Change Is In The Air

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!