CHARISOL ON A MISSION

It's been a pretty calm week, just business as usual. Oh wait, except for the tornado warning. We had to go into the kitchen at the office for safety. It's an inside room with no windows. It's the best we can do. Some of the missionaries came too. It lasted about 2 hours. The wind was blowing, the thunder was roaring, and it was raining soooo hard! Then it passed and we were all safe. Chris was actually bringing a car back from Fayetteville so he had to pull into a fast food restaurant for safety. Hmmm. When we got home from work, the sun was shining so we went for a walk to Walmart to buy some groceries. Just before we got home it started raining again. By the time we got home it was a complete downpour for hours. Whew! Close call.

The next day we found out why we had a tornado warning. The Bentonville district of missionaries had all taken our mission van to Grove, Oklahoma to do a finding "blitz" to try to build up the area. It's about an hour away but in the Bentonville Stake. A couple of them had knocked on a door and talked to a lady who was really nice to them but they couldn't really stay because her husband wasn't home. When they left it started raining pretty hard. A car coming towards them stopped and the man inside asked if they wanted a ride. They declined. He said he lived close and had an extra umbrella at home that he would give them. He pointed to the house where the nice lady lived. It was her husband. So, of course, they hopped right in. He had the radio going and on the way to the house the tornado WARNING (not WATCH) came on. So when they got to his/her house they HAD to go inside to wait out the warning. So they had about an hour there to talk to the couple. They have now found a new family to teach. And, oh, by the way, it was the Grove missionaries. So they found someone in their own area.

Since the last zone conference Chris has been doing a lot more work with the vehicles. He is doing a lot more of the computer work. He keeps track of where all the cars are and makes sure that the computer system is up to date. He is also calculating mileage allotments for the missionaries and then recording their monthly mileage reports. When ever a car needs to be repaired or maintained the computer needs to be updated. He is also doing that. The lady who is our Vehicle Coordinator takes care of keeping the cars serviced, licensed, and clean. So she is doing all the real work and Chris just makes sure the computer records are right. So far it's been a good partnership.

We just got 17 new cars. And we just had all of our TIWIs replaced with a new model. The bulk of the work was done by a hired crew at zone conference but Chris has to do the ongoing work to install and uninstall TIWIs.

We currently have 11 cars that we are turning in to be sold. So they have to be cleaned out and the TIWIs have to be removed.

Here is Chris removing a TIWI. Nice picture of him, right?

One of the new vehicles we got was a new mission van. We are all pretty disappointed because it is EXACTLY like the old van. Looking at the picture above I can't tell you whether it is the old van or the new van. Anyway, the TIWI had to be removed from the old van and put in the new van. Once the TIWI is installed the vehicle has to be test driven to make sure it's working correctly. (Mostly this is because the missionaries never think they are working correctly.)

The TIWI monitors speeding and aggressive driving. So to do the test you have to do some speeding and some aggressive driving. (That's Chris' favorite part.) So after the TIWI was put in the new van we went for at test drive. I was scared to death.

But along the way we noticed the birth of a baby armadillo on the side of the road. The joke here is that armadillos must be born dead on the side of the road because no one has every seen one alive.

I can't figure it out but for some crazy reason Chris has decided to try to grow some tomatoes here. He says that the season should be long enough that it will be worth while. After spending $80.00 on pots, soil, and plants, he's thinking it still may not be worth while. We'll see!