The first day that we were in Hawaii Ryker got a text from Church Headquarters letting him know that his mission call was ready to be opened. We were all so excited and instantly started debating when he should open it. Kenedy and Kelsey were kind of pressuring him to open it while we were in Hawaii, Kenedy wanted to be present for the opening and Kelsey I think thought it would be a cool place to open it. Ryker had wanted to open it at home with family and friends present but I could see he was being a little too pressured to do it there and I finally told him he needed to do it his way how he always imagined it. If he wanted to open it in Hawaii that was fine but if he really wanted to do it at home with more family and friends there than he should do that. He ultimately decided to wait and thankfully we had the trip to distract us because if we had to wait a week for him to open it while we were at home we all would have gone crazy.
We made plans for him to open it Monday night, May 17th, at 7pm. Ryker invited a bunch of people to come to our house but for those that couldn't I would do an instagram live so they could tune in to watch. I put the message out on Instagram, Kefford let his family know and I told my family.
I was fine all that day, I was busy getting the house clean and I baked brownies, bought ice cream and made a hot fudge sauce for those that were going to be coming. It wasn't until about an hour before that I started to get a little panicky and kept thinking to myself that this was happening too soon. It felt crazy and a little surreal that something we had talked about and planned for since he was born was finally happening, I all of a sudden was not ready, but it was happening so I had to be ready :).
Friends and family gathered and I was able to figure out how to do Instagram live and Ryker was ready to go. Mikayla had Kenedy on FaceTime so she could be a part of it in Texas which. appreciated. Alison came with Whitneys family but Bob stayed home and so Whitney was trying to FaceTime him and we had to wait a couple of minutes for that to get figured out. Also, while I was trying to figure out how to do a live on Instagram I kept having messages form my families group chat popping up that they couldn't find the live and where was it and did they miss it and why can't they see it. It was comically frustrating and I wanted to tell them to stop messaging so I would stop getting interrupted as I was trying to get the I've going. Finally it got figured out and my family were all able to tune in.
Ryker pulled up his email was was able to start reading. They added a couple more paragraphs to these mission calls and Ryker had a bit to read through before he got to the part we were all more interested in.
Ryker has been called to serve in The Texas Houston East mission and he reports to the mission home on September 1st!
He was happy to read right after that that he will be speaking English, Ryker did not want to have to learn a foreign language and was really happy he wasn't assigned to a mission where he would have to learn one.
My friend and neighbor Arin Lamb came over with her two little boys for the mission call and she recorded me aa Ryker read his mission call and then took my reaction picture right when I found out where he was going. I never thought to have anyone record me during this and am so happy that she did. I was visibly nervous as he was reading and I had spent a lot of the day thinking about where he would go and if it was foreign I thought Africa but I couldn't think of anyplace in the United States where I thought he would go. I was really worried that I would be disappointed about where he was called to serve and really didn't want to be I wanted to be excited. When he read Texas Houston East I was instantly excited and thrilled and 100% all in. It felt exactly right to me and I couldn't believe I didn't think of Texas before. I knew right then that this was the perfect place for Ryker and that he was going to love being there and serving the people who live there and I couldn't think of a better place for him!
