14 February 2015 Change
Is In the Air
Sometimes things get pretty routine and a little mundane,
but now we have a big change coming to our mission.
Black Boxes - Our mission will be having "black
boxes" installed in all the missionary's cars in June. This will be interesting. It tells you everything: It reports your speed, if it goes over a
certain limit it tells you to slow down, if you don't it sends an email to the
Mission President; the same, if you are driving outside your working area, if
an accident occurs, if you are braking too hard or too often, if you accelerate
too fast too often, if you turn too quickly.
I'm pretty sure a report is sent to the Vehicle Coordinator and the
Mission President. The Church is trying
to cut down on accidents, speeding tickets and unsafe driving. So parents the church is busy protecting
your sons and daughters, helping them obey rules and laws so they don't get
hurt. They need lots of experiences driving safely. It seems that since the lowering of the age
for missionaries, these young men and women aren't able to get as much driving
experience before they come out.
Now that the Missionary Committee in Salt Lake has decided
that all missions will provide bedding for the missionaries when they arrive in
the field, Elder Stringham and I have been busy. Mostly we order online, but we have nearly
wiped out all of certain kinds of comforters and blankets in the stores. So we have had to stop at several stores to
see if they have them. They had a few,
but were low on what we want. We have
had lots of big boxes shipped to our Mission Office. Then we or the APs take them over to the
Mission Home where we will be assembling pillows, mattress covers, bed-in-a-bag
and a blanket into a certain group so the new missionaries can just grab what
they like and put their name on it. We
have 25 missionaries to prepare bedding for so this next week that is one of
our projects. Interesting thing is that
when Elder Stringham called the Missionary Department to talk about the budget
he was told that there is no budget....what?
Last conversation he had with them he was told to estimate and present a
budget. I guess there are changes in the
works (again) and we only worry about bedding until June. We're not sure what the changes will be so we
are up in the air until they tell us.
My cubicle is next to the Vehicle Coordinator's cubicle so I
often hear his phone conversations with the missionaries. One day, I heard Elder Shelley say, "Are
you okay? Tell me what happened? "You hit a mountain?' Were you going up or down the mountain? What?
You turned a corner and hit a mountain?
Because it was dark? This whole
time I was wondering where in Iowa is there a mountain? It was a Sister Missionary and I was sure she
must have meant a small hill. After
Elder Shelley advised her of the need to fill out a report, take pictures and
send to him, and contact a place to get it fixed, he hung up the phone and came
over me and was shaking his head.
"I have no idea what she was talking about", he said. "She said she turned a corner and
suddenly there was this mountain in front of her and she couldn't stop fast
enough." To this day, we really
don't know what really happened. These
Sister Missionaries work way out in the middle of nowhere and no one has been
out there to see what she was talking about.
So maybe there is a mountain, who knows!! There was minimal damage to the fender so no
one worried about it, but it is a story we smile about often in the
office.
It seems that since the cold, snowy weather has arrived....finally,
and may be here to stay for awhile. Elder Stringham has been busy replacing
phones. The phones get broken when the
missionary slips and falls, loses it or drops the phone in the snow, or in the
mud puddles. Missionary work slows down
too. We have days where they cannot walk
around in the neighborhoods because it is frigid and capable of frostbite. Sometimes they can't go out until afternoon
when the roads have been shoveled and special anti-slippery chemical sprayed on
them. The winds are ferocious here. If I get chilled to the bone, the only thing
that helps is to turn on my electric blanket when I get home and crawl under
until I have been warmed all the way through.
I walked from a store to my car and the car heater could not begin to warm
me up.
Today in our Gospel Principles class the lesson was on
Chastity. The lesson talks about the
necessity of parents themselves teaching their children about sex instead of
having others/schools do it. A convert of
a few years, who attends the class, told us that she was a biology teacher in
high school for several years. One year
she was assigned to teach sex education
class in the health class. She reviewed
the curriculum and told them she would teach them some parts of it, the
functionality of the body and how physiologically babies are born. Other parts of it she didn't want to even
touch telling the educators that those parts should be taught at home. She was told that parents don't want to teach
their children and now expect the schools to teach about sex and their moral
interpretation of what is right and what is not. She told us this was the start of her
conversion to the church. Usually she
had maybe one member of the church in her class. This year she had 5 youth members. These children had been taught at home. She was impressed with the parents of these
youth members. They simply told the
school no to the section on sex
education. She found herself watching
these youth and noticed what fine, good and strong people they were. This Sister liked that and it influenced her
decision later to listen to the gospel and be baptized.
This weekend we attended a lot of baptisms. All together there were 7 persons baptized
just in our building alone. A sweet
father baptized and confirmed his step-daughter for whom he had fought the
court system for custody. Also, at this
baptism was a young 9 year-old who was befriended by another 9 year-old member
at school. Come to find out that this
young convert's mother was already a member, but had become less active over
the years. The missionaries taught both
the mom and the daughter. Now the
daughter is a member and the mother is attending regularly. They were fellowshipped royally by this
ward. The baptism of these two young
girls had so many people attend that they moved the opening part into the
chapel where everyone could be accommodated. There was standing room only in
the room off the baptismal font. So
many children and youth came to support them.
Another baptism held in the evening was for 5 people. A mother and her son were baptized. She was the friend of a recent convert whose
3 children were also being baptized that day.
One of the little boys was so excited that as he headed to the baptismal
font, he quickly turned around, ran back to his mom and gave her a big hug,
before going into the font for his turn. The baptism ceremony itself it short
and powerful. I still get chills when a
man, holding the Priesthood of God, raises his hand to the square, and starts
the prayer .... especially a young
missionary!.
We are grateful to be missionaries! We love you all!
