Sunday, January 24, 2016

Chinooks are for real! We have had an abnormally warm week with mild breezes and melting snow producing slushy roads but otherwise nice conditions. Last night were treated again to some snow, only a couple of inches, but no bitter cold weather to follow. Nice!

We are bracing for our first experience with receiving a batch of new missionaries and saying goodbye to the ones who are preparing to return home at the end of their missions. This is known as "transfer week" and it is uniquely challenging and busy. We will say more about it next week after the experience.

I learned this week that we are about receive a few new vehicles, - Nissan AWD Rogues. The timing of their arrival could be better so will have to delay doing the new car inspections until early the following week. Then, once we have decided which cars will come out of the fleet and be sold, we have to drive the new vehicles to the areas where they will be assigned and bring the older vehicles home to be detailed and sold. At least two of them will be going to missionaries in the Canadian Rockies where the snowfall is more of a problem and so we will get to see the Banff area in winter time. We enjoyed traveling there before we were married (having no idea we would be returning for a mission!). People here know that missionary cars turn over from time to time; I get one to two calls a week from people who are interested in one of our cars. I have yet to learn how a price gets set for them but will soon learn that facet of the process I'm sure. Anyway, the cars which are to be sold are detailed and tires replaced if needed, and either go to auction or are sold to private parties. I'm going to try something I hope will work. This is a funny Midas add called, Canadian Car Chase, which we first saw while in the MTC. I hope you get a kick out of it: Canadian Car Chase.

If I can figure out a way to do it, in a future blog I hope to share a very funny video we were shown in the MTC from a driving safety DVD the Church uses. It is about two hillbillies making fun of and mocking two missionaries backing out of a parking space. Missionaries in all missions are required to have the non-driving missionary get out and watch behind and to the sides of the missionary vehicle while the driver backs up. This truly helps improve safety. The importance of this was emphasized last week when one missionary pair didn't follow the rules and, in their hurry to get to an appointment, quickly backed up and into a pickup passing by. Fortunately this was in a church parking lot and the vehicle they ran into was one owned by the Church and operated by facilities maintenance personnel. The Church's insurance covers both vehicles. My recommendation to the mission president was that they walk for a couple of weeks.

Kathy has been busy much of the week working on the mission newsletter amid her other duties. It gets published electronically so that it can be seen and read by our missionaries when they send their weekly email home to their families.

Friday at the close of business, we went with one of the other couples to dinner and then to do a session at the Calgary temple. We enjoyed this so much that we are planning to make this a weekly event.

We wish you all the very best. We love and miss you!


1 comment:

  1. Loved this! Jared stood out side of the car waiting for us to backup after his mission! This went on for quite a while,so that must have been a habit he picked up on early :)
    One of my favorite trips with my husband was a corporate trip to Banff. We could walk up to deer and they'd almost let us touch them!

    ReplyDelete