A few thoughts at halftime
So we will have been in Scotland for nine months this coming Wednesday. Our mission actually started on January 1st when we presented ourselves at the Provo MTC, so we reached our halfway mark at the end of September.
This seems a good time to write about some of the things that have been joyful for us, some of the things that have been hard, and some of the things we hope to accomplish.
1. Homesickness. I (Louise) am generally a happy soul, but I get miserably depressed every time I move. It takes a little while to put down roots, and then I am just fine again. I also get homesick when we are on holiday, btw. I was very much aware of this and hoped this depression would not be part of the mission experience, and for the first couple of weeks I thought we would get away with it this time. There was so much to learn and do, one would think there was no time to be miserable, but I have a special talent--I found the time! I think this was all exacerbated by the constant darkness and certainly things improved when spring arrived. Richard was also homesick for a time, but did not ask for much sympathy. We both just smiled and said nice things at the office. We still miss home and family, and really enjoy our opportunities to chat with children and grandchildren. We love receiving mail, especially photographs, which we pass around the office. Now winter is rapidly approaching and we hope all will be well. For a while last winter it was a mystery to us why anyone would live in Scotland who could possibly avoid it, but then spring came and we understood.
2. Working in an office. I (Richard) had an office, but was never a full-time office worker. Louise has never worked in an office environment. The work is not difficult but is never-ending and frequently repetitive. And you need to sit down most of the day, which is truly weird and totally unhealthy. We both have pretty comfortable chairs, fortunately. I (Louise) find being the phone-answering person particularly frustrating as no matter what I am doing I get interrupted. On the other hand, I get to have a brief chat with every missionary who calls in, and have made friends with many of them through these brief conversations. We are finding more and more ways that the office work can be streamlined and are working on diminishing the repetitive part of the workload for everybody. This is a slow process, but we think by the end of our mission we should have an office with considerably less for the people to do, provided that the missionaries are willing to embrace automated solutions. Certainly neither of us would have chosen to work in the office, but we are doing our best. Richard had never worked with accounting finances before, but does an excellent job, though between handling finances and the mission's cars he is overloaded. Whenever I get tired of what I am doing I sneak into his office and grab some of his finance work, as I find working with numbers very relaxing, almost as good as a holiday. This saves him several hours each week, but I am also aware that the job I most often grab is one he quite enjoys when he has time to do it.
3. Health issues. We have both been pretty healthy up to date and hope we will stay that way. Certainly we cannot complain about our diet. Fruits and vegetables are high quality and inexpensive compared with the US, and fish is plentiful and relatively inexpensive. We went a little mad on some less healthy food items when we first arrived here, but have settled into a much healthier diet. It is a little horrifying to realize just how unhealthily young adults eat. We take young missionaries out to dinner from time to time, and they like to eat and drink pretty much the same sort of junk as we ate and drank at that age. I (Richard) remember taking an elder to a restaurant, who expressed appreciation, since, he said, his diet had been quite unhealthy recently. We got to the buffet and I invite him to stock up on vegetables and proteins, and he proceeded to fill his plate (twice) with carbohydrates. Oh well, I used to do the same thing and used to burn off the calories too.
One particular challenge for us is not having time to exercise the way we should. For me (Louise), I have managed to keep my osteoporosis under control the past few years by dint of careful and consistent weight bearing exercise, in addition to keeping myself nicely fit, despite arthritis, doing water aerobics. Now, with the long hours sitting in a chair, there is time and energy for very little exercise. We have a swimming pool near us, but it is not open for public use at the hours we are free. We tried getting up at 5:15 each morning so I could go walking and Richard could run, but that gave us a sleep deficit. Still, we are doing our best to get what exercise we can and are looking forward to getting back to taking better care of our health. Richard is more willing than I am to go out in icy rain in the dark, but I do try to go walking whenever possible.
4. Our ward. We attend a different ward from the rest of the office staff. They all attend Edinburgh Ward, with its chapel right next to the mission office. We are assigned to attend Dalkeith, about half an hour's drive away from the office and from our flat. We love the Dalkeith ward. It is smallish and the active members all tend to be overworked by Utah standards, but the joy of the gospel shines through. The same spirit which we feel in our beloved Oak Hills 2, is to be found at Dalkeith as well. We miss Oak Hills 2, and I suspect we will miss Dalkeith when we leave here. We are not supposed to have callings in the ward, but we are allowed to help out, and we do have plenty of opportunities to help out, most of them in Primary. We were teaching for a little while, but now we do sharing time once a month, and Primary music. I would like to help more than we do, but meantime enjoy going to church each Sunday.
5. Missionary work We love to wear our missionary name-tags, and know that we represent the Lord and the church. For years we have taken the sacrament, indicating that we are willing to "take [the Savior's] name upon us", and now we get to do that literally. We do believe that the Lord wants us here, at this time and in this place. That belief does not instantly make everything easy, but it does help us through rough patches.
6. The Scots. We love them to bits. We are glad, however, that we are supposed to avoid politics. Staying uninvolved can be hard, in this environment where all the natives, live, eat and breathe politics, whether modern-day or leftover from 700 years ago, but getting involved would be even harder Tartan, on the other hand, is up for grabs. It is a rare day in which Richard wears a non-tartan tie, and almost all of them reflect one of his or my ancestral lines. We picked and chose the ones we found most attractive.
7. The Weather. On a dry day, it only rains a little. On a calm day, the wind blows softly. On a warm day, you can get away with wearing a light jacket. During the summer heat wave, however, one did not even need a sweater! True Scots were suffering, truly suffering from the outrageous heat, which went up to 78 deg F in Edinburgh one day.
8. Sharing the gospel. We have limited opportunities in the office. We sustain and encourage the young missionaries. We try to represent the Church in our many, many phone conversations I (Richard) get to talk to a lot of people about bills, and strive (mostly successfully) to keep my cool and be friendly, even when they are asking us for money they are not entitled to. Generally friendliness and politeness help a lot, actually. Fun fact; one particularly obnoxious utility company has outsourced their telephone support to a call center in a poor neighborhood in Cape Town, South Africa--which has a very distinctive accent, so I always discuss the weather, environment and beautiful SA scenery whenever I call them.
We still try to engage people in gospel conversations whenever we are out of the office. Always friendly, always pleasant, hopefully planting seeds, but so far limited direct mission success.
In Summary. We are loving our mission. We testify that the the work is inspired and that we are where the Lord wants us to be and believe and plan to do much good here. We continue on in faith.
This seems a good time to write about some of the things that have been joyful for us, some of the things that have been hard, and some of the things we hope to accomplish.
1. Homesickness. I (Louise) am generally a happy soul, but I get miserably depressed every time I move. It takes a little while to put down roots, and then I am just fine again. I also get homesick when we are on holiday, btw. I was very much aware of this and hoped this depression would not be part of the mission experience, and for the first couple of weeks I thought we would get away with it this time. There was so much to learn and do, one would think there was no time to be miserable, but I have a special talent--I found the time! I think this was all exacerbated by the constant darkness and certainly things improved when spring arrived. Richard was also homesick for a time, but did not ask for much sympathy. We both just smiled and said nice things at the office. We still miss home and family, and really enjoy our opportunities to chat with children and grandchildren. We love receiving mail, especially photographs, which we pass around the office. Now winter is rapidly approaching and we hope all will be well. For a while last winter it was a mystery to us why anyone would live in Scotland who could possibly avoid it, but then spring came and we understood.
2. Working in an office. I (Richard) had an office, but was never a full-time office worker. Louise has never worked in an office environment. The work is not difficult but is never-ending and frequently repetitive. And you need to sit down most of the day, which is truly weird and totally unhealthy. We both have pretty comfortable chairs, fortunately. I (Louise) find being the phone-answering person particularly frustrating as no matter what I am doing I get interrupted. On the other hand, I get to have a brief chat with every missionary who calls in, and have made friends with many of them through these brief conversations. We are finding more and more ways that the office work can be streamlined and are working on diminishing the repetitive part of the workload for everybody. This is a slow process, but we think by the end of our mission we should have an office with considerably less for the people to do, provided that the missionaries are willing to embrace automated solutions. Certainly neither of us would have chosen to work in the office, but we are doing our best. Richard had never worked with accounting finances before, but does an excellent job, though between handling finances and the mission's cars he is overloaded. Whenever I get tired of what I am doing I sneak into his office and grab some of his finance work, as I find working with numbers very relaxing, almost as good as a holiday. This saves him several hours each week, but I am also aware that the job I most often grab is one he quite enjoys when he has time to do it.
3. Health issues. We have both been pretty healthy up to date and hope we will stay that way. Certainly we cannot complain about our diet. Fruits and vegetables are high quality and inexpensive compared with the US, and fish is plentiful and relatively inexpensive. We went a little mad on some less healthy food items when we first arrived here, but have settled into a much healthier diet. It is a little horrifying to realize just how unhealthily young adults eat. We take young missionaries out to dinner from time to time, and they like to eat and drink pretty much the same sort of junk as we ate and drank at that age. I (Richard) remember taking an elder to a restaurant, who expressed appreciation, since, he said, his diet had been quite unhealthy recently. We got to the buffet and I invite him to stock up on vegetables and proteins, and he proceeded to fill his plate (twice) with carbohydrates. Oh well, I used to do the same thing and used to burn off the calories too.
One particular challenge for us is not having time to exercise the way we should. For me (Louise), I have managed to keep my osteoporosis under control the past few years by dint of careful and consistent weight bearing exercise, in addition to keeping myself nicely fit, despite arthritis, doing water aerobics. Now, with the long hours sitting in a chair, there is time and energy for very little exercise. We have a swimming pool near us, but it is not open for public use at the hours we are free. We tried getting up at 5:15 each morning so I could go walking and Richard could run, but that gave us a sleep deficit. Still, we are doing our best to get what exercise we can and are looking forward to getting back to taking better care of our health. Richard is more willing than I am to go out in icy rain in the dark, but I do try to go walking whenever possible.
4. Our ward. We attend a different ward from the rest of the office staff. They all attend Edinburgh Ward, with its chapel right next to the mission office. We are assigned to attend Dalkeith, about half an hour's drive away from the office and from our flat. We love the Dalkeith ward. It is smallish and the active members all tend to be overworked by Utah standards, but the joy of the gospel shines through. The same spirit which we feel in our beloved Oak Hills 2, is to be found at Dalkeith as well. We miss Oak Hills 2, and I suspect we will miss Dalkeith when we leave here. We are not supposed to have callings in the ward, but we are allowed to help out, and we do have plenty of opportunities to help out, most of them in Primary. We were teaching for a little while, but now we do sharing time once a month, and Primary music. I would like to help more than we do, but meantime enjoy going to church each Sunday.
5. Missionary work We love to wear our missionary name-tags, and know that we represent the Lord and the church. For years we have taken the sacrament, indicating that we are willing to "take [the Savior's] name upon us", and now we get to do that literally. We do believe that the Lord wants us here, at this time and in this place. That belief does not instantly make everything easy, but it does help us through rough patches.
6. The Scots. We love them to bits. We are glad, however, that we are supposed to avoid politics. Staying uninvolved can be hard, in this environment where all the natives, live, eat and breathe politics, whether modern-day or leftover from 700 years ago, but getting involved would be even harder Tartan, on the other hand, is up for grabs. It is a rare day in which Richard wears a non-tartan tie, and almost all of them reflect one of his or my ancestral lines. We picked and chose the ones we found most attractive.
7. The Weather. On a dry day, it only rains a little. On a calm day, the wind blows softly. On a warm day, you can get away with wearing a light jacket. During the summer heat wave, however, one did not even need a sweater! True Scots were suffering, truly suffering from the outrageous heat, which went up to 78 deg F in Edinburgh one day.
8. Sharing the gospel. We have limited opportunities in the office. We sustain and encourage the young missionaries. We try to represent the Church in our many, many phone conversations I (Richard) get to talk to a lot of people about bills, and strive (mostly successfully) to keep my cool and be friendly, even when they are asking us for money they are not entitled to. Generally friendliness and politeness help a lot, actually. Fun fact; one particularly obnoxious utility company has outsourced their telephone support to a call center in a poor neighborhood in Cape Town, South Africa--which has a very distinctive accent, so I always discuss the weather, environment and beautiful SA scenery whenever I call them.
We still try to engage people in gospel conversations whenever we are out of the office. Always friendly, always pleasant, hopefully planting seeds, but so far limited direct mission success.
In Summary. We are loving our mission. We testify that the the work is inspired and that we are where the Lord wants us to be and believe and plan to do much good here. We continue on in faith.
You are blooming where planted, even where sunshine seems minimal. Thank you for always sharing inspirational feelings and experiences. I really enjoy reading your newsletters!
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