Welcome at the Kansas City Temple

President John Hardy, and his wife, Nancy Hardy, with Claron at the Kansas City Temple

I had a warm reception at the Kansas City Temple today. My wife’s cousin Chris, who lives in the Kansas City area, made arrangements with me yesterday to meet at the temple. He arrived before I did and told the volunteer staff in the temple that I had walked from Salt Lake City to Kansas City. When I entered the temple, I was greeted with an enthusiastic, “Oh! You are the brother that walked here from Salt Lake City. We are so happy to see you!”

The temple president, John White Hardy, and his wife, Nancy Hatch Savage Hardy, the temple matron, returned to the temple from their quarters near the temple to meet me and have their picture taken with me.

After attending the Kansas City Temple, I went to the Kansas City airport to catch a flight home to Salt Lake City. The picture is of me, Claron Twitchell, on the flight home to Salt Lake City from Kansas City with a stop to change planes in Denver. After almost three months, it felt like I was going home, a refugee or homeless person no more!

The fluffy white clouds in the picture taken by Claron are beautiful as the plane gained altitude after taking off from the Kansas City airport. The cloud deck grew thicker until it was a heavy overcast as we landed in Denver. I had a scheduled 3 hours to wait for my connecting flight from Denver to Salt Lake City. I watched a heavy rainfall for about an hour which caused a one-and-a-half hour delay for the plane that I was going to board for the flight to Salt Lake City. [Update to this story! It turned out that this was a series of heavy rainfalls in a few days that set record rainfall totals in Boulder, Colorado and the greater Denver area. It actually washed out some of the roads that I had walked on about 6 weeks earlier.]

I landed safely and received a warm welcome from my family and some friends at the Salt Lake City Airport. It was a great adventure. Thanks to all of you who followed me and supported me. Thanks especially to those who donated to support the children at our schools in South Sudan. It is great to be home.

Video of welcome from Claron’s family at the Salt Lake City Airport