The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan locates Jethro's arrival at Israel's camp with unusual precision: "Jethro the father-in-law of Moses, and the sons of Moses, and his wife came to Moses at the desert in which he was sojourning hard by the mountain upon which the glory of the Lord was revealed to Moses at the beginning" (Exodus 18:5).
The mountain is Horeb, the same peak where Moses first encountered the burning bush (Exodus 3). The Aramaic is drawing a circle: Moses began his mission here as a lone shepherd with a staff, and now he returns to the same mountain at the head of a liberated nation, with his wife Zipporah, his two sons Gershom and Eliezer, and his father-in-law in tow.
The Targum's phrase "at the beginning" is the key. It links two scenes separated by years of enslavement, plagues, and flight. The same glory that once called to Moses out of a thornbush is about to call again — this time to the entire people — on the same mountain.
There is poetry in the return. The shepherd who ran became the prophet who remained. And when his family finally caught up to him, they caught up at the place where it had all begun. The takeaway: true missions do not leave their origin behind. They return to it and gather everyone else into it.