"God be with you till we meet again"

This has been a tough week for all of us here on Chuuk. It has been transfer week and those of you that don't know what that is > it means that every 6 weeks the Mission President may or may not be inspired to move the Missionaries from one area to another within the mission. In the Chuuk Zone we will lose 12 Elders who will be going home to the States within the next 6 months.
That means a lot of changes :(

This week started with us finding out that one of our Zone Leaders was going to be transferred to Guam and become the new AP. Elder Johnson has become dear to us and we have grown to love him. We have done a lot of work with him and his companion(s) while doing the GPS locating. He always turned it into real missionary moments.

Elder Johnson finally earned the right to wear the magic sunglasses...
Then Tuesday came and after study time and a prayer, we headed to the airport. Sister Tiffany made a candy lei out of tootsie rolls (thank you Brady & Kim). Elder Johnson loves tootsie rolls and you can't get them here on the island.
The other Elders put flowers on his head and a flower lei around his neck.

We pulled ourselves together to be strong and say our goodbye's. We don't know if we will see him before he goes home to the states. That is something only the Lord knows.
Saying our goodbye was very tender, we have grown to love this young Elder dearly.
He is from Idaho and a salt of the earth young man. He has been our surrogate son, our friend and Chuukese teacher.

These are our main island Elders, the outer island Elders couldn't come to say goodbye.

Elder Johnson boarded the plane with two other Elders, Jones and Lavitis, who were also going to Guam to be trainers for two new Elders when they bring them back.

Next day (Wednesday), we pulled in ALL the outer island Missionaries for transfers. No one knew what was going to happen except we knew Elder Malit would be going home, back to the states, so they wanted to give him time to go around the island and tell everyone Goodbye.

Us with the other two Elders that left us today.
Elder Valinotti and Elder Lapeyrouse. We pray they will be able to return with us before they go home to the states.

These young men are truly amazing and full of love for one another. We all met down at the airport and the outer island Branch Presidency was there and some branch members.
This was very, very hard to say our final goodbye's. A lot of tears were shed, they have become truly family with one another.

The Elders all stood together and sang "God be with you til we meet again" Very touching and tearful.