get together during Education Week

I am meeting with two of the mothers of missionaries Wednesday at Education Week at 11am if anyone wants to join us let me know.
melinda_kinghorn@hotmail.com

Mission get together

Mission Party at the Jacob's
we are getting together with the missionaries who are in the area on August 22nd at 1pm at the Jacob's in Orem
the address is 127 West 1700 South
Orem Utah
if you can come bring a salad, or dessert, or chips, or fruit or veggie plate.
If you need to contact me you can e-mail me at http://www.melinda_kinghorn@hotmail.com/
or you can find me on facebook

Mission Reunion

Hello friends,

Bruce and I are going to Education Week in Provo and will be arriving August 15th and staying for a week or so. If any of you parents of missionaries or returned missionaries in the Provo area would like to get together we would love to meet up. Just let us know and we will arrange something.

Love,

link to our new blog

www.kinghornswalkingonsunshine.blogspot.com

my last blog entry

saying good-bye to some of our dear friends in UkraineMarina, Deema, Ilia
Anya

fellow missionaries

Marina, Nastia, Olga, Vitaly, Sister Fry and President Fry

When one door closes........................................................................

another one opens...........................

our family greeting us at the airport in Sacramento

I'm sitting here looking at this blog thinking about updating it a bit and I just can't bring myself to change one thing about it. This blog contains more than words and pictures. I started writing the blog as a way to communicate to our friends and family what we were doing in Ukraine, but I soon found myself sitting at the computer sometimes daily pouring out my heart.

Today as I sit and visit with friends here in America and they ask about Ukraine. I find myself tearing up as I speak of the people I have come to love. The girl who I initially referred to in my blog as our interpreter who we now call our Ukrainian daughter, Olga, the 16 year-old Anya who stole my heart and her cousins, Nastia, Marina, and Ilia, the women at church who I called my sisters, our amazing branch president and his counselors.

My friends ask me how it was to see so much pain and suffering. They ask how we dealt with it. My answer is this blog. I just came home and wrote about it. Sometimes the feelings were to0 much to keep inside and I just had to get it out and this is where I went. I didn't think so much about who would be reading it I just wrote. I wrote about the adjustment to living in a foreign country. I wrote about how hard it was to leave our family and know that we would be gone for so long. I wrote about the things we saw that broke my heart, the children who lived on the streets, the babies in orphanages, the beggars who were often old ladies, the elderly people who were abandoned and left in shelters. I wrote about the appalling way that handicapped people were treated. I wrote of the shocking conditions of the hospitals and orphanages.

That is how I coped with seeing so much pain. I wrote about it.

But our mission was so much more than all of that.

I wrote about that too. I wrote about the amazing spiritual experiences we were having. I wrote about the wonderful young men and women we were serving with. I wrote about our Mission President's and their wives and how much we admired and loved them. I wrote about how my testimony of Jesus Christ was growing. I wrote about the things I was learning about myself and how Ukraine was transforming me. I wrote about how much I love my husband and the blessing he is to me.

Today will be my last entry in THIS blog, it is time to turn a new page, or maybe to begin a new journey. I will be starting a new blog. It may not be as fascinating or interesting as life in Ukraine but it will continue to be the place I go to pour out my heart.

It will be filled with the magical moments of being a wife, mother and Nana

home again in America..........................................

I want to close by thanking you, our friends and family who became followers of our blog. As I said I didn't always write with you in mind but I know that your words of encouragement helped us through the difficult times. I will be forever grateful for the love that we felt from you thoughout our journey in Ukraine. To you parents of missionaries who lifted me with your love, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your words were often the balm I needed to face another difficult situation. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for your love and support.

dreaming of our own home again

Our dream home is still not a reality yet. Today we went by and visited our home, we even got to sit at the kitchen bar and visit with our real estate agent and the man we are buying the house from but we won't be moving our things in for awhile.

As we sat in the kitchen we could hear the roosters crowing outside and birds singing in the backyard, The gentle breeze was blowing through the windows. I could imagine our grandchildren playing on the floor in the family room as we visited in the kitchen.

tonight I am dreaming of our new home and finally getting all our things out of suitcases while my husband, and our daughter and son-in-law watch Batman in the other room and the babies sleep soundly in the beds.

and tomorrow I will wake up to the squeals of my dear little grandchildren who greet me each morning as if I just stepped off the plane.

Life is good.

Love,

Notes from home

I have finally found a little time to spend at the computer again. I thought I should let you all know how we are doing. First of all.................

I had no idea that we would experience the same Culture Shock coming home as we did when we arrrived in Ukraine.

We are so happy to be home with our family again but I have to say there are days I find myself feeling a little displaced.

We still have not been able to move into our new home yet so we are living with our daughter and her husband and 4 children. We are so grateful for their kindness in allowing us to be here so long. We love spending so much time with family. We all took a trip to Santa Cruz to spend about 12 days staying in a beautiful cottage on the beach. We're back and Karrissa and Brad's now and our son Nate comes over a few times a week to join us for dinner or a movie.

We are enjoying catching up with our friends at home. I have also spoken to a few of the returned missionaries who are home now. We have spoken about our mission experience during Sacrament Meeting at church and once at a fireside. We loved it. We will have another opportunity to speak again in September and probably when we move into our new ward.

I haven't been able to stay in touch by e-mail with my fellow missionaries or my Ukrainian friends the way I intend to as soon as we have our own computer again. I did get to talk to Olga, our interpretor/ and dear friend on the telephone and the minute I heard her voice my eyes filled with tears.

I couldn't stop crying as she quickly told us all the things she wanted us to know about life in Ukraine. Oh, how it made me miss you all. I am so grateful to have been to Ukraine and to have been a part of the Donetsk Mission. I am so grateful to President and Sister Fry for all they did for us and for all the missionaries they love so very much. I am so grateful for all of you who kept me going with prayers and wonderful encouraging comments on the blog.

I promise I will write more soon and post pictures again as soon as i am able to use my own computer again.

Tomorrow Bruce and I are going to Monterey again for a few days and I hope I will be able to use my computer while we are gone to post some pictures.

For now I just want all the missionaries and my friends in Ukraine to know that you are in our prayers daily, we love you, and miss you so much.

These three are keeping me busy

sorry I haven't written yet.

We Made It Home

We have been home a few days now and this is the first time I have had to post.

Wyatt is off with Papa Bruce, Monroe went to the store with her dad, the baby is watching his mom cut Cousin Leigh's hair in the garage and Maverick is taking a nap. Wyatt and Monroe have not left my side for long yet. We have all gotten up early each morning to make waffles, we have played MEMORY (card game) many times, we have watched movies, they have helped me cook and clean the kitchen, read books, and gone to the park a few times.

This Nana is exhausted but OH SO HAPPY.

we won't be moving into our new house until the first of June so we are staying at Brad and Karrissa's.

We don't have a phone yet, and I am using Brad's computer to post this as quickly as I can.

We will be giving our talks in church tomorrow but I haven't had time to write my talk yet.

Oh boy, did I forget what life is like with little children. I promise all my friends both in Ukraine and home in America that I will be better at writing you personally when I am in my own home and have more free time. I love you all and miss you so much.

change in flight plans

OUR FLIGHT PLANS HAVE CHANGED.

OUR PLANE LEAVING KIEV WAS DELAYED 6 HOURS WHICH MEANS WE WILL MISS 2 CONNECTIONS .

WE ARE GOING TO SPEND THE NIGHT IN NEW YORK

(WELL AT LEAST TRY TO CATCH A FEW HOURS SLEEP)

AND FLY TO SALT LAKE AND THEN SACRAMENTO.

WE LEAVE NEW YORK ON FLIGHT 1103 AT 7AM AND ARRIVE IN SALT LAKE AT 1024

WE WILL JUST HAVE A FEW MINUTES TO CATCH OUR PLANE TO SACRAMENTO AT 1115AM.

WE WILL NOW BE ARRIVING IN SACRAMENTO AT 1201 PM MAY 5TH DELTA FLIGHT 1187

see you soon

we are so excited to see you all soon

Love,

saying good-bye

This has been a week of good-byes. A few weeks ago I started feeling sad about leaving so many people we have come to know and love. I couldn't imagine how I would feel this week. It has been difficult but I have to say that I really believe that Heavenly Father has blessed us with a wonderful peace this week. We spoke at Church on Sunday and then had a very nice gathering after church to say good-bye to everyone in our branch. It was a wonderful day. We really felt loved. Yesterday we had our last Zone Conference with our Zone it was another day of good-byes. Now it seems like everytime we do something we say to ourselves, "This will probably be the last time we do this". It is difficult, but on the other hand, we have spoken to our family alot these last few weeks and those little voices of the grandchildren are calling us home. We can hardly wait to see how they have grown and to just hold our loved ones once again.

I have to sign off. We are moving the last few things in our apartment today. We are going to be in the Mission Home until Sunday. Love to you all.

We are coming HOME

MAY 4TH at 9:47 pm we arrive in Sacramento

Returning to America

We are coming home soon and this will be our new home

We are so excited we are buying this beautiful home in Old Town Fair Oaks.

We decided we needed more space for all the grandkids so we began searching on the internet for a new home. We found this home and instantly fell in love with it. It really is our dream home. We sent Brad and Karrissa (our daughter and son-in-law) to look at it and Brad reported back to us,

"it is sick"

(which basically means he loved it)

he continued..

"you guys have to have that house"

The rest, as they say,.................

Is history!

Brad and Karrissa have been busy finalizing all the paperwork for us and meeting with inspectors. Escrow should close by the end of May. We will be staying with Brad and Karrissa for a week or so and then the whole family will be going to Santa Cruz for 10 days. We are looking forward to so much.

Holding loved ones in our arms again

family

friends

a new home

California Sunshine

The Ocean

The Redwoods

Driving a Car again (Bruce is looking forward to a nice long drive)

attending Church that is spoken in English

singing hymns in English

However the list of things I will miss about Ukraine is equally as long.

OUR RETURN HOME

WHEN, WHERE, AND HOW

We have had some people ask about the details of our return to America.

We leave Donetsk for Kiev on Sunday May 3rd and fly to America on Monday, May 4th. We arrive in Sacramento on Delta Airlines on Monday Night at 9:47 pm.

It will be very late when we arrive and clear customs so we know that we won't see you at the airport but hope you can join us at Church on May 10th. Bruce and I have been asked to speak about our mission experience on Sunday May 10th.

The Sacrament meeting will begin at 9am.

The building is located at 7950 Hazel Ave ORANGEVALE , CA 95662987-1849 (Office)987-7479 (Foyer) Map and driving directions

I know I will say this again, but we just want to thank all of our friends and family who have supported us on this mission. Your love and prayers have been felt and so appreciated. We are happy to be coming home but sad to say good-bye to so many we have come to know and love here in Ukraine.

Humanitarian Conference in Armenia

We are home from our Humanitarian Conference in Armenia. We are so happy we had this opportunity to go. We met with 21 other couples who are serving Humanitarian Missions in Eastern Europe. We were told that we represented half of the Church's Humanitarian Missionaries worldwide. That means there are less than 42 Humanitarain Couples serving throughout the world and half of them are in Eastern Europe. We feel so blessed to have been among this wonderful group of people and to have been able to serve in this capacity for the past 18 months. We enjoyed hearing how diverse our mission experiences are. The one thing we heard over and over is how grateful they all were to have had this opportunity and how blessed their lives have been by the experiences they have had while on their missions. We had a day and a half of training and one day of sightseeing with these wonderful couples. There is so much I learned and would love to share but we have to get out the door to do a closing at a hospital. I will try to post more later. Yesterday we said good-bye to most of our friends at church and I will post more about that too. We love you all. Thank you for remembering us in your prayers.

We are in Armenia

I forgot to post that we were going to Armenia for a Humanitarian Conference.
We left on Tuesday for Armenia and we will be here until early Sunday morning. So I will post pictures when we return. We just had a wonderful first day of training with President Gibbons who is a General Authority in the Church who is assigned to Europe East. We met with 21 other couples who are on Humanitarian Missions all over Eastern Europe. We had some wonderful instruction from some of the other couples about how to do different types of projects. In Armenia they have done a huge water project. One Country has had success bringing containers of wheelchairs into the Country. Another couple talked about the Health Fair. We spoke about the Strengthening Families Classes. It has been so wonderful to be around so many wonderful people who are doing amazing things while on their missions. We were told that Eastern Europe represents half of the Humanitarian Missionaries worldwide. Wow. There really is alot of awesome Humanitarian projects happen in Eastern Europe and I am so grateful to have been a part of this. I will write more when I get home. Blessings to you all!