Goodyear, AZ is Home - For a while

Now the challenge will be to get settled into our new life in AZ as a retired couple.  Carolyn has warned me that I should keep busy and let her have her space.  Since we only have a brief time before we leave for our Mission I will be busy unpacking boxes and making yet another trip to the Goodwill with things we didn't need to bring from California.

PebbleCreek is the community in which we now live.  It is in the City of Goodyear which is about 20 miles west of Phoenix.  Two of our sons (and nine of our grandkids) live in Peoria, AZ which is about 30 minutes from PebbleCreek.  Peroia is northwest from Phoenix.

Home in PebbleCreek

 

The view from the Patio out to the golf course

 .                                                 

Preparing for England - and now Scotland

We have been working on all the arrangements to obtain our Visas and learn more of what we will be doing on our mission.  Through an exchange of email with various individuals in the Church we have learned a few more details.

We were called to the England Birmingham Mission to work in the Area Welfare Office as Area Welfare Specialists.  The Temporal Welfare organization within the Church is quite amazing.  We have been reading more of the organization and have learned there are many areas all under the umbrella of Temporal Welfare - helping those in need with basic food and shelter; Employement Resource Centers; and Humanitarian help.  Each one of these areas has very extensive programs with a few paid empolyees and many unpaid volunteer missionaries.

We enter the Mission Traning Center in Provo, Utah on April 22 and will be there for two weeks.  The first week will be basic Missionary training and the second week will be training on the Welfare servcies programs.  We have learned that we are still traveling to Birmingham on May 6th but will be assigned to work in the Employment Resource Center in Edinburgh, Scotland.  We will be working with the local Church leaders in Scotland and Ireland.  Since I served my 2-year mission in Scotland as a young man, this news has made it even more exciting to leave.  We will be providing workshops to help individuals evaluate their employment situation and help them to be more self-reliant in finding a job, imporving their current employement, or providing support for them to be successfully self-employed.

We have been given a lot a material to read and talks to listen to.  We are really gettinig excited!!   Five weeks to go!!

Retirement & the Move

Many things have happened since my last post.  My last day in the office of Rutan & Tucker was Friday, March 1, 2013.  My friends in the OC Chapter of ALA and Mike Howard of Howard Building hosted a wonderful evening at the Pacific Club on February20th.  It was great to see so many long time friends and associates.  The Firm hosted an unbelievable Retirement Luncheon on March 8th at the Chuck Jones Center in Costa Mesa.  There were over 175 people in attendance.  The expression of love and respect for me was really overwhelming.  Kim Thompson and Jodi Brooks did a wonderful job in hosting the lunch.  The Partners' Dinner to welcome new partners into the partnership was also a Retirement Dinner for me.  It was a very special evening.  Eight of the 13 managing partners I have worked with were present and tried to "roast" me.  Some very kind words were spoken.  I have the greatest respect for the Partners of Rutan & Tucker.  I am not one who seeks out the limelight so all the attention focused on me over the last few weeks has been a bit strange...but I was told to "deal with it" becasue I had earned the praise over the last 37 years.

Next, the movers came on March 4th and our things were delivered to AZ on the 11th.  We are in the middle of sorting things out and trying to fit a four bedroom house and 37 years of "stuff" into a two bedroom house.

It has been a very busy three weeks as things at work came to an end but now we are working on getting settled in AZ and preparing for our mission to England for the LDS Church