A long week and its end
The pace of life and our mission appears to have increased. One would think that with our vast (ahem) experience in the office, we would be on top of everything by now, well organized and generally imperturbable. It hasn't been like that. We seem to be pushing ourselves harder and harder, and are truly grateful for the remarkably good health with which we have been blessed. We are working our heads off, but are still managing to enjoy ourselves, mostly.
With the last transfer, we found ourselves working a twelve- day week. Our Saturday P-Day evaporated into a working day, and we came into the office straight from our Ward responsibilities on the Sunday. Richard worked in the office while I yoyoed between the office and helping to prepare a farewell dinner for the departing missionaries. It was all the Lord's work we were doing, but it still felt a little weird doing office work on a Sunday.
The biggest trigger for all this extra work was (wait for it) Introducing Smartphones to the Mission. And in case you think the process would be, "mission, here are some smart phones; smartphones, may I introduce the missionaries?" it was not like that at all. We kicked it off at the start of April. "Kicked" is a good verb. It conveys the sudden sense of acceleration from a stationary position to rapidly moving flight, with some bruising and bouncing. The mission president was anxious to get going as soon as possible so, in less than a week, we teleconferenced with the experts in SLC, bought 28 phones (thank you Amazon Prime!), told the mission leadership missionaries to read the prep materials, held an afternoon conference on how to use them for mission work and handed the phones out. I (Richard) spent the afternoon frantically unboxing the phones with two assistants, recording all the vital statistics, applying screen protectors and cases and installing basic software on all 28 phones, then allocating them to specific missionaries and then creating a few policy documents and a brief presentation for the end of the meeting, and finally handing them out. The missionaries will buy their own phones and then these initial ones will come back to the office and be loaned to a few missionaries who are going home soon or are unable to buy a phone for any reason.
The missionaries are excited of course, and, we are pleased to note, are in fact using the phones to do missionary work in new and more effective ways, and not to fiddle with their new electronic devices--although some of that does happen. In the meanwhile I am fielding many calls from families along the lines of "Which phone should I buy?", "Can they use this old phone I've got lying around?" "Where should it be delivered?" and of course, "Will my son/daughter be ok using a phone on mission or will it be bad for them?" The answer to all these questions and many more is "Please read the letter you were sent", but it is understandable that people are concerned so we patiently answer many, many emails and try to be helpful. Thankfully so far all the parents except one obeyed the instruction to make sure their missionary's name was on the package; the exception addressed it to me at the office, however the mother's name appeared on the packaging, so we were able to solve that puzzle.
Boxes of phones stack up around the mission office (up to 30 at one time) and then are shipped out to zone conferences and handed out to missionaries. Technical questions get asked and answers are invented, researched or experiments are done. We are still in the throes of this but some things are getting better. Yesterday Louise was chatting to a missionary who needed to send an email and they mentioned they would get to the chapel computer to do that soon and she said, "But don't you have a smartphone now?" "Oh, Oh yes! I'll send it right away."
Phones will not solve all our problems in the mission. In fact I am reminded of a quote commonly found in graduate student labs,
"We have not answered all our questions,
And we have the same result with phones. We traded one set of problems for a different set, but it seems clear that the new set will enable us to do more and better missionary work, and to take care of mission and missionary needs better--so an overall win.
Anyway all this excitement, combined with a major transfer, meant that many routine office jobs got pushed into corners and postponed so we had a bunch of catching up to do--thus the 12-day week.
By the time our next P-day arrived, we needed a break. There was a whole bunch of mail for missionaries in the Paisley Zone, so we decided to deliver it to the zone leaders and then go explore one of the west coast beaches. We very sensibly asked one of the zone leaders for his opinion and he suggested Greenock. Greenock is actually at the mouth of the Clyde river, (Inverclyde, in Scottish) and is beautiful. It was at Greenock that we discovered a novel way to make friends with all the local dogs, and indirectly, their owners. We popped into a supermarket and bought some wonderful wholewheat bread rolls, and some cold meat to put on them. Then we drove to a lovely beach, and wandered along the shore, munching on our sandwiches. Every dog on the beach came bounding over, eager to make our acquaintance and to become our new best friend. They were trailed by their truly apologetic owners. They could not understand what had got into their normally well-behaved dogs!
As for the beauties of Greenock, and Gourock, we will let the pictures speak for themselves.
This is Ginger, one of Andy Scott's creations. Andy Scott specializes in horse sculptures made from steel. He sees them not as whimsical or beautiful beasts, but as symbols of power, and specifically mentions them as the origin of the term horse-power. James Watt was born in Greenock, near where this statue stands today and is world famous for his engineering prowess.
Ginger the horse was also a real horse, much loved and cared for.
Other Andy Scott creations include the Kelpies, which we have mentioned elsewhere in these chronicles.
With the last transfer, we found ourselves working a twelve- day week. Our Saturday P-Day evaporated into a working day, and we came into the office straight from our Ward responsibilities on the Sunday. Richard worked in the office while I yoyoed between the office and helping to prepare a farewell dinner for the departing missionaries. It was all the Lord's work we were doing, but it still felt a little weird doing office work on a Sunday.
The biggest trigger for all this extra work was (wait for it) Introducing Smartphones to the Mission. And in case you think the process would be, "mission, here are some smart phones; smartphones, may I introduce the missionaries?" it was not like that at all. We kicked it off at the start of April. "Kicked" is a good verb. It conveys the sudden sense of acceleration from a stationary position to rapidly moving flight, with some bruising and bouncing. The mission president was anxious to get going as soon as possible so, in less than a week, we teleconferenced with the experts in SLC, bought 28 phones (thank you Amazon Prime!), told the mission leadership missionaries to read the prep materials, held an afternoon conference on how to use them for mission work and handed the phones out. I (Richard) spent the afternoon frantically unboxing the phones with two assistants, recording all the vital statistics, applying screen protectors and cases and installing basic software on all 28 phones, then allocating them to specific missionaries and then creating a few policy documents and a brief presentation for the end of the meeting, and finally handing them out. The missionaries will buy their own phones and then these initial ones will come back to the office and be loaned to a few missionaries who are going home soon or are unable to buy a phone for any reason.
The missionaries are excited of course, and, we are pleased to note, are in fact using the phones to do missionary work in new and more effective ways, and not to fiddle with their new electronic devices--although some of that does happen. In the meanwhile I am fielding many calls from families along the lines of "Which phone should I buy?", "Can they use this old phone I've got lying around?" "Where should it be delivered?" and of course, "Will my son/daughter be ok using a phone on mission or will it be bad for them?" The answer to all these questions and many more is "Please read the letter you were sent", but it is understandable that people are concerned so we patiently answer many, many emails and try to be helpful. Thankfully so far all the parents except one obeyed the instruction to make sure their missionary's name was on the package; the exception addressed it to me at the office, however the mother's name appeared on the packaging, so we were able to solve that puzzle.
Boxes of phones stack up around the mission office (up to 30 at one time) and then are shipped out to zone conferences and handed out to missionaries. Technical questions get asked and answers are invented, researched or experiments are done. We are still in the throes of this but some things are getting better. Yesterday Louise was chatting to a missionary who needed to send an email and they mentioned they would get to the chapel computer to do that soon and she said, "But don't you have a smartphone now?" "Oh, Oh yes! I'll send it right away."
Phones will not solve all our problems in the mission. In fact I am reminded of a quote commonly found in graduate student labs,
"We have not answered all our questions,
in fact we have not completely answered any of them,
but we feel confused on a much deeper level
about much more important problems"
And we have the same result with phones. We traded one set of problems for a different set, but it seems clear that the new set will enable us to do more and better missionary work, and to take care of mission and missionary needs better--so an overall win.Anyway all this excitement, combined with a major transfer, meant that many routine office jobs got pushed into corners and postponed so we had a bunch of catching up to do--thus the 12-day week.
By the time our next P-day arrived, we needed a break. There was a whole bunch of mail for missionaries in the Paisley Zone, so we decided to deliver it to the zone leaders and then go explore one of the west coast beaches. We very sensibly asked one of the zone leaders for his opinion and he suggested Greenock. Greenock is actually at the mouth of the Clyde river, (Inverclyde, in Scottish) and is beautiful. It was at Greenock that we discovered a novel way to make friends with all the local dogs, and indirectly, their owners. We popped into a supermarket and bought some wonderful wholewheat bread rolls, and some cold meat to put on them. Then we drove to a lovely beach, and wandered along the shore, munching on our sandwiches. Every dog on the beach came bounding over, eager to make our acquaintance and to become our new best friend. They were trailed by their truly apologetic owners. They could not understand what had got into their normally well-behaved dogs!
As for the beauties of Greenock, and Gourock, we will let the pictures speak for themselves.
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| Inverclyde |
This is Ginger, one of Andy Scott's creations. Andy Scott specializes in horse sculptures made from steel. He sees them not as whimsical or beautiful beasts, but as symbols of power, and specifically mentions them as the origin of the term horse-power. James Watt was born in Greenock, near where this statue stands today and is world famous for his engineering prowess.
Ginger the horse was also a real horse, much loved and cared for.
Other Andy Scott creations include the Kelpies, which we have mentioned elsewhere in these chronicles.
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| Gourock Beach |
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| Also Gourock |
Yay, dogs! And all the other things you did :)
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