So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye

My little brother, Riley has officially left for his mission! Dad, Josh, Jordan, and I dropped him off at the MTC on Wednesday. It's kind of unbelieveable...in my mind, Riley is still 12...

In the few days leading up to his departure date, we let Riley run our activity schedule. We were able to go bowling with him, watch movies (approved ones, of course, since he was already set apart...), and go to dinner.

On the morning he reported, he decided to have his "last meal" at Cafe Rio (and so did a ton of other reporting missionaries, for that matter...). Then, we drove straight to the MTC. This was a lot different than when we dropped off Jordan. Back in his day, you got to go into the MTC. The mission president would speak, you'd watch a touching film about missionary work, and once they got everyone good and emotionally raw, they'd dramatically send the missionaries through one door, and the families through the other. A little intense, but a nice send-off. That's all changed. Now, the missionaries practically do a drop and roll onto the curb from a moving vehicle. You pull into the MTC, throw the car in park, pull the luggage out the back, and give a quick hug. We even got told we were holding up traffic! Very different. It made it all seem that much more surreal...like we were just dropping him off for school and would be back to get him at 3:15. But in some ways it was really good...a quick happy, heart-felt goodbye done in the style of ripping off a band-aid. One thing that made it really nice for us was that we dropped Riley off in great spirits. He was super happy, and not even acting nervous. I think we were all very apprehensive for him, so seeing him so excited was calming.

Before we said goodbye, we took a couple of pictures outside the MTC. We weren't able to get the quintessential shot in front of the MTC sign because it was under construction, but we were able to get some good ones in front of the building, which I will now post for your viewing pleasure.

In this picture he's on the phone either saying goodbye to Mom or Lindsey...I can't remember which.

Here's Riley in front of the remains of the sign.

(Yes, it IS necessary to take pictures with every possible combination of people. And, believe it or not, I actually spared you some.)

Unloading the car:

And what do you do the same day you drop a missionary off at the MTC? Make him a care package, of course! We went and got him a ton of candy and prizes and shipped it that same day. I really think we are more apprehensive about his new change than he is.

Now, we will just have 2 years of e-mails and letter writing!