Today was such a beautiful day as I sat at my desk in my office. I have a large window that fills most of the wall on the side of my desk and I watched a cat and bird playing in a tree, the blue, blue sky and President Donaldson stroll around with his grandchildren for a minute this morning but then it was off to work for all of us. Transfer week is next week and that means crazy, crazy times.
I got a day and a half of training before Sister Clark left to go home and there is no easing into the job. It’s just go, go, go. I am sure I will make mistakes but hopefully not too many. On my first day I have already been asked to find three new flats for senior couples. I have no way of going out to see properties on my own, the mission is too large and I am not really supposed to go out house hunting. I’m to find members, stake presidents etc to help me out. So I’m looking for a 2 bedroom place in Scotland, Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. They have to let me pay month-to-month and at the most a six-month lease. Every place I look at wants a year lease. They also have to be furnished. Nothing like asking for the impossible, but I just have to have faith that “impossible” isn’t a word when we are doing the Lord’s work. We will find what we need.

Yesterday I got a complaint from a landlord saying there has been continual pounding coming from the Elder’s apartment during the night hours and they had also been throwing something from their window so I got to call them and see what was going on. I’m going to have to start a Top 10 list of missionary excuses.
After work yesterday Sister Dent and I took Sister Paxman from Midway, UT and Sister Stapley from Washington to dinner at a really good Indian restaurant. I had Butter Chicken and it was delicious. As we were driving there we saw a lady pushing her baby carriage down the road. We commented on – “Oh look, a lady pushing her baby…” But then she passed and we realized she had a white wire cage on her back with a cat in it. It was the craziest thing. I tried to get my camera open fast enough to take a picture but it didn’t happen.
So today we left the office at 5:30 which is the earliest we have left this week. I think we could have easily worked at least another hour but the President has his daughter here with her children and they were preparing a big dinner and the smell was killing me. I was getting hungry. We have an unusual situation where the mission home and the office are together. So we are just outside their dining room basically. Anyway, as we neared our flat I noticed some black smoke billowing over our roof. I pointed it out to Sister Dent and she thought someone might be BBQing but no – when we rounded the corner the building just across from our parking area was on fire.

