Week Six – Not much happening (fun anyway)

First off, Sunday, Dani Hayes made it to our Sacrament Meeting.  It was fun to see her.  She is going on a two-week adventure with a couple friends though Scotland and Ireland.  She was so excited for her friends to get here later that day so they could get going.  We texted her mom and dad so they knew she got here safely.

So this week started out really quiet because All Ireland Conference is going on so the President and Sister Donaldson are gone there until tomorrow.  I actually drove them to the airport on Monday which was nice to get out of the office during the day and go for a drive.  Also, the Winter’s who work in the office with Sister Dent and myself were gone on a little trip Monday and Tuesday so it was just the two of us.  No APs or Sister Leader Trainers either since they all got to go to Ireland.  I got so much work done it was crazy.  I got almost all of the 100’s of files that covered my desktop when I arrived sorted through and made folders and organized everything.  It feels so good to look at my computer now.

Also this week I got down to figuring out the phones.  It’s hard because I work with church employees on phones.  One man in London for the UK phones and another in Ireland for their phones.  Neither man does the same procedures and I didn’t have any clear instructions left on what to do about broken phones etc. so I’ve been calling and trying to get these two men to talk to me.  The London one has been upset with my predecessor from five years ago and has been really hard to work with but when I finally got to talk to him after many, many tries he was really curt with me and didn’t want to take the time to answer my questions.  But I told him I was new and really had no idea what to do and if he would just tell me what he expected I would be happy to conform to what he wanted.  That seemed to do the trick and he actually sent me two new phones to get me started with the worst of the phone issues.  I also made a spreadsheet so I can see what phone numbers are in use and where they are located.  I’m trying to find out what make of phone and the condition as well so I can make determinations as I get phones.  The President wants every missionary to have a phone which isn’t the case right now.  But he feels it isn’t safe with as much traveling they do alone at transfer time.  Our mission does not have iPads like all the other missions in Europe.  Well, finally on Thursday got in touch with the Ireland man (church employee, you would think they would be nicer), and he wouldn’t even speak to me.  He wouldn’t give me suggestions on what kind of phones or what kind of budget I should try to stay in.  He just said all he deals with are SIM cards and to talk to the president.  I have also tried talking with the Irish phone service people that we use but they won’t talk to me because I’m not on the approved list of who they can talk to.  I did text the President to see if he knew what I should do and he wrote an email to the Irish guy and told him he needs to work with me.  So we will see how that goes.  Ha ha.  It’s like having a job, not being on a mission at times.  Most of the time really.  But that’s okay.

On Friday we had a visitor come to the mission office.  Chloe DeMille and her mother.  Chloe was on a mission here and left the end of last year I believe.  She was a great missionary I’ve been told.  Anyway, she is from Cedar Hills and her mom runs with Stephanie Wolfley a few times a week.  Small world right?  Stephanie had actually told me her friends daughter had just gotten home from Scotland when I got my call.  Funny how those things work out.  Also, on Friday Sister Donaldson called from Ireland and asked me if I would do some grocery shopping for her!!  Yes!!  Another little jaunt from the office during the day.  I love it!!  Pretty sad when a trip to the grocery store is so exciting.  Also, Friday afternoon Elder Winter asked Sister Dent and I if we would like to take a bus up to Inverness and pick up a car that was in the shop and get it over to Dundee to some missionaries and then take their car back down to Edinburgh.  We said yes.  Of course we would.  I’ve never been to Inverness and I thought that it was going to be really neat!!

Well, today we got on the bus.  What a crazy bus ride.  We stopped at the bus stop in Perth and let some people off and some others on and the bus lady there got on and said there was a lady who was supposed to be dropped of in Abbeyshire or something like that and the bus driver forgot to stop.  Could we take her there on our way to Inverness.  So we went five minutes out of our way to take her to a bus stop about 30 minutes further down the road.  No big deal but I thought that was funny.  But to make it even crazier, a girl and boy on the bus walked up to the bus driver.  Since I was sitting on the front row I could hear them.  They were supposed to get off in Perth and didn’t realize we had already gone there, so they didn’t get off.  Is there something he can do for them.  He said he would figure something out.  So we are driving down through a cute little town (which I want to go back to, it looked really fun) called Pitlochry and there is a city bus coming towards us on this teeny narrow road and the bus driver slows way down and sticks his arm out the window to wave at the other bus.  So in the middle of this little road with cars behind both buses they stop and our driver asks the other if two people from our bus can get on his and go to Perth.  Then they hop off our bus, run over to the other and hop on.  Crazy.

Well, we finally got to Inverness a bit late after all that and we had a few things to give the missionaries that were waiting for us.  Then we had to walk to the car service place that had our car a few miles away.  When we got the car we opened the doors and, I’m not even kidding, the car reeked.  In the back seat was old packages of food, empty water bottles, radiator fluid container, a Japanese board game of some type (which they aren’t supposed to have), papers, bags, a crockpot, a hymn book and more junk than you can even believe.  What a mess.  It’s amazing how these missionaries take care of these cars.  I hope my kids did a better job than that.  We were hoping to find some great sites in Inverness but there really isn’t anything at all in town.  We walked down into town but it was dirty and not much to look at.  I know there are some really great things outside of Inverness including Loch Ness and “Nessie” but my companion didn’t want to go there, she’s been a few times.  I can go another time with my new companion.  There is a battlefield that is supposed to be a great place to go as well but we had to be back to Edinburgh because we weren’t sure what time we were supposed to meet the DeMille’s to let them in the mission home and possibly get dinner with them.  I wish we had figured that out before we left because when we got back we found out they didn’t need to get in the mission home until 8:30 so we could have done something.  Oh well.  Tomorrow we are going to drive the car to Dundee.  Maybe we will see something along the way there.  We are going to get up and go in the morning and attend church there as well.

On the drive home I saw a sign for ice cream so I said, I’m turning here.  We need something good to happen today.  So we drove down this incredibly narrow, windy road to a dairy farm and they had just closed.  So no ice cream.  Par for the day.  Oh well, that’s not why I’m here, right?  I’m here to be a missionary and not to be entertained.  Actually I guess we were entertained a few times today.  I didn’t get many pictures though.  But there are a few at the bottom here.  The fields were near the dairy farm.  I decided to pull off into a field so I could at least get a picture today.  So enjoy.