THANKSGIVING TURKEY, HAM & VENISON (ALMOST)

This last week has been busy with the first five of over a dozen new cars having come in, the Thanksgiving-day holiday, another ER visit, and our first snow of the year.  According to State Farm, insurance claims for collisions with deer rise significantly in the fall when deer are mating, with November having the highest claim frequency. And deer tend to be most active around dawn and dusk, particularly between 6-9 p.m.  With our over 90-car fleet, statistically, it should come as no surprise that we would have such an accident. Wednesday, shortly after 6 p.m., I (Russell) got a call from two of our young sister missionaries. They were on a quiet country two-lane highway, saw the deer off to the side of the road, slowed down and watched it going away from the road; only to then have it turn back around and run into the oncoming light of their car’s headlights.  The sisters said they were okay, and that the car wasn’t really hurt too bad.  I asked if they had “bagged” their deer. To which they responded that they couldn’t find it or even any blood.  I think all three of us were pleased that the deer survived, but it did mean that we wouldn’t be having venison for Thanksgiving dinner.

 

On Thanksgiving Day, we had a fabulous dinner with most (19 of 25) of the senior missionaries.  One benefit of having lots of senior sisters is that they can cook well, really well!  We had eight kinds of pies. Eileen had been worried about the young missionaries cooking their own turkeys and thought she might be spending Thanksgiving evening dealing with cases of food poisoning.  We did have a few such cases, but it wasn’t from the missionaries’ cooking.  I chalk that up as a win.

 

Friday afternoon/evening, Eileen found herself back at an ER not far from Independence with two young missionaries.  Eileen came home that night frustrated, after taking the missionaries back to their apartment (they got there via ambulance).  She felt that the situation could have been easily avoidable.The next morning Eileen was up early, making her medical notes about the past night’s ER visit in the Church’s Missionary Medical computer system.  Around the time she finished, another young missionary called her.  He was just reporting in following some medical challenges he had recently experienced.   He told Eileen that he was doing significantly better, which given the circumstances was pretty miraculous.  After the call, I could tell Eileen was still frustrated over the events of the previous evening.  I knew she was justified in her feelings, but also recognized her being upset wasn’t doing her or anyone else any good.  The thought came to me to ask her to focus on two blessings.  The first blessing being that one month earlier, Eileen had recorded in her Missionary Medical notes regarding the applicable missionary from the night before, that this very issue was likely to occur if corrective action by the missionary was not taken. The second blessing being the call she had just received from the young elder.   Both the timing of the call and the fact that he did report in (Eileen generally has to chase the missionaries down to follow up with them) was unusual.  Both events were blessings, easy to overlook, but blessings, tender mercies, nonetheless. My guess is that I often miss God’s attempts to bless/help me during my difficult times because I am too focused on my problem of the moment.

Two of our zone leaders, Elder Perry and Elder Smith.  Elder Perry cut his finger pretty badly on Thanksgiving. It wouldn't stop bleeding and the urgent cares were closed. We came up with our creative way to bandage it. He told me to say that his companion threw an exacto knife at him and he didn't catch it correctly and it cut him. In reality he was cutting his fishing line and cut his finger in addition.

                                                     Senior missionary Thanksgiving dinner.

                                                        The options were plentiful

We had Elder Fackrell and Elder Dodd over to our home last week. I sure was impressed with them both.

The first snowstorm of the year. The 27 degree weather made us really miss our garage.

We went on a shopping spree for a young missionary who didn't come to the mission field with the clothing he needed. The Youngs joined us. It was a very nice outing and he seemed very appreciative. 

After a very frustrating evening the previous night in the ER Russell was trying to cheer me up. We went and bought a replacement computer for the one I have been using which is on it's last leg. We found this restaurant right around the corner. This restaurant was one of Russell's favorite in Houston where he spent a good part of his career. Chuy's is gaudy, loud and has delicious food. We were both surprised to find it, and my spirits were definitely lifted.

This was a humongous and delicious piece of tres leche cake we split for two different meals. 

We went to pick up  5 new vehicles for our mission. I (Eileen) was really impressed with some of the gadgets and technology in the car. Since I sold my car before this mission and it was a 2007, I haven't seen some of the cool things cars can do now. Russell's car is a 2013. The missionaries are driving much newer cars than all of the senior missionaries.  It takes Russell about a half hour to transfer the driver monitoring device from an old to new car, but that is still a long time when temperature is close to freezing.

THREE MONTHS IN MISSOURI

Eileen reminded me that it was three months ago today that we arrived here. While we had some very busy times in Indonesia and Germany, those occasions usually involved traveling to other places within the mission. Here the work just comes to us via our phones with missionaries calling us needing our help or reassurance.  Our predecessors told us it would be 24/7, but in truth it rarely starts before 6:30 a.m. or extends after 10:30 p.m.  Thank goodness the missionaries have to sleep!

In the past three months we have had five automobile accidents, the front ends of our cars tagging the other vehicles four out of five times.  The most recent altercation took place early Tuesday morning (see picture below).  After getting the car towed to the shop, I followed up with the missionary driver to get some additional information.  The sister asked me, “Do you think we can have our car back by Thursday for transfers?”

 

For the past two weeks, Eileen has been reviewing the files of the 23 missionaries that came in on Friday.  A number of them have medical issues that she followed up on by calling the parents to learn more about them.  A couple of the missionaries’ medical issues sounded quite challenging, enough so that calls were made to Missionary Medical to see if perhaps a mistake had been made.  Missionary Medical responded by agreeing with Eileen’s concerns.  We have had challenges with Missionary Medical over the last few months when they have looked at issues purely on a remote, emotionally detached basis, never seeing the missionary or taking into account the opinion of the missionaries’ presiding priesthood leader.

 

On Friday afternoon we picked up the new missionaries from the airport and Eileen interviewed each of them, discussing any medical needs or concerns.  It was interesting to me to see the change in Eileen after meeting the individual missionaries.  The missionaries went from being names on a piece of paper to her fellow missionary and someone for whom she had assumed responsibility; some combination of primary care nurse and mom (Grandma?) had just kicked in.  I can now understand better the role and perspective of Missionary Medical, but if I am ever in need of real medical help, I hope the mission nurse and mission president are the ones calling the shots. 

The accident that occurred earlier this week quite early in the morning. The car had 1400 miles on it. 

This little creature was in our office parking lot one evening. Russell and the grandkids think it is a fox.

President Sommerfeldt at transfers talking with the groups of missionaries before they saw who their next companion would be. 

    We had 23 incoming missionaries. They had all gotten up that morning at the MTC at 2:45 a.m. and were pretty tired.

                                         Some of the new missionaries with their newly assigned trainers.

                I love these missionaries-they just haven't mastered the art of making a heart very well yet. 
 

Forty turkeys were distributed on Thursday to the missionaries. Each zone will be cooking three turkeys for their zone. The nurse in me is concerned that Thanksgiving evening might be a very busy night with potential food poisoning. I typed up instructions on how to thaw and cook a turkey, with strict instructions on how long it could be out before being thrown away. The other senior missionaries thought it was pretty funny when they read my instructions about washing the turkey, I  included that it should be washed with water only, no soap!  

The past week this lady drove her car into the bushes at the church, came out of the car with nothing but a robe on and her eyes covered with an eye mask.  She did her business on the lawn and then proceeded to drive a half mile up the road driving backwards at about 50 mph.  I called the police twice but they never came.

On Friday we went to the old courthouse. It was built in 1827.  We had a very interesting hour learning of the history of this building and also Independence. 

THE REST OF THE STORY

Recently, during a conversation with Sister Sommerfeldt, Eileen was reporting on a number of health challenges that she was dealing with the young missionaries on. After listening for a while to the long list of issues, Sister Sommerfeldt noted something that Eileen and I often forget.  She said the problem with our roles is that we usually only get to see the problems of the missionaries and that we rarely are in a position to see all the good things that are transpiring in the mission.  We don’t see very many of the good things that are taking place in the mission among the 80-90 percent of the missionaries that don’t have significant medical or driving issues.   

 

But occasionally we do see things that bring a smile to our faces, two situations come immediately to mind.  In mid-September, we found ourselves at a hospital one evening with a young sister missionary.  The recommendation from Missionary Medical in SLC and our Area Medical Advisor was that the sister should return home.  President Sommerfeldt and Eileen felt that perhaps there was more to the story and that trying to resolve the underlying problem here was the right approach.  Well, now it is two months later.  The underlying problem seems to have been resolved simply by the young sister taking an inexpensive over-the-counter medicine.  Had the sister never come on the mission and ended up in the emergency room, she probably could have gone on for years suffering with a health problem that once properly diagnosed was easy to treat.

 

The second situation involves the sister who was bit by a dog when she and her companion were trying to deliver a requested Book of Mormon.  About a month has gone by since then.  The sister has had the prescribed rabies shots, and her arm is healing from the bites.  Eileen was talking to the sister the other night and learned that they are now teaching the man to whom they were taking the Book of Mormon (and who owned the dog).  They haven’t gone back to the house; they meet and teach in a nearby park and the dog's fate, which was decided by a judge two weeks ago is never discussed.

 

The missionaries in these two situations mean a lot to Eileen and me, as we have seen more of the story with them than we usually do.  My guess is that there are many such situations going on all the time, we just don’t see them.  There was a radio program years ago by Paul Harvey titled, The Rest of the Story.  Paul Harvey would tell a story, take a commercial break, and then come back and tell an interesting additional fact or two that made the story far more interesting.  I realize I need to spend more time trying to get to know the missionaries better, to see them more than as just someone suffering a medical issue or a driver of one of the mission cars.

Our Elder getting casted for a broken radius and ulna. I was grateful he didn't need surgery.  Maybe there should be a rule that missionaries can not play capture the flag in the dark with glow in the dark flags!

Eileen went with our missionary to concussion physical therapy.  The physical therapist wanted him to do visual exercises to the tick of a metronome using a metronome app. Since missionaries are limited on what kind of apps they can use, Eileen bought the missionary an actual metronome on Amazon and Russell hand delivered it to him. 

We found this garlic press in our kitchen and didn't need it. Our friends from the MTC who are serving in Kenya had told us that their predecessors asked them to bring a garlic press which they thought was ridiculous. We were going to mail this one to them, but were shocked to find out that the minimal shipping would be over $200.  They will have to settle for a photo instead. 

WHEN TWO OUT OF THREE IS BAD

Shortly after we arrived in our Centerville home a week ago Thursday evening, Eileen got a call regarding a serious medical issue with one of the missionaries.  That call reminded me that we can run (over a thousand miles), but we cannot hide.  The call also was an early start to the most difficult week, from a medical perspective, we have had so far on our mission.

 

You can generally count on Monday, the young missionaries preparation day (day off), to start off being relatively quiet of both medical and vehicle issues.  No one is going to try and go to the doctor or get the oil changed in their car when they could be doing fun things with other missionaries.  But as the day goes on and the consequences of those “fun” activities transpire, Mondays turn out to be the day of the week when most accidents occur.  Eileen tells the missionaries that things are serious if one or more of the three “B’s” are present, those being: bleeding; broken bones; and not breathing.  We had two of the three on Monday.  Both bones of an elder’s left arm were the casualty of a flag football game.  Another elder’s surprise head butting of an automatically opening church building’s heavy metal door led to bleeding and a concussion.

 

Earlier this week we had another missionary who had to go home suddenly due to a medical issue.  It was heart breaking to watch, being helpless to relieve the missionary’s suffering.  There are times in life when things seem so unfair, so unjust.  After serving diligently, to the best of one’s ability, to need to be accompanied home at the end of your mission is hard for even the most faithful.  It was an honor to take this young sister to the airport, and then to watch her as she met her father who had flown in to take her home.  As her father came through the doors where we were waiting for him, he opened his arms and his daughter ran to him.  Eileen commented to me, perhaps that is what it will be like when we pass from this life and meet our Father in Heaven again.  

 

The missionaries' mental health issues in this mission have been hard on Eileen, and President and Sister Sommerfeldt.  We are blessed to have a medical doctor and a therapist, both members of the Church, close who can help with the missionaries.  Eileen is great with physical medical issues, but emotional issues are something we have dealt with a bit in our family but never in her professional nursing life.  For the last 9-10 days, we have had the blessing of assistance from a retired psychiatrist, Dr. Anderson.  Brother Anderson has been away from counseling missionaries for a while as he has had some serious heath issues himself.  Eileen was hesitant to burden him too much with our missionaries’ challenges, to which he said something to the effect of, “ I’ll let you know if it gets too heavy for me. I figure God doesn’t need a psychiatrist on the other side, so maybe He will let me stay here so I could help the missionaries.”  I know that he will be of great value to the young missionaries he works with in our mission, and I also know his assistance is a great relief to Eileen.  He is an answer to my prayers and those of many others,

The first frost of our mission on November 1st. It certainly gets cold here with the humidity.

We received this note from a lovely, kind, thoughtful missionary.  Definitely a keeper memory from our mission.

It was a beautiful reunion between this missionary and her father. I couldn't help but think that it was similar to what we might feel when we go  to the other side of the veil and our loving Heavenly Father or older brother Jesus greet us with a tender embrace.

Our missionaries from the Paola district, Russell & I, and Sister Hunsaker having lunch together. There were two other elders in the district but one had spent the night before throwing up.  Russell went to the store and bought him several bottles of Gatorade and Sprite.

Smothered homemade potato chips with BBQ pork, cheese, guacamole and pico, fried pickles and sweet potato tots accompanied our BBQ sandwiches. Definitely not for those on a diet.