.
When they got into Denver, they didn’t have a good direction on the map that Texaco Corp had sent them. Twice they left Denver and ended up heading back to Utah before they found the correct route on Highway 80 all the way to the east. Then, they dropped down to Virginia.
When we left the mission field, the last thing we did was to have an interview with our mission president.
We were studying in the living room of the mission home. I was with my parents, and he was taking forever. He was on the phone. I came to find out he was talking to one of the leaders of the church. They were instructing him to start looking for a piece of property in the east where they could build the new temple. Later on, it became the Washington D.C. Temple, which is still there today.
After I got home, they always had the missionaries get up in church and take about 30 or 45 minutes to give a report of the mission experiences. It was a good opportunity, and it helped me a lot. I appreciated that.
