Another very busy "transfer week"................

 24 July 2016

I have covered the details involved with transfer week in other blogs so I won’t go into any great detail this time except to say that it is always a challenge; a challenge for planning and organizing given the myriad of details involved, and then it is a challenge putting that plan into motion. Nothing ever goes perfectly according to the plan.

On Monday of transfer week, as usual, we met with President and Sister Miles and the APs and in that meeting we looked at the numbers coming to the mission and the numbers going home. In the week prior to transfer week the President has already considered the changes he feels are needed for redistributing the missionaries and needed changes in existing companionships. The focus for our Monday meeting is logistical planning; transportation, car assignments, housing and furnishings needs, phones, etc. This translates into some missionaries going from the north mission to the south mission and vice versa. In the end we picked up 18 incoming missionaries at the airport on Tuesday and had 9 missionaries returning home on Friday (we had a couple of missionaries already return home that would have been in this returning group). Sixteen missionaries went south and 15 came north. Despite having a few of our missionaries return home for various reasons earlier, the net gain was again greater than the net loss. Three new areas were opened and there were boundary changes in some existing areas. As for cars, the increase in missionary numbers meant all available cars are now back in service including the ones we had plans to sell.

We need additional cars in order to take the ones due to be sold out of service. Since the Church buys its cars directly from the manufacturers, we are having to wait until the 2017 cars become available before we will get any replacement cars. I learned during the week that we now have a few more hail-damaged cars in the fleet from some of the severe storms seen in the past couple of weeks.

Yesterday Kathy and I returned to the historical village near here called Heritage Park. We mentioned in a previous blog that there was so much to see we decided to get a full year pass. We spent several hours there yesterday and again enjoyed it. We were able to see parts we hadn’t seen the first time, and we still have some things to see so will return again sometime soon. I will include a few pictures.

Early settlers lived in sod huts; cool in summer, warm in winter - all good, but roof leaked badly when it rained. 

First Calgary Hospital - actual building - brought to Heritage Park and restored.

Burns Barn - from Southeast Calgary feedlot. Beef production made Patrick Burns Calgary's first millionaire. 

Restored fire station from Cochrane, AB. Cochrane is north and west from Calgary. 

Actual parsonage from early 1900's in Calgary. 

Restored early Calgary Printing Shop. Presses and typesetter are working presses.

The weather remains so incredibly beautiful (daytime high temperatures of 72-80 degrees) that we are getting out as often as we can to see the sights. We are planning to return to Canmore next weekend so will have something to say about that in the next week’s blog. Today it was nice to be back in our local ward. 

We are well and happy and hope this is true for all of you as well.

Love, Evan and Kathy