Just sent off Sharolyn, AmandaRae, Aubree, Autumn and Christopher David.  They started the long drive to North Dakota and this new journey of adventure in their lives.  We gathered for prayer and a family hug to send them off and our most fervent prayers go with them.  We will be apart again, but closer now too.  In our new adventure we are becoming better at life's finer and spiritual things and that also makes our family more special to us too.  Last night we got our first taste of the reality that is our mission.  It was quite an experience.  Hard to really describe it, but even amid all of the inner city missions ours will be unique.  I see now why there was so much vagueness from those trying to describe it to us.  But I am really beginning to see it for the great experience of learning that it will be.  Of course the subject matter is mostly people, folks, human beings, 'block 2' (ask me) and our extended and eternal family and the very different struggles (or the same struggles of different individuals).  Already we have encounter some real characters.  Some of them are members of this new ward and some of them are our fellow missionaries.  It is all part of what to me is my own personal experience and journey.  I do see outward, but I also see so much inward for me.  Maybe the proper balance of that equation is my perfect challenge.  Can't see outward without proper inward vision nor be proper inward without proper outward understanding.  Wow!  Does that sound deep to you too?  Got a small taste of that already and I am properly excited about the great meal that is still to come.