Mom of a Missionary. Perparing for my Missionary to come home.

There are 31 days left until my son comes home from his mission in Tampico Mexico.  I am now in the process of getting things ready for his return.  While I do this I try hard not to email him about all the things we want to do with him when he comes home.  He is trying hard to stay focused on working hard in the mission field still and I don't want to be the one to get his mind turned towards home.  It is hard though.

My first job was to clean his room up and make it ready for him.  I have used his room for the last two years as extra storage space.  I've had the vacuum cleaner in there, the extra towels and blankets.  Whenever someone is looking for something my reply has been check Jacobs room.

 His bed is all made up with a special quilt that my mom made for him.  I love that it has a Mexican feel to it.

 I have to still clean his desk up a bit, but we got some Lego character boxes and have gone
and put a bunch of his Lego figures in it.  This was a Christmas/ Birthday gift.

There are Christmas and Birthday gifts waiting for him to open when he returns.

Shipping things to Mexico can be a bit hard so we decided to just save everything up for his return.

We have his Mission letter and photo framed.  I also framed some photos he 

has emailed from his mission and put them around his room.

The very big project I have been working on is putting together a 

memory journal for him with all his weekly emails and photos.

He had some incedent happen and had to throw all his journals away. 

I wanted him to come back and have some memories available with space to 

add his reflections.

 I can't tell you how many photos there are that I have printed out over the last few days.
But I can tell you there are a lot of them.  My husband was pretty amazed.  There were points during this project when I was very happy for an email with no photos.

The Memory Journal starts with his farewell speech.  Which 

I found sitting next to my couch the other day.  I was glad it was 

so easily found because I think searching for it would have been frustrating as

who remembers exactly where they put something two years ago.

So far the book has 228 pages.  We have a few more weeks of emails left.

 Through out his mission in his emails my son has used different names in the beginning of his emails.  As I have been putting together his journal I have written all the names down and I'm going to put them on his bedroom door with a big welcome home sign.  These are just the beginning photos of that project.

This cat photo is something that he sends in his emails when he has reached certain

milestones in his mission.  So now it is his welcome home sign on his bedroom door.

There are many websites that tell you things to do to prepare for your missionary to return home.

In the next few weeks I'll be reading them and I will be more prepared to have my son come home than I was to have him leave.  Some of our next projects are getting the airport welcome home signs made.  I'm thankful I do have a friend who will be meeting us at the airport to be our photographer.

I can't believe we are down to the last month!!

G.G.

What did you do to welcome your missionary home??

Or if you are a returned missionary what was the thing that your parents did for you that you liked the best?  

Please help me figure this out.