Getting her ready for her Mission

 It is Sept. 1st today in a little over a month, a little less than 6 weeks, or 39 days Alysha's mission will officially start with Home MTC.  In 2 months on Nov. 1st she will be flying to Indiana.  It feels like a long time from now but the past 2 months of preparation time have slipped by so quickly that I'm afraid the next 5 1/2 weeks will be gone in an instant.  The past 2 months have been constant shopping trips to find, clothes, shoes, luggage--etc., etc., etc!!!  I never knew how much work and how expensive it was to get a missionary ready to go--it has been exhausting!  We have most of the stuff now, but, some things like winter coats and other last minute stuff we have to wait because they aren't in the stores yet.  

Along with all the physical stuff, we have also been helping her with the spiritual stuff, like teaching her the temple preparation classes and getting her ready to take out her temple endowments in 2 weeks!  I decided to make sort of a memory quilt to document her missionary journey so I've done a row for her work to turn in her mission papers, a couple of rows for her mission call, and a row to represent all this work of shopping.  My next row will be white after she receives her endowments.  Then when her mission official starts, I will do a row each week to represent her mission.  We'll see how this turns out because I'm just a beginning crocheter.

One of the things Alysha was challenged to do to prepare spiritually for her mission was to reread the entire Book of Mormon before she leaves.  I decided to do that challenge with her so I figured out how many pages I needed to read each day and I haven't missed any reading since I began clear back in July.  I think this reading is helping me to stay calm and not completely freak out that she is going to be leaving.