The Quirks of the Trade

I haven't blogged lately because I haven't found much to blog about. We've kind of fallen into a routine and haven't squirmed out of it. This weekend we stayed home the entire weekend except to attend church and a baptism. We had planned to go to a big quilt show in Essex Junction and do a couple of tourist things this Saturday, but instead we get to go to Boston to attend the temple and, perhaps, do a couple of tourist things there. Yeah! Yeah!

I was going to put a picture of Joseph Smith to set the theme of my blog, but when I put his name in Images some pictures showed up that sickened and saddened me. I was thinking about some of the quirky, little things that have happened in our lives because we're missionaries. The reason I was going to put Joseph Smith is because he taught the principle of self-reliance when he said I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves. On a mission, you really govern yourselves.

We're often perplexed as to what to do because we are missionaries. The records preservation only fills our workaday hours most of the time. Sometimes we have a little work that we do at home, but mostly not. We're supposed to be at the beck and call of the ward bishop, but he hasn't called on us much. The fulltime missionaries have only called on us during the time we're at the Repository or when we're 40 miles away. I find lots of solace in my sewing, but Garth (Ooops, Elder Gunter) doesn't have much to do. It's not like there's grandkids nearby, yard work to do, or handyman stuff. Any poor soul who wanders into the room where we work is engaged in a long conversation whether they like it or not!

People do the funniest things to see what our badges say. Since we represent the Utah Genealogical Society, we wear white badges which say Family Search when we're working and black badges other times. We've had several conversations with people about our work, but most don't know there's records to be preserved in Middlesex or they don't really know what genealogy is. The people at the Repository are much more versed in records preservation, but can't believe that we would volunteer to do it let alone move across the country. We're the little church mice in the corner there.

And we find that being a missionary means mission rules some of which apply to us and some don't. We have our director who is in Quebec whom we've seen once. He's coming tomorrow for a couple of hours. We only hear from him once in awhile. Our mission president is in Manchester, NH, and he's only responsible for us ecclesiastically. For those of you who know, he's the first cousin to several Royalites--the Allreds and Andersons. He basically tells us to read our handbook. If we followed our handbook, we'd call each other Elder and Sister instead of by our first names. Hmmm. Just me remembering to call him Elder when I'm talking about him to my contemporaries is a feat.

Being a missionary means we're living in an apartment which would be a blog in and of itself. Our apartment is quite nice really thanks to our kids and the missionaries oohed and ahhed about it when they came to dinner, but, for us, it's a little confining. We're not used to neighbors who bang on the wall when you're pounding something at six in the afternoon. We're not used to having the landlord write messages like: Spring has arrived in Vermont. The heat is turned off. Run your windows appropriately. What does that mean? And the laundry--now there's a tale!

It's an interesting life and very different for us. Sometimes we're very lonely especially when we don't hear from anybody. We're adjusting to it, though, and finding new challenges each day. The two big topics of conversation here are the weather and the roads. Neither are fantastic. Have a nice day everyone! Pray for us and pray we have summer before September.