Missionary Farewell

We have a dear, sweet friend who is leaving tomorrow to serve an 18 month mission in Ecuador for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  We love her dearly and she is like family to us.  She is 21 years old, and for the last 6-7 years has readily babysat our children.  They adore her because she has been so involved and sweet to them.  (She even would attend their ballgames and school events.)
Because of her specialness to our family and others in our local ward church family, many of us wanted to surprise her with a going away party, and luckily, I got to head that party up!  So I really wanted to make it thoughtful presentation and here are the things I did.  I looked up Ecuador and its country flag to mimic and hang up; learned facts about the country and printed them on signs to hang around the room; looked up scriptures related to missionary work to place on the tables; and my kids and I made these cute button bouquets in Ecuadorian colors.  Then I went to the Dollar Tree store and bought matching tablecloths and so on to make up the tables. 
My family and I went the evening before the party and made up a room separate from where we were having another "meeting" on Thanksgiving and being grateful.  But everyone knew that was just a cover for the real celebration, except my sweet missionary friend.  So we began our meeting the following night and had our opening prayer and song, and then we let our friend in on the secret that we had another party in another room prepared just for her!  She was so surprised (which isn't always easy to do!) and she was loving it!

We had had sisters in the church bring pies as a cover for our Thanksgiving theme, so as we played games like fill-in-the-blank for this song:  http://www.lds.org/churchmusic/detailmusicPlayer/index.html?searchlanguage=1&searchcollection=1&searchseqstart=270&searchsubseqstart= &searchseqend=270&searchsubseqend=ZZZ, and translated Spanish words to English, we ate our pie and socialized and shared our gifts and testimonies of missionary work and Jesus Christ to her.  It was really a special evening, and totally worth the effort.  Thanks for looking and reading all of this -if you have!