So yesterday I returned to the last place we called HOME about 30 miles north of where we live now. It's a small community at 5200 ft elevation with a beautiful mountain view but it is cold and windy which is why we moved from there to a lower elevation with no snow. The people there are so friendly in my old HOME, and it was fun to visit the Daughters of Utah Pioneers group that I started six years ago when we first moved to this rural town and retired. Started with ten members, the group has grown to over thirty or more. I knew everyone there and was so pleased that the group was still carrying on with many of the ideas I introduced as their leader. The only person I didn't know at the meeting came up to me and said "don't you remember me? I bought your house." So I knew her also, but not very well.What I'd like to discuss is where is HOME? I have lived so many different places in my lifetime including Utah, California, Wisconsin and Brazil. I don't have a specific place I'd call HOME. My grandparents' HOMES have all been bulldozed in the small Utah communities where I once lived as a child near or with them. My ten years in California were spent in a trailer court so that has changed also. Even my mom lived in a mobile HOME in Utah Valley before she went into a care facility-it belongs to someone else now. So I feel HOME-less. I have owned HOMES in several Utah towns but they have been sold and belong to others now. To return HOME to me, means my current HOME where I am putting down roots. As I returned to my last community yesterday I realized that what makes a HOME feel that way is the memories you have and the relationships with your friends and family that were created in that one place. So in that sense, I have many HOMES.
Ultimately we'll all go HOME to where we lived with our Heavenly parents before we were born and will have a great HOME-coming with our deceased family members who have gone on before us. Then I believe we will truly be HOME as it is not a place but a feeling of togetherness with family and friends with love and peace.