We departed San Jose around 8am.
Evan said good bye to Ryan at home and Ryan headed into work.
We headed to Oakland, wanting plenty of time, and it was plenty of time, we got there around 9 for an 11:00 flight. Greg dropped us to the curb and then went to park the car. Only a few people ahead of us in the Delta check in line. The gal asked Evan if he was headed to Salt Lake or to LA. I wondered if she recognized him as a missionary. But then thought maybe Delta is only checking to those two places at that time. It was nice to think she might have recognized a missionary - it seemed to me she slowed down to help him out. There was a young lady whom we heard mention "missionary". Once we were done with the check in we asked her if she's a missionary and she said yes - she was headed to Salt Lake to go to the MTC tomorrow. Was fun to exchange "where and when"s with her but a little disappointing to find out she wasn't on Evan's flight. Greg caught up to us about this time. We fly using Oakland a lot but on Southwest. Delta uses a different terminal so we were not familiar with where we were. We were very pleased to see a small restaurant right next to the security check - before the security check. We decided to have some breakfast.
Evan and Claire were in prime spots to see if any other missionaries were going through security. Evan thinks he saw a girl go through, just as we were coming to the restaurant. The tip off was the family at the side watching watching watching for the last glimpse.
Unfortunately, we did not see any more missionaries. I hoped maybe there were one or two or more :-) at the gate already. Evan's flight wasn't until 11:04 so we sat, waited and watched. Around 10:00 Greg tried to get us to move a little - I just didn't want to. Just a few minutes more...
Finally I stood up.
We hugged, tears all around, hugged more, more tears, kisses, hugs, wiping eyes - putting on brave faces - watching and waving
There was hardly anyone going through security - all the time we were there - so he moved quickly through. We watched. He sat down to put his shoes back on, put on his jacket and his belt, grabbed his bags, waved and turned.
And he was off.
