Let me begin by catching you up on a few things. As you know, I have checked some epic items off my bucket list over the past few years, including bicycle rides along the 4 coasts of the US that are posted here. A few bucket list times were harder to write about, because internet and cell phone service are unreliable on mountains and in the hinterlands of foreign countries, and I was usually so exhausted at the end of each day of them, that sleep was more important than blogging.
Some day in the future, this blog will include my trip to Israel and Jordan, as well as treks of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu; the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro (spoiler: on the final summit push, altitude sickness stopped me short of the summit); Mt Everest Base Camp (altitude sickness didn’t kick in till after I reached Base Camp, but I later required helicopter evacuation to the closest hospital); and both the French and Portuguese Ways of the Camino de Santiago in France, Spain and Portugal.
Where am I going with this? I am now working on a bucket list item that has been weighing on me for over a decade. On December 12th, my husband and I arrived in Nairobi, Kenya to embark on a one-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. How did we get here? Let’s see, now. In January of this year, James and I got married. We spent our honeymoon in Nairobi, Kenya, where we volunteered for 4 weeks as elementary school teachers in Kibera—the largest slum in Africa and 3rd largest slum in the world. During the days before and after our volunteer stint and on the weekends, we hiked, toured and went on 2 safaris. James somehow had time to write his own blog, but I was too busy keeping up with other things to do a blog justice.
When we returned home from Africa, we rejigged our gear and headed to Portugal to walk the Portuguese Way of the Camino de Santiago, a 400 mile almost 1000 year old pilgrimage.
Returning home from that adventure, we worked overtime to get our application in to go on a mission for our church. In May, we spent a week on the beach in San Diego with my daughter and her family, then in June, we went on a weeklong Caribbean cruise with the same crew.
Not long after returning home from our cruise, we received our call to serve for 1-year in Nairobi, Kenya. Deja vu! There were 5 months spent learning Swahili and making preparations to leave our homes and families. We sold my car, found someone to stay in and take care of the house, packed up a few closets and cupboards, to make room for said home caregiver, mostly prepared for our 2024 income tax returns, and, just to keep things exciting, I wrote a real estate contract for my daughter to purchase a house, so her family can have a permanent home again—something they have not had for almost 4 years. The home is scheduled to close on January 5th, but until then, I will continue to burn the midnight oil, dealing with a realtors, title agents and mortgage processors.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving, I flew up to Provo, Utah to spend a couple of days with my sister and her husband, before my husband and I entered the Missionary Training Center (MTC) on Dec 1st. We spent almost 2 weeks learning the principles of teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ as missionaries and the details of how to perform the jobs we will be doing in Kenya. Our instructors were young male and female returned missionaries who across the board were bright, competent and inspiring teachers. Very impressive indeed! Our class members were mostly retired folks, like us, who were slated to go everywhere from California, Ohio and Utah to the Philippines, Albania, Sierra Leone, Dubai, UAE, Ghana, and more exotic locations.
On my middle weekend at the MTC, I took a last minute 24-hour trip home for to see my 70-year-old former brother-in-law, David Ellsworth, who had been being treated successfully for cancer, but had taken a sudden turn for the worse. It was going to be the last time I saw him alive. In a very tragic turn of events, he passed away as I was boarding my flight back to Prove. For those of you who know him, and he will be greatly missed by many, but especially his closest brother Jerry, my daughter Camille, and her 3 older children.
Then on Thursday, December 11th, James and I took early leave of our classes at the MTC and boarded a shuttle for the Salt Lake City airport to begin our travels to Kenya. We arrived around 11 PM the following day (Friday), and were greeted by Elder and Sister Stowell, the couple who, for a few weeks, had been managing the full workload in the administrative office of the Kenya Nairobi East Mission. They took us to our apartment, gave us a little tour, and left us to catch up on our sleep.
Would like to read about our adventures in Kenya? I will be writing a post every 2-3 weeks. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you can enter your email address and subscribe to receive a notification when I post something new. Feel free to ask questions through the blog or email me news of your life at eileenhardy1@gmail.com
Living Our Bucket List 