A little over 33 years ago Larry returned from serving Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ on a two year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to Kobe Japan. It was a wonderful time for him to learn, grow and serve.
35 years ago. Larry is in the back middle.
With his mission president and wife.
Larry is on the back row left. His MTC companion is on the far right. Come to find out Larry's 1st missionary companions daughter served in the Missouri Independence Mission the same time Michael did and she remembered who Michael was but Michael didn't remember her. In fact they went home on the exactly the same day. Plus one of the Japanese women (who was a 18 year old girl when Larry was in Japan) that came to the reunion lives in one of the same towns that Michael was serving in MO but they didn't get to meet each other because Michael was in a different ward. Small world. If she knew whose son Michael was Michael would have been pretty spoiled.
Michael and Harmon Choro's daughter on the day they left to come home last year (Nov. 2010).
Michael is in the back 3rd from left. Harmon Choro's daughter is 2nd from right.
Larry with one of his companions and Japanese people.
Fast forward 35 years... The mission president had died just a few weeks before the reunion. How sad. His family came though and was so kind and grateful to have everyone there. Larry is in the back middle again, a popular place for him. Listening to people speaking Japanese during the reunion the language was coming back to Larry.
We stayed at one of Larry's closest missionary friends home. John and his wife Denise. It was fun to watch those two talk about their mission. Good friends are easy to be with. It's like you've never been apart.
Larry and John
A picture with all of us. I used my automatic timer on my camera so the shots not great but oh well, it's us.
We were in Utah General Conference weekend and I hadn't been to conference in the Conference Center yet and so we went to the Saturday afternoon session. John told us how to ride the Trax system. He told us where the station was and a bus would take us to downtown Salt Lake City. So we went. Little did he know and us too that it was more complicated than just hopping on and riding. Luckily for us we met this really nice young woman who took us by the hand and helped us get the right buses and where to get off on back on. She actually rode with us all the way downtown. She also explained how to catch the trax back to West Jordan. She wasn't even suppose to be still at the Trax station when we arrived but felt like she should wait for the next bus. Thank goodness she waited for us!
She was teaching Larry how to read the maps for the Trax system.
We arrived downtown Salt Lake right after the morning session got out. Hordes of LDS members were on the streets and the Deseret Book Store was extremely crowded. It was fun to go in because they had authors, actors and artist there signing books and things. It was fun. I love the book store anyway.
Here we are waiting for the LDS Saturday afternoon session to start in the conference center.
I loved being in the same room with the Prophet and Apostles. It was honor to be able to sustain them in the same room as they asked for their sustaining votes. We watched the proceedings of how the smoothness of changing of the speakers. We watched as Elder Perry held up Elder Packer (because of his older age and polio from when he was a child) when they stood up to sing the hymns. We watched them sing the hymns and heard them speak. It was great! Driving to Utah was one of Larry's least favorite things to do. He actually said now with the Trax system to get around and knowing his friend lived there he'd go back. You heard it here folks.
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