Rain, beautiful rain........!

This part of the country is finally getting some rain. It is truly an answer to the prayers of so many. Everything is looking so green and fresh as the pictures below show. These were shot from the north side of our building. As it turns out, there is a nice veranda that can be accessed by everyone in the building that looks out over the city. I especially like the one looking toward the downtown area.

I will start with some non-mission things that have involved some of my thoughts and efforts during the week. Our rental home in Lehi again has some wonderful tenants moving in, and, since we are losing our great tenants from one of our Miles City (MT) homes, I have been busy in my off duty moments screening prospective tenants as best as one can do when hundreds of miles away. Thank goodness for modern technology.  Other than this, my week was primarily involved with the tedious task of entering car inspection results into the system. This has to be done for each car one at a time which is time consuming enough, but it is especially so when I must also call the missionaries who have the particular car needing service or repair and arrange for the particular needed service revealed during the car inspection.

And speaking of cars; an unusual car turned up in our parking lot this past week. Wednesdays are the busiest days at the bishop’s storehouse during the week and so all people who work in the various Church offices in the building know this and everyone parks on the north side of the parking lot which frees up the south side of the lot for those coming to the bishop’s storehouse. This happened to also be a day when some workers from the local telephone/internet providers, Shaw Communications, were there to string a new line from their poles to the church offices. They wanted all vehicles cleared from one area of the parking lot while they were stringing wires. When I went outside to see which vehicles these might be, to my surprise, there sat a beautiful red Ferrari. Each of the offices was contacted to move their vehicles but no one claimed the Ferrari. Fearing that some car thief had possibly stashed the car there for a time, I went out and took pictures of the license plate, the VIN, etc. with a plan to inform the police if the car was still there later in the morning. The next time I looked out the car was gone but still no one knew anything about it. In any case, I couldn’t resist a vanity shot while the car was there. After all, I am a car guy! I think my knees would have a problem getting into and out of such a low-slung car, however. Do you know what sits in the back seat of a Ferrari? The engine!

Speaking of cars, this week I sold the Chevy Colorado truck we have had for a month, and I have a prospective buyer coming tomorrow who is very interested in the Dodge Caravan. Kathy and I also picked up two additional new Nissan Rogues early in the week. One of them has already gone south to Lethbridge and the Chevy Cruz it replaced is now sitting in the mission parking lot to be detailed and sold along with one other Cruz awaiting being sold. The latter car had been a loaner out to a pair of missionaries whose car had broken a timing chain which resulted in a total failure of the engine. It had to be towed to a Chevy dealer where they found a bent piston rod and some other damage. It could have been worse; sometimes when a timing chain or belt breaks, pistons are thrown through the side of an engine. Fortunately the Cruz was still under the 5-year drive train warranty so there was no charge for repairs. 

And now to the domestic front; we have bought a cherry tomato plant for our balcony so we will see how it goes. Since we have a south-facing apartment, it should do okay. We will keep you posted.

Yesterday we attended a baptism for a young man in his 20s who is Chinese and who was taught by our Mandarin speaking missionaries. The service was in the building where the Mandarin Branch meets and was done in Mandarin. Fortunately they have devices so we Anglos could each listen to the translation provided. It was a marvelous experience and was well attended by the Branch members.

Tonight we had the Elder and Sister Peppinger, a couple with whom we work in the mission office, here for dinner, and then we all went to a missionary fireside where President and Sister Miles were speaking. It has been a wonderful day.

We hope your week goes well. We love you all.

Evan & Kathy

A Less Stressful Week!

Wow, what a difference a week makes in the weather. This week we performed two different car inspections, 20 cars on Tuesday and 27 on Wednesday. This was done while the Elders and Sisters in two different parts of the north mission attended a temple session at the Calgary Temple followed by lunch and then their zone conference. The weather on both days was a comfortable temperature, around 82 degrees (28 degrees Celsius). We even got a little sunburned. This was in stark contrast to our experience the week before having 4 inches of wet sloppy snow fall on us during the car inspections. Given the beautiful weather, we could actually see the exterior of the cars so we were able to make a list of needed repairs and perform some minor repairs such as replacing worn windshield wipers. Since the Calgary Temple shares a parking lot with the Royal Oaks Ward building so it all worked out very well.

On Monday I was able to sell two of the older mission cars which have come out of the fleet. Both were Chevrolets, a Cruz and an Equinox. We still have a nice Chevy Colorado truck and a Dodge Caravan to sell.

During the car inspection on Tuesday we made an interesting discovery; the new Caravan we received about two weeks ago has no spare tire! The Dodge Caravan has a cranking system to lower the spare tire. Ordinarily it sits under the front row passenger seats. The device cranked with amazing ease but no spare tire appeared, just the device that connects to it, -  so I called the Dodge dealership involved in delivering the car to us. You won’t believe what I was told; “The spare tire is an accessory and must be ordered as an accessory item. The spare tire was not specified when the Church ordered the vehicle.” This is a new one for me. I was flabbergasted. I called the fleet managers at Church Headquarters and they, too, were amazed. They are working on resolving this for us. In the meantime I asked the Dodge fleet guy with whom we worked what it would cost. Are you ready for this: $712 CD (about $534 US)!

Other than the laborious task of putting the inspection results into the CARS system (entered item by item and one car at a time X 90 cars!), this has been a rather typical week so there isn’t much else to tell you except that it is finally raining. We have had rain on and off for over three days, sometimes mixed with some snowflakes. What a welcome blessing! It gets light now about 5:00 a.m. and I am enjoying being able to run outside. Lots of lilacs in bloom along my route but they are going fast. I have always loved the fragrance of lilacs; my personal favorite!

I am proud to tell you of the high school graduation of my twin grandsons, Ethan and Jonah. Their papers are in to serve missions so as the summer continues we will hope to hear where they will be assigned. They will both be great missionaries.

I’m sorry there were no new pictures to share this week.

Love, Elder and Sister Thorley

So there we were when it started to snow……

We had a rather unique weather experience this week; one that I am not sure we will want to experience again for awhile. First let me lead into the story……

In last week’s blog I mentioned that our missionaries would have the opportunity to get together for a temple session, followed by lunch and a zone conference. Through much of Monday and Tuesday we prepared to make the trip to Cardston, Alberta, where the first of the temple visits and zone conferences would be held. This meant getting all of the car inspection stuff restocked and moved out into the mission truck which Elder and Sister Sefcik would be driving to Cardston along with a chest of drawers needed by one set of missionaries. Kathy and I would be driving a new Rogue to be swapped for an older Cruz which is to be sold. We loaded the Rogue with boxes containing copies of a booklet that Pres. and Sis. Miles have prepared for the missionaries who have gone home in the past few months. All of the missionaries presently serving have already received a copy of the same booklet. Because it is so much less expensive to mail stuff from the U.S., we would be taking advantage of this by hauling the mail across the border while in Cardston, which is just north of the border.

On Monday and Tuesday the weather was beautiful, and Wednesday was beautiful as well as we drove to Cardston. The weather forecasters, however, were warning of a change.

Arriving in Cardston, we checked into our motel and then drove south to Babb, Montana, which is just across the border. 

View of Old Chief Mountain from Babb, Montana

We carried in the boxes and boxes of mailing envelopes containing the booklets and the poor postmistress started the process of putting postage on each of the envelopes. Since it would take awhile for the postmistress to finish, Elder and Sister Sefcik and Kathy and I decided to take a drive to St Mary’s, just a bit further south, and continue on into the part of Glacier National Park that is nearby. For those who have not been there, may I say, this is a really beautiful area. I will include some pictures. The lake in the pictures is St. Mary’s Lake. Unfortunately, the area is still recovering from a couple of devastating fires, the last one just a year ago.

St Mary's Lake on the Northeastern edge of Glacier National Park

When we got back to the post office in Babb, the postmistress was finished with the mailers and so we paid for the postage and drove back to Cardston. We arrived back in time to go to the Cardston Temple to do a session. This is a beautifully unique temple and we greatly enjoyed the session and seeing the beauty of the building and the grounds.

While in the temple the clouds had started to thicken. Still the forecast was for light rain and cooler temperatures for Thursday. After returning to the motel, we had dinner and settled in for the night.

On Thursday morning, there was evidence of some very light rain having fallen sometime during the night. We went to breakfast and then to the Stake Center across from the Temple grounds where we set up for the missionaries and, as they arrived, we directed them to the respective zone parking areas. I have described before how we have the missionaries park their cars by zone, turn the front wheels all the way to the left, raise the hood, and leave the key on the front seat in preparation for the car inspections. Since we would have some 40 cars to inspect, I had asked one of the Cardston Wards to provide us with three pairs of men to help with the car inspections and they did. With the help our hope was to be finished by noon. The men arrived right on schedule and I gave them some instructions, a clipboard, a tire gauge, a tread depth measuring device, and we all went to work. Some light rain was falling as we began.

As we worked there was an occasional snowflake amid the drizzling rain, then there were a few more snowflakes, and soon the precipitation was more snow than rain. Then the fun began,  - the snowflakes got bigger and bigger so much so that we could barely see across the parking lot. The snowflakes became the size of silver dollars and soon it was impossible to adequately inspect for exterior cleanliness, windshield condition, or body and fender damage due to the sticking snow. To make a long wet story shorter, before we were finished some three hours later, the snow depth had reached 4 inches of wet, dense snow! By the time we were finished with the inspection we were all cold, wet, and ready to be done. The heavy snow continued through the lunch period and into the afternoon. Before it quit, the forecast of light rain showers had become 9 inches of snow. Our return trip to Calgary quickly revealed less and less snow and none some 20 miles further north at Ft Macleod. Fortunately, next week when we will do it all over again (twice more), the weather should be better, but we are wary of forecasts.

Friday was a more typical day; oil changes, cracked windshields, a set of lost keys, an impounded car, and a speeding ticket to deal with.

Love to you all.

Evan and Kathy

Greetings from Canmore, Alberta!

Well, here we are in beautiful Canmore. Our mission president has encouraged us to get out of the office every now and then so we made plans and traveled here after work on Thursday. It has been wonderful. We will include lots of pictures so you can appreciate the area and just how magnificent it is. Canmore holds a special place in our hearts so we really looked forward to coming back.

In 2013 Kathy and I met online and began corresponding, then after several weeks we met in person in Sandy, Utah. Thereafter about once a month I would make the 700+ mile trip from Montana to Sandy so we could get to know each other better. After four months of dating we decided we were sufficiently interested in each other to consider making it permanent but we needed to spend more time together to see whether we were just friends, in love, or if we might get on each others nerves. Kathy and her late husband had owned a World Mark Timeshare plan which has potential destinations all over the western U.S. and into Canada so we discussed where we could go to take advantage of the plan. I noticed that one of the locations was just west of Calgary in the Canadian Rockies. Since my family and I had had such a great time at the Calgary Stampede back in the 1980s, I suggested to Kathy that we go there and she agreed. The timeshare was available so off we went. It was while in Canmore that we became engaged. So here we are back again. As was the case the first time, the weather has been remarkably beautiful and the mountains just as grand.

Friday we drove around the area including a scenic two-hour drive south through the mountains from Canmore. The pictures above are mostly from that drive. Breath taking! We saw an elk, several dear, and a mountain sheep. 

Friday evening we had dinner at a restaurant at the Silver Tip Golf Course with Elder and Sister Gardiner, a senior missionary couple who arrived quite recently from a town very near Vancouver, BC. For all you golfers out there, I have to tell you that this is one of the most spectacular golf courses I have ever seen, - on a par with Pebble Beach for sheer beauty. 

Today we joined Elder and Sister Gardiner again, this time to attend Church in nearby Banff. 

The Branch is quite small in numbers of local members but always has a varying number of visitors as was the case today; - Boise, Idaho, Cokeville, Wyoming, Vancouver, Alberta, and Calgary. The couple from Cokeville, Wyoming had a history very much like ours; both have spouses who had passed away and were recently married. 

Yesterday we walked around downtown Canmore and then met a couple, the Perdormos whom we know from our own ward in Calgary. Bro. Perdormo makes custom jewelry and has a cute little shop here in Canmore. 

He and his wife are our Home Teachers. They are both originally from Uruguay, lived in Brazil for a time, and later immigrated here to Alberta. They took us to a Brazilian Rodizio Grill called the Gaucho Grill. We had enough meat to last us for quite awhile!

Our work in the office this past week was pretty much routine so there is nothing particularly newsworthy to report. This next week starts a new round of zone conferences and car inspections. The zone conferences will start first in the south followed the next week by two zone conferences in the north. These will be special because the missionaries will be able to go to the temple in the morning and then meet for their respective zone conferences in the afternoon. Because we will be inspecting cars on Friday while the missionaries are in the temple, the office couples will go down to Cardston on Thursday evening so we can attend the temple ourselves. The Cardston Temple is one of the early temples in the Church and is quite unique so we are really looking forward to being there. Stay tuned next week for details.

So, in closing, Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers. We hope the day was wonderful and special. I got some roses for Kathy before we left so we hope they are still alive when we return later this evening.

We love you all.  Please join us praying for rain for Alberta, especially in the fire devastated area of Ft. McMurray. What a tragedy; 80,000 people had to be evacuated. There are many miraculous stories coming out of the tragedy. 

Spring is truly here.

Despite a rather cool week, it is safe to say Spring is here; the leaves are out, many bushes and trees are in bloom, the days are noticeably longer, and my walk-jog-run activities have moved outside. I first go along the road you see southward down to the tall buildings in the distance, then west, then north, then south in a sort of rectangle and back to our building. 

Much more interesting than running inside of a heated parking garage. In one of first blogs I posted a wintertime picture when it was below zero outside. It is quite different now. In the second picture you can see the snow covered Canadian Rockies. This also is the view to the west from our balcony. In next week’s post I will show more of the mountains as we are headed to Canmore next weekend for a brief stay.

The car highlight, I suppose, for this past week was getting a new Dodge Caravan, a replacement for one of two Caravans in our fleet of cars. Except for being a different color and having the new car smell, it looks the same as the older Caravan proving that the design has not changed in a few years. As the district or zone leaders come to the office for supplies and mail, they are quick to notice a new car in the office parking lot. They come into the office and come to my desk, “This one is coming to us, right?” Sometimes I respond by asking, “Perhaps this car should go to the companionship that has the cleanest car. Would that be yours if we go out and look?” Usually this puts things back into perspective. Hmmmm, as I think about it; maybe that would work as a more serious incentive than a Subway gift card.

We have again had a rash of parking lot accidents over the past week. Fortunately there was only one case where the missionaries were at fault. The others involved people backing into missionary cars. This is always interesting when our missionaries are not the at fault party; I get a call from the at fault person wanting to know (as I would want to know if I were at fault) where the estimate is going to be done and how much it will cost. I usually have no idea at the time they call as the estimate is pending so I get their name and number and promise to keep them in the loop. What they are trying to decide, of course, is whether they want to pay out-of-pocket and avoid their insurance company either jacking up their monthly premium or dropping them altogether.

The best highlight of the week was the baptism of grandson, Austin, in Colorado. While we couldn’t be there in person we were there in spirit. I will include a picture of Austin and his proud father. We, too, are so proud of Austin and the handsome and good young man he is turning out to be.

After our weekly visit to the Calgary Temple we shot some pictures looking out to the Calgary skyline. This is taken from the hill where the temple sits. In the next picture, which is just to the west of the skyline shot, is the site of the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. This is known locally as COP, Calgary Olympic Park. The ski runs stay busy all winter long with day and night skiing but the snow is nearly gone. Unfortunately, most of the snow this year was man made.

We drive along the bottom end of the ski jump each Friday on our way returning to our apartment from the temple.

The final picture I will include is a visit to the downtown Calgary’s Knox United Church for a choral presentation. A friend and ward member who sings with “The Festival Chorus” knows of our involvement with choral groups in the Salt Lake area and invited us to attend. It was wonderful. The choral group was excellent, the soloists were great, and the orchestra was superb. 

Attending the concert was the first time we have been downtown other than to drive through since we arrived on our mission. We visited downtown briefly when we were here two years ago during the Calgary Stampede but there is obviously much to see and do so we plan to spend much more time there. We hope you will visit Calgary this summer and go with us.

Have a wonderful week!

It has been another busy transfer week. 

Each time we receive a new group of missionaries as we did on Tuesday it means it is time to say goodbye to a similar sized group of missionaries who are going home, new companionships are formed as new missionaries join their missionary trainers, some missionaries are scheduled to go from Calgary to the south mission and other missionaries then come from the south mission to the north areas in and around Calgary. It takes President and Sister Miles with the assistance of the two Assistants to the President considerable time to make these assignments. There are many variables which have to be taken into consideration: the three languages our missionaries speak (English, Mandarin, and Spanish), who is eligible to drive (or not), who has served in a given area for quite some time and is due a change, personalities, health needs, and so on. I am so happy I do not have to make these assignment decisions. Inspiration is involved but “information precedes inspiration” as we so well know. Thank goodness for computer assistance as companionships are considered. It is amazing to see, in the end, how well it all works out from the office point of view.

To give you an idea of the first day in the mission for our newly arriving Elders and Sisters, at least for the ones being assigned to North and South American missions; they leave the Missionary Training Center in Provo very early in the morning on a Tuesday and are transported to the airport in Salt Lake City where they wait for their particular flights to the varying destinations. For our group arriving on Tuesday their day began around 1:00 a.m. They arrived about 11:15 a.m. here in Calgary. They next go through customs and this can be a rather lengthy process depending on the size of the group and how many are coming from outside of Canada. When they are all through customs we load them and their baggage into the mission vehicles and drive them to the mission home where they kick off their shoes (it is a custom in Canada that everyone removes his or her shoes as they enter a private residence) and the local training begins. The office staff is introduced and we each have certain things we teach them such as how their mission funding and gas cards work, local laws and customs, driving requirements and safe vehicle use, expectations for upkeep of cars and apartments, telephone and internet use and limitations, how the mail system works in Alberta and how they receive their mail (it all comes to the mission office first and then goes out via the Zone Leaders once a week), ordering supplies, how health issues are handled, etc. This involves several information sheets (since they will remember only some of what we present), and certain forms that must be completed. We try to make it interesting but fatigue from their long day takes its toll so there are stretch breaks and an occasional hymn. Finally they have dinner and have a chance to get to bed but not before each of them has an interview with President Miles which enables him to get to know each of them, their expectations and concerns, and this interview helps with his assignment decisions.

The training continues on Wednesday when each of them first meets their new companion and together they receive additional training before heading out to their assigned area of labor.

On Thursday morning we meet all the Elders and Sisters being transferred and their “old” companions at 9:00 a.m. in a church parking lot. All those going south load up their baggage in the trailer and then climb into one of the mission vehicles and we head for Lethbridge, nearly two hours south. In the meantime those who have briefly lost a companion are paired up with another Elder of Sister in the same circumstance and they go to an area close in and do some work while they await the arrival of their new companions from the south mission. In the meantime the same thing is happening in a church parking lot in Lethbridge although it begins at 11:00 a.m. The convoy of missionaries arrives from the north, new companions are met, baggage is unloaded (see more on this below), cars are loaded up, and the new companionships head to their assigned areas. Those missionaries going north load up and the convoy heads back toward Calgary. Back in Calgary the same thing happens as new companions meet, load up, and head to their areas.

This is all supposed to go smoothly, of course, but not always so…….I have remarked in a previous blog that it is a lot like herding cats. When a bunch of missionaries get together who may not have seen each other in awhile, they understandably want to visit and catch up. There are pockets of visiting missionaries scattered all over the parking lot. Instructions can be ignored or lost in the wind (the wind is an especially big problem in Lethbridge). Announcements to load up must be repeated. Efforts to ensure that cell phones, apartment keys, and car keys get into the right hands are not always successful. Likewise keeping southbound and northbound luggage separated is a big issue; for example, after all of the southbound luggage was unloaded and placed on the south side of the trailer, and the northbound luggage was then loaded, after closing up the trailer I was approached by a frantic Sister saying she couldn’t find her luggage. I unlocked the trailer and the search began. We had to unload 2/3 of the luggage before she spotted her luggage. After getting back to Calgary we got a phone call from one of the Elders who didn’t discover he was missing one of his bags until he got to his area. Sigh………!

I will include a picture I took of the 11 passengers who rode back to Calgary with me. We had to stop in Clareholm at TIM HORTONS to get some “Timbits” (they are like donut holes and come in a variety of flavors – yum, especially the carmel and sea salt ones!)

Also on Thursday, the Elders and Sisters who are returning home gather at the mission home and with President and Sister Miles they all go to the temple. It is a very emotional time for them and going to the temple is an especially fitting way to cap off their missions. It is hard for all to say goodbye. 

On Friday mornings of transfer week after we take the departing missionaries to the airport to catch their flights, things get a bit more relaxed, ….. well sort of. It is then we get calls that a cell phone or a gas card didn’t get passed on as planned, or someone left something important in their last apartment or car and so on.  Despite this it all really does go quite well, and in another six weeks we will do it all over again.

See, it is possible for me to have said all this and hardly a word about cars! Well, there are a couple of items to mention. Two new areas were opened up in the Lethbridge and Cardston zones so two cars had to be identified and driven south on Thursday as a part of the transfer process. Additionally I had to take a couple of repair items south and arrange for these to get to the missionaries needing them.

Tuesday evening after the training sessions with the new missionaries, we three couples who work in the office went to dinner together. I want to share a sign with you that hangs in the Italian restaurant where we ate. I got a kick out of it and thought you might as well.

Finally, as I have mentioned before, we live on the 12^th floor of an apartment building and our apartment faces the south. Despite assurances from the locals that it rarely gets hot enough in Calgary to warrant air conditioning, we, nevertheless, have great concern for how hot it will get inside our apartment in the summer. Even on some days when the outside temperature is in the 70s we get too warm and there is no cross ventilation to help. Many of the individual apartment spaces are privately owned and this is true for our apartment. Whether an apartment currently has air conditioning or not was dependent on the individual owners and their willingness to pay the cost of individual a/c units at the time of construction. Considering what we could do to cool our apartment, while in Utah last month we bought a portable a/c unit from Amazon and brought it back with us. I made a special window adaptation for our apartment window in the bedroom and the unit works well for the bedroom, but we need the air to get to the living room as well and this would mean modifying the apartment, viz., a hole through the wall between the rooms. I bought all the component pieces needed to do this, then invited our landlord to visit so I could explain what I wanted to do. I laid out all the pieces and showed him what the wall would look like when it was done. To our delight he readily agreed to it and, in fact, wants to buy the whole system when we leave. I will include a picture of the living room side of the wall and how the a/c unit is hooked up from the bedroom. Hopefully, our problem is solved. Stayed tuned. 

Love, Evan and Kathy

Cars, trucks, and a special visit.

My blogs remind me of my grandson, Brady. As he was learning to talk all he could talk about were his matchbox trucks. Pretty much everything he said was unintelligible except the word, “trucks” and he loved his trucks (still does). I am guessing you are probably thinking this is true of my blogs, - everything is “cars”. It is a good thing I like cars as my life pretty much revolves around them. So here is the update on mission cars for the week (and a few other things as well).

This past week we were informed of the arrival of two new Nissan Rogues, and one more is due in on Monday or Tuesday of this next week. Later in the month or early in May we will get two more Rogues. The arrival of new cars means the older cars must eventually come out of the fleet; however, since we have been adding new missionaries and opening new areas, until now I haven’t had to prepare anything for sale. That is changing. The truck I mentioned in my last blog is ready for sale and the process should be completed by the end of the week when the truck will probably head south to Cardston. The potential buyer is just waiting for the truck to be priced before he commits, which makes perfect sense. Personally, I would really like to have this truck. It has nearly 100,000 km on it but is in wonderful shape and condition.

The weather has been so nice that Kathy decided she would like to go with me to pick up the new Rogues at the Nissan dealership. On Wednesday the fleet sales guy picked us up and away we went. The previous Rogues had silver paint jobs; these were a sort of gun metal grey, which looks really good but will certainly show the dirt and grime of winter more than the silver ones. When we go in to pick up the new vehicles, we have to do an inspection, fill out the specific car checklist(s), get in them and drive away, - much easier than haggling with a salesman over price, accessories, etc. if I were buying a car for myself!

Now that winter driving is pretty much over and the number of accidents is down, I am concentrating on gradually getting each of the cars in the fleet touched up, bumpers and windshields replaced, and windshield dings repaired. I discovered, however, that this has to be handled just so. Since other than simple repairs are covered by the Church’s automobile insurance, I have to fill out an incident report just like when one of our cars is involved in an accident, only on this incident report I indicate “accumulated damage”.  Filing out an incident report triggers an insurance case number and a file is automatically generated. One of the first cars for which I started this process was a Subaru Impreza that was otherwise in great shape. While we were in Utah in March, without warning the insurance adjustor simply ‘totaled’ it, the insurance company sent the Church a check for its salvage value, the car disappeared from the fleet inventory without warning, and after returning from our Utah trip I am scratching my head trying to figure out why this car was no longer showing up in the inventory. Then the Calgary towing company the insurer uses called to see where they could pick up the car. I said, “Whoa, wait just a darn minute.” I called the Church Fleet people in SLC and asked what was going on. They verified that they had been paid for the car and it was indeed going to a salvage yard. So this was a double whammy; not only does the car come out of the fleet but another car has to be put in place to replace it. Lesson learned; get the windshield replaced, then a bit later arrange for the dings, dents, and scrapes and scratches to be repaired at another time so that no one assumes it isn’t worth the cost of repairs.

Yesterday was a special day for the mission. We learned after returning from Utah that Elder Christofferson (one of the Twelve Apostles for my non-Mormon friends) was coming to the area (together with a couple Seventies) and would be meeting with all of the missionaries. Rarely is there an event that has such importance that the entire mission meets together in one location. For some of our missionaries this means a six-hour drive, working out carpooling, making arrangements for an overnight stay, and then a return long trip back to their areas, - it is not a simple undertaking. So far it appears that everything has gone without a hitch and everyone is safely back home.

You may recall in a previous blog I described how we had a guy here in Calgary come to the zone conferences held in the northern part of the mission to fix the windshield rock chips while the missionaries were in meetings. For the cars in the south mission we were planning the same thing at the next zone conferences. We determined, however, that the gathering of cars for Elder Christofferson’s visit would enable fixing the rock chips in the remaining cars. I sent out word, when planning for which cars would be driven to Calgary, the cars with windshield rock chips should make the drive. And so the plan was to have the cars from the south mission park on the east side of the building where the gathering was to occur and the cars from the north mission on the other side. The meeting was to start at 9:00 a.m. We planned to arrive at 8:15 to begin directing the cars. We arrived shortly after 8:00 thinking we could get set up and be ready at 8:15. As we rounded the corner 50-60 cars were already there! Now picture trying to get the attention of the excited groups of reuniting missionaries; getting them to move their cars and park according to the plan we had so carefully worked out brought to mind the phrase “herding cats”.

The meeting with Elder Christofferson, Elder Martino, and Elder Spackman was wonderful. As the meeting started, President Miles announced that our visitors wanted to shake hands with each of the missionaries. 

The entire chapel was filled with young Sisters and Elders and so the pews emptied one at a time coming around from the back of the chapel and up the aisle to the front where each had an opportunity to shake hands. 

This was our opportunity as well. I will include a picture shot by one of our fellow office workers, Elder Sefcik, when Kathy and my opportunity to shake hands occurred.

Of note is that many of our missionaries think that Elder Christofferson and I look alike and often say so. While we were sitting waiting for the dignitaries to arrive, Elder Sefcik, knowing of the opinion that Elder Christofferson and I look alike, poked me in the shoulder and said, “You should go out the side door and come in through the back of the chapel and up the aisle to see what would happen.”  I didn’t have to think about it very long…. “I don’t think so.”

I was sitting in the right front of the chapel so I could slip out when the guy fixing the rock chips was finished and texted me he was done. This happened right in the middle of Elder Christofferson’s talk. I slipped out the rostrum door as quietly as possible and went outside to meet the repair guy and settle with him (22 rock chip repairs!). When I returned and attempted to come back inside using the front chapel doors, I discovered they were locked. I could see some men dressed in suits sitting in the foyer and so motioned for them to let me in, and one of them did so. Then I got the 3^rd degree as to why I was there. It turned out that these men were Elder Christofferson’s security detail. They listened to my story and allowed me to return through the rostrum door I had come through earlier, but it caused me to think what a sad commentary of the time where it is necessary for a security protection detail to travel with the Apostles. I suppose this is true for all General Authorities as well.

Still, life is good. There are still many good people in the world; just getting to be more and more people who have no respect or regard for preserving the good and sacred things of the world. We are delighted to be here. We love those whom we serve. This includes the Master Himself.

We are so saddened to hear of the passing of two of our good friends and neighbors just a few days apart. Kathy and I both know the pain of losing a spouse and our hearts go out to them. We are so grateful to know where they are and to know they are now free from the pain and suffering they had to endure.