We hit a new
high for time away from the office lately.
One day we completely reorganized and cleaned up two out of three of our
storage units. Another day was spent
moving furniture and supplies from a senior couples’ apartment. Unloading it
mid afternoon in 90+ temps only took half an hour, since we saved going through
items they had boxed up for us, for a cooler morning job. It was still hot and sticky enough to make us
rethink summer moves: we will leave extra early on those mornings and try to
finish before the hottest part of the day.
We will get lots of help to speed things along and we will never do a
double move in one day. Lunches for the
crew will need to be packed and taken so we can finish faster than when we take
our helpers out to eat, but hey, we’re talking survival here!
Thursday we
wound up making two trips to Auberry to assess properties for a new senior
couple. Rentals are super scarce up
there this summer. No luck! We will have to build on what we learned to
find other possibilities and try again.
Tomorrow will be apartment visits and a side trip to sign a lease. It will be a long day, but the weather is a
little cooler just now and there is little physical labor involved.
Len has set up
men’s choir for our ward; they will sing the Sunday following Mothers’
Day. He also has arranged for men’s
choirs to sing at the three zone conferences during the week after Mothers’
Day. The last round was such a success
that it is great they can do it at least once more. There may be more singers because some
elders volunteered after hearing how well it went the first time.
Mission
vehicles have a small box called a Tiwi (rhymes with kiwi) attached to the
upper left corner of the windshield. All
drivers carry cards which they swipe as they get in and out of the car. If it is a successful swipe and the machine
is cooperating, a deep gravelly monotone voice pronounces, “Driver logged
in.” When the driver is done using the
car, he/she swipes and the voice says that the driver is logged out. Many missionaries despise the Tiwi. It keeps track of every infraction or
possible infraction. If someone goes
more than five miles over the speed limit, the voice says, “Check your
speed.” Then the driver has 6 seconds to
get the speed down before the infraction is recorded. If someone tries to fool the Tiwi and go
right back to speeding, it will be recorded.
When someone
goes over a speed bump or a railroad track or a pothole too fast, the message
is “Aggressive driving.” Sometimes the
circumstances lead to unfair accumulations in the aggressive driving category,
or at least the missionaries feel that happens.
When a missionary gets too many infractions, he/she is suspended from
driving for a period of time. Repeated
failures lead to being banned from driving for the remainder of the mission. The driving ban can affect how a missionary is
able to serve. Since the zone leaders
deliver mail, etc. to their zone members and help those who do not have cars,
at least one of them has to be able to drive and there sometimes have to be
changes because both companions have lost driving privileges. The Tiwi center of operations is out of state
so it is independent of any local influence or favoritism.
Senior
missionaries usually drive their own cars, but some of us drive the mission pickup
truck so we have experiences with Tiwi too.
We’re not sure we’d lose driving privileges for bad reports, but it would
seem that we should have the experience and patience to avoid those
anyway. Len can do a very creditable
imitation of “Check your speed” and “Aggressive driving”. (Sometimes we say that to each other when driving
our own car, and backseat driving becomes joking.) We have felt the irritation of getting busted
for something that was due to the road conditions instead of bad driving. Since we found out that one has six seconds
to comply with “Check your speed” we can be more philosophical if we hear that
message before actually passing a sign announcing the lowered speed limit. As with Siri, we sometimes find ourselves
talking to Tiwi in a less than friendly tone.
It is frustrating, for example, when he won’t respond to repeated
attempts to log in.
One departing
senior missionary told how he worried about his mission because of his
allergies, including a terrible allergy to cats. During his career as a school principal/superintendent,
his eyes would swell shut, along with other symptoms, if a child simply carried
a show and tell kitten down the hall adjacent to his office. Hearing that, I finally understood the
omnipresent redness around his eyes. He
then told that when visiting people in their Oakhurst, CA homes as MLS
missionaries (Member & Leader Support) they encountered many cats, but he
never experienced his allergic reactions.
Have a wonderful week,
Len and Kit
