All is well that ends well!

You know on my mission I heard myself saying, “things did go as planned.”  I asumed that, that was a mission thing.  I felt that everything I planned got flipped upside down.  Not for the worse, sometimes for the better but it would just never go as planned.  I have come to realize that it’s not the mission that makes you say that it’s Ukraine.  

Starting for the beginning, things started to go off course.  We were sitting in Salt Lake International waiting to board our plane to Paris when they announced that they needed a part for the plane and that it wasn’t in SLC.  They would need to go get the part put it on and then we would be able to depart.  So we sat, waited and ate for four hours and they said that we were able to fly to Paris.  By this time we already realized we were going to miss our flight to Ukraine.  I, of course, started to cry when I realized I would not be able to attend a ward that I loved dearly because I served 9 months of my mission there. Well the flight was okay we got to Paris at two in the afternoon.  They gave us a hotel and we decided to go play in Paris.  It was wonderful we saw the Eiffel Tower, the arc de triomphe and shopped on the Champs Elysees. It was nice to soak up paris in a few hours.  We went to our hotel and slept for only a few hors and were right back at the airport.  After some complications of them not being able to locate us on the flight roster they pulled some strings and got us to our gate really fast. I was so excited to be on my way to Ukraine!!!

We got to The Kiev Airport and we waited for 30 minutes for our luggage to come out for the plane.  Everyone else came and left with their stuff and to our surprise our luggage never came.  we filed a lost luggage claim and went to get our rental car.  Up until this point things were fine we enjoyed out detour to Paris and were just happy to make the flight to Kiev but a lack of luggage and no knowledge of when it would come was a little frustrating. Well we get our TINY rental car and decide we are going to church.  

We were able to still make it to sacrament meeting in a different ward that I served in.  We were late and tried to sneak into the back.  Well the bishop of the ward who i know very well noticed us and announced to everyone that Sister schmidt has returned to Kiev with her family.  everyone looked back so we waved and then he invited me to the front to bare my testimony.  As I walked from the VERY back of the room to the front I felt completely out of my element!!! I was walking to the front of a ward that I served in as a missionary, now as a returned missionary IN JEANS AND SNEAKERS DURING SACRAMENT MEETING!!!!!!! It was completely awkward and not how I ever imagined it would be, when I revisited my mission! But I was so happy to greet and hug everyone!  They are amazing people!! I was so glad to see them no matter what attire I was wearing!

So things may not always work out as planned, but they still work out.  Sometimes life takes you in a completely different direction or maybe just on a detour. It maybe for the best and sometimes its just because, but no matter what the circumstance “all is well that ends well.”