Dear Family,
This is the beginning of our second week. It some ways it seems so short of a time and other times it seems that there has been a lot of stuff packed into this time. I could also get used to not having to cook or do dishes.
Monday started out with our training for the office at 8:00. There are only five couples in our classes; one of them is our other couple, one couple is from our district, and the other two are from the big group. We spent the first hour as a devotional. Although it was nice to sing a song, have a spiritual thought and prayer, I was getting antsy to get started with the training. They finally got going and we had some good instruction until noon. We worked on IMOS which is the Church’s software system. We were able to pull up our actual mission information and even saw ourselves as missionaries in the Washington, DC, South Mission but still in the MTC. After getting an overview of the information they had, we needed to learn some things about excel so that we could manipulate the reports to give the mission president the information he needed in a format that he could use. Since there were a couple of the people that had little to no experience with excel the instruction was pretty basic. Poor Dad was getting a little restless until they picked up the pace a little.
We got through with class about 4:30 and then Dad came back to our room to make a phone call for work. That took long enough that we about missed dinner and were the last ones in the cafeteria by the time we left. We decided to go and see the rest of the murals in the new training center. We spent the next two hours looking at the murals and discussing the questions listed on the handout that we had received in class that first week. We walked up and down the stairs and from the east to the west side of the building, but finally got to see them all. When we got back to our room, we looked at our app on our phone and saw that we walked 11 flights throughout the day. We have class on the 4th floor, live on the 2nd floor and go up a flight of stairs to get to the cafeteria. We got most of our steps walked today from walking up and down stairs.
This is the beginning of our second week. It some ways it seems so short of a time and other times it seems that there has been a lot of stuff packed into this time. I could also get used to not having to cook or do dishes.
Monday started out with our training for the office at 8:00. There are only five couples in our classes; one of them is our other couple, one couple is from our district, and the other two are from the big group. We spent the first hour as a devotional. Although it was nice to sing a song, have a spiritual thought and prayer, I was getting antsy to get started with the training. They finally got going and we had some good instruction until noon. We worked on IMOS which is the Church’s software system. We were able to pull up our actual mission information and even saw ourselves as missionaries in the Washington, DC, South Mission but still in the MTC. After getting an overview of the information they had, we needed to learn some things about excel so that we could manipulate the reports to give the mission president the information he needed in a format that he could use. Since there were a couple of the people that had little to no experience with excel the instruction was pretty basic. Poor Dad was getting a little restless until they picked up the pace a little.
We got through with class about 4:30 and then Dad came back to our room to make a phone call for work. That took long enough that we about missed dinner and were the last ones in the cafeteria by the time we left. We decided to go and see the rest of the murals in the new training center. We spent the next two hours looking at the murals and discussing the questions listed on the handout that we had received in class that first week. We walked up and down the stairs and from the east to the west side of the building, but finally got to see them all. When we got back to our room, we looked at our app on our phone and saw that we walked 11 flights throughout the day. We have class on the 4th floor, live on the 2nd floor and go up a flight of stairs to get to the cafeteria. We got most of our steps walked today from walking up and down stairs.
Tuesday the day got started much faster with a short devotional and then jumped into the instruction. We worked a little more on reviewing excel by taking one of the reports on our mission site and rearranging the information for a report to the president. It was a good review and a good way to think of ways to present the information. Then they divided us up and I went in with the finance people and Dad stayed with the office secretary people. Our session was only a half hour but the information came at us like a fire hydrant. Hopefully we will be able to review a little tomorrow.
We had a couple who had returned from a mission in Madagascar come and talk with us about their mission and what they had done as the office couple. They were so enthusiastic and shared all that they had done. They didn’t just do the office work, but found ways to serve the people there. Some of the missionaries didn’t have the money to buy suits so they let them try on the clothes that the departing missionaries had left. Although these clothes were pristine white shirts, they were better than what they had. The office sister had made a little area in a storage room to hang the left behind clothes. Some of the elders left their best shoes and suits and shirts behind going home in their old worn out clothing. The nurse had gathered over the counter medicines from the departing missionaries to have in a little area allowing the natives to have an aspirin or decongestant or even bug repellant. It was really inspiring to hear and see what a difference they had made.
On our way back to the room we saw many missionaries in suits, but some with just white shirts. Dad asked them why there was a difference and they explained that the missionaries going to the Philippines didn’t have suits, so they were in just shirts and all the other elders were required to be in suits for the devotional. We were unaware that there was a devotional so were glad that we stumbled onto this information. Before the devotional started we were sitting in our seats and the sister sitting next to me turned to me and asked where we were going (the standard question when we meet anyone here). When we told here where we were going, she got SO excited saying that their best friends were office missionaries in our mission. She was so excited that she took our picture and sent it to the couple in Washington. If that wasn’t enough, the couple behind us told us that they had just been released as a counselor to the mission president in our mission. What are the chances of us sitting by these two couples?? We got to listen to Bishop Waddell spoke and we really enjoyed the talk.
Today was another day in the classroom. We had a brother from the church who had come to talk to us about transportation. He was convinced that it was IMPORTANT to let the missionaries know the How and Why about the rules and they would be safer drivers. I am sure that is true, but after a good hour, I was getting anxious to get to the instruction for helping in the office. He had good stories that emphasized his point, but I had already gotten the point a half hour earlier. Finally, we were through (or so I thought) and took a break and split up into finance and office. He was in our finance class room and spent the next couple of hours talking about transportation and why it is important to watch and analyze the costs that occurred with the cars. Again, that is true, but I would not be working with transportation. If I needed to learn this, I at least wanted to learn how to get the information into the computer so that the work could get done. What I really wanted to do was go back and review the information on the finance section and practice on that. By lunch time I was more than a little frustrated especially when I saw what the office people had been learning. I did, however, learn that some of the elders in one of the missions had been doing donuts in a parking lot and had worn out a lot of tires—more than the average. That is how they caught the elders doing it. I also learned how brake pads grip onto the rotor and stop the car. The afternoon went better because we got to learn about the finance part of IMOS.
We had a couple who had returned from a mission in Madagascar come and talk with us about their mission and what they had done as the office couple. They were so enthusiastic and shared all that they had done. They didn’t just do the office work, but found ways to serve the people there. Some of the missionaries didn’t have the money to buy suits so they let them try on the clothes that the departing missionaries had left. Although these clothes were pristine white shirts, they were better than what they had. The office sister had made a little area in a storage room to hang the left behind clothes. Some of the elders left their best shoes and suits and shirts behind going home in their old worn out clothing. The nurse had gathered over the counter medicines from the departing missionaries to have in a little area allowing the natives to have an aspirin or decongestant or even bug repellant. It was really inspiring to hear and see what a difference they had made.
On our way back to the room we saw many missionaries in suits, but some with just white shirts. Dad asked them why there was a difference and they explained that the missionaries going to the Philippines didn’t have suits, so they were in just shirts and all the other elders were required to be in suits for the devotional. We were unaware that there was a devotional so were glad that we stumbled onto this information. Before the devotional started we were sitting in our seats and the sister sitting next to me turned to me and asked where we were going (the standard question when we meet anyone here). When we told here where we were going, she got SO excited saying that their best friends were office missionaries in our mission. She was so excited that she took our picture and sent it to the couple in Washington. If that wasn’t enough, the couple behind us told us that they had just been released as a counselor to the mission president in our mission. What are the chances of us sitting by these two couples?? We got to listen to Bishop Waddell spoke and we really enjoyed the talk.
Today was another day in the classroom. We had a brother from the church who had come to talk to us about transportation. He was convinced that it was IMPORTANT to let the missionaries know the How and Why about the rules and they would be safer drivers. I am sure that is true, but after a good hour, I was getting anxious to get to the instruction for helping in the office. He had good stories that emphasized his point, but I had already gotten the point a half hour earlier. Finally, we were through (or so I thought) and took a break and split up into finance and office. He was in our finance class room and spent the next couple of hours talking about transportation and why it is important to watch and analyze the costs that occurred with the cars. Again, that is true, but I would not be working with transportation. If I needed to learn this, I at least wanted to learn how to get the information into the computer so that the work could get done. What I really wanted to do was go back and review the information on the finance section and practice on that. By lunch time I was more than a little frustrated especially when I saw what the office people had been learning. I did, however, learn that some of the elders in one of the missions had been doing donuts in a parking lot and had worn out a lot of tires—more than the average. That is how they caught the elders doing it. I also learned how brake pads grip onto the rotor and stop the car. The afternoon went better because we got to learn about the finance part of IMOS.
We went to visit Chelsea Wednesday to say good-bye so that we could get an earlier start on Thursday afternoon.
Thursday was our last day—happy and sad. We would be saying good-bye to some good friends but would also be leaving to go and do what we had been called to do. We spent the morning doing more training in class and then went to lunch—again our last meal at the MTC. One of the couples left then and the remaining four couples went back for some review. We finished up about 2 and went back to our room to pack up and check out. This was a MUCH easier pack up than the one we did leaving our home 1 ½ weeks ago! We were able to have the car packed and we were checked out by 3:30ish. Thinking that we could stop by Chelsea’s school and say a quick bye would be faster than waiting for her to get home. The kids leave at 3:30, but she can’t leave until 4, so we stopped by and visited for a minute in her classroom then went on to Keri’s to say good-bye to them. After dinner (which they were so good to provide for us) we started out on our trek across this great land. After traveling for about 3+ hours we arrived in Rock Spring, WY and spent the night.
Friday was our first full day of travel. I don’t know what I expected to see, but we found that there is a LOT of empty territory out there. Maybe the freeways didn’t go near towns, maybe there weren’t towns, or maybe the towns were so small that we just missed them. But we didn’t see many humans. That first day we went the rest of the way through Wyoming, into a foggy Colorado with roads going up and down rolling hills. After going through Colorado, we went most of the way through Kansas stopping in Salina for the night. We had driven a little more than 10 hours today and really enjoyed it.
All across Kansas were fields of corn, but it was not green or “tall as an elephant’s eye”. It was only 3-4 feet and brown. It wasn’t just one field that was like this, so we figured that these farmers knew something about corn that we didn’t know. Do they let the corn go this long to get seeds? We texted Michael Otteson to see if he was free to see us the next morning, but he was tied up.
On Saturday we got an early start leaving a little after 6:30. We finished up Kansas and went on into Missouri stopping for about ½ hour at Independence to see the visitor’s center there and then look quickly at the outside of the temple and Auditorium of the Church of Christ. We were on the road and onto Indiana then Ohio stopping for the night in Milford, OH. Today was a 12-hour trip.
On Sunday we went to cousin Ben’s home in Milford so that we could go to church with them. That was really good—got to listen to Ben’s Sunday School lesson. After church we went back to their home and had a nice lunch and visited with them for a bit and then started our travels again.
We traveled through the rest of Ohio, West Virginia, and into Pennsylvania. It was a little tense because there was a lot of road construction in West Virginia and Pennsylvania and it was pitch black. I don’t know for sure what was on the sides of the road—hills, forests, or drop offs. We finally stopped in Uniontown, PA for our last night on the road. This was a 4-hour day.
Monday was a beautiful day and we, again, were on the road before 7. Again, we were on roads that were two-lane roads that went through rolling hills. As we came to the top of a hill and looked down into the valley we could see only fog. As we got down in the valley we were driving through fog. It was so green and lush, but we wondered where the traffic was. Didn’t anyone go to work around here? We got to Maryland and still no towns or traffic. Finally, about 11 is we hit the beltway traffic around the Washington D.C. area. That, however, was only about ½ hour from the mission office. Today was another 4+ hour day. We stopped in to get the keys for our apartment so we could unpack. We had planned to go back to the office, but Dad felt a need to get the internet hooked up so we could be connected with WES. We also needed to get groceries. We called the office and told them we would be into the office in the morning.
This week has all melded together. There is LOTS to learn and I sometimes worry that I’ll really mess things up before I get the hang of things. The office opens at 9 and people begin leaving around 4:30. Dad and I try to get there at 8 so we can see how much we can do on our own and do a little retracing our steps to see if we can do some of things we were taught the day before. Most of the nights it has been 6 before we get away and Friday it was 7. Dad comes home and spends a couple of hours doing WES stuff. Hopefully the company will get to running smoother so he doesn’t have to spend so much time worrying about it, or those there can grow in the capacities to be able to do it on their own.
Wednesday we went to a zone conference so that we could get our flue shots, got introduced to those missionaries, and then came back to the office. It was good to meet the president and his wife and the missionaries. Thursday and Friday we spent our days at the office. The time seems to go swiftly while we are there, but it always feels so late by the time we get home and do dinner. Poor Dad is eating dinner after 7. Hopefully we will get that straightened out.
I am looking forward to going to church and seeing if there is something we can do in the evenings to help move the work along in this part of the country. I think it would do both of us a lot of good to be able to look outward and do some service.
Saturday we got up and went for a walk. There is a trail at the back of our apartment that goes through a foresty area and ends up at the train depot. There was a farmer’s market in the parking lot there and the baked goods as well as the fruits, vegetables, honey, jams, meat, and sea food were fun to look at. The only problem was the price. One of the loaves of bread was $12. It looked good, but not quite $12 good.
After breakfast we went to the dollar store to get storage containers to help organize our closets and then stopped by Walmart for groceries (things much cheaper than at the farmer’s market). We were able to do all this before Conference started!! Conference didn’t start until 12. If we had been at home we would have been done at 11.
Well that about does it for last two weeks. Know that we love you and pray for you daily.
Love,
Mom
Friday was our first full day of travel. I don’t know what I expected to see, but we found that there is a LOT of empty territory out there. Maybe the freeways didn’t go near towns, maybe there weren’t towns, or maybe the towns were so small that we just missed them. But we didn’t see many humans. That first day we went the rest of the way through Wyoming, into a foggy Colorado with roads going up and down rolling hills. After going through Colorado, we went most of the way through Kansas stopping in Salina for the night. We had driven a little more than 10 hours today and really enjoyed it.
All across Kansas were fields of corn, but it was not green or “tall as an elephant’s eye”. It was only 3-4 feet and brown. It wasn’t just one field that was like this, so we figured that these farmers knew something about corn that we didn’t know. Do they let the corn go this long to get seeds? We texted Michael Otteson to see if he was free to see us the next morning, but he was tied up.
On Saturday we got an early start leaving a little after 6:30. We finished up Kansas and went on into Missouri stopping for about ½ hour at Independence to see the visitor’s center there and then look quickly at the outside of the temple and Auditorium of the Church of Christ. We were on the road and onto Indiana then Ohio stopping for the night in Milford, OH. Today was a 12-hour trip.
On Sunday we went to cousin Ben’s home in Milford so that we could go to church with them. That was really good—got to listen to Ben’s Sunday School lesson. After church we went back to their home and had a nice lunch and visited with them for a bit and then started our travels again.
We traveled through the rest of Ohio, West Virginia, and into Pennsylvania. It was a little tense because there was a lot of road construction in West Virginia and Pennsylvania and it was pitch black. I don’t know for sure what was on the sides of the road—hills, forests, or drop offs. We finally stopped in Uniontown, PA for our last night on the road. This was a 4-hour day.
Monday was a beautiful day and we, again, were on the road before 7. Again, we were on roads that were two-lane roads that went through rolling hills. As we came to the top of a hill and looked down into the valley we could see only fog. As we got down in the valley we were driving through fog. It was so green and lush, but we wondered where the traffic was. Didn’t anyone go to work around here? We got to Maryland and still no towns or traffic. Finally, about 11 is we hit the beltway traffic around the Washington D.C. area. That, however, was only about ½ hour from the mission office. Today was another 4+ hour day. We stopped in to get the keys for our apartment so we could unpack. We had planned to go back to the office, but Dad felt a need to get the internet hooked up so we could be connected with WES. We also needed to get groceries. We called the office and told them we would be into the office in the morning.
This week has all melded together. There is LOTS to learn and I sometimes worry that I’ll really mess things up before I get the hang of things. The office opens at 9 and people begin leaving around 4:30. Dad and I try to get there at 8 so we can see how much we can do on our own and do a little retracing our steps to see if we can do some of things we were taught the day before. Most of the nights it has been 6 before we get away and Friday it was 7. Dad comes home and spends a couple of hours doing WES stuff. Hopefully the company will get to running smoother so he doesn’t have to spend so much time worrying about it, or those there can grow in the capacities to be able to do it on their own.
Wednesday we went to a zone conference so that we could get our flue shots, got introduced to those missionaries, and then came back to the office. It was good to meet the president and his wife and the missionaries. Thursday and Friday we spent our days at the office. The time seems to go swiftly while we are there, but it always feels so late by the time we get home and do dinner. Poor Dad is eating dinner after 7. Hopefully we will get that straightened out.
I am looking forward to going to church and seeing if there is something we can do in the evenings to help move the work along in this part of the country. I think it would do both of us a lot of good to be able to look outward and do some service.
Saturday we got up and went for a walk. There is a trail at the back of our apartment that goes through a foresty area and ends up at the train depot. There was a farmer’s market in the parking lot there and the baked goods as well as the fruits, vegetables, honey, jams, meat, and sea food were fun to look at. The only problem was the price. One of the loaves of bread was $12. It looked good, but not quite $12 good.
After breakfast we went to the dollar store to get storage containers to help organize our closets and then stopped by Walmart for groceries (things much cheaper than at the farmer’s market). We were able to do all this before Conference started!! Conference didn’t start until 12. If we had been at home we would have been done at 11.
Well that about does it for last two weeks. Know that we love you and pray for you daily.
Love,
Mom
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