Last P-day in the USA

Jeff is on his last P-day in the MTC. He sent a few emails this morning. He's looking forward to calling home and grandparents Monday and wants to call from both SLC and Seattle. We are all looking forward to hearing his voice!

We will be expecting a package next week from him, apparently he has some more things to send home. Unfortunately he doesn't think it will have much written in it so we may be scratching our heads wondering why he sent certain stuff home and what does he want us to do with it. It's been fun sometimes trying to figure out what he was (or wasn't) thinking as we've been getting boxes and even letters from him. The only things we know that will be in the package are the extra stamps he won't be able to use in Japan and his extra MTC name tag. He will be getting full Japanese tags once he gets to Tokyo so he only needs to keep one from the MTC. He did leave some instructions for what to do with the name tag (there may or may not be pictures posted later). And I think we can figure out what to do with the stamps. 8)

Sunday he will be bearing his testimony in Japanese during sacrament meeting. Apparently it's a tradition and he's very nervous about it. I'm sure he'll do fine.

Jeff has been reflecting on his childhood recently. I have been helping Anna with her science project so I wrote a little about it in my letter to him. This was his reply:
"Funny thing, I was just thinking about the science project I (ok you) did for Chase and I in 5th grade, last night. I know we didn't really do all that much work and it probably was super frustrating, but it did mean a lot to me, and I have fond memories :) I'm sure Anna feels the same way."
I'm glad to know he remembers the work we did. I thought it was a great time and now I'm glad to see it paid off! It's always rewarding as a parent to have your children remember something you did, either for them or together.

Jeff is glad everyone likes the photos he's been sending home. He can't wait to get some really good ones from Tokyo and share them with us. I (the geek who sometimes saves the day) have set up a site for him to share photos with us. He can also create documents and other files and share them too. Maybe we will be printing and mailing letters from here to those who don't have email or don't use it regularly. From what we've heard his P-day there will be on Tuesday (Monday here) so it may be almost a full week before we hear anything from him again. We are hoping he gets time to email us when he's in the mission home the first night. It would be very comforting to know how he's doing and how his flight was. I suppose if we're extremely lucky his mission president will let him call home for a few minutes. One can always hope right?

Jeff also had this to say:
"Let everyone know that I'm sorry for not writting back (I do mean EVERYONE), I've been super busy and only able to send off the 5 letters to home, plus 2 to 2 of the several other people that are sending me mail. I'll likely not write home much after this week, just email weekly. That'll save me a bunch of time, so let everyone know a reply is coming... slowely :\"
So please be patient as you wait for a reply and know that he plans on writing everyone sometime, someway. I suspect some of you may be getting your replies as a post on this site. 8)