Preparing for all the new missionaries

   We have been extremely busy for the past week or so trying to complete our preparations for the next influx of missionaries on July 16th, and providing service to those affected by the massive floods from two weeks ago.  Last week at Church we spent the third hour being briefed on the recovery efforts.  The area authority is our former Stk President who is very familiar with the area. He is coordinating the recovery with Brothers Ludlow and Murray from SLC.  Interesting side note; they were also in charge of recovery after the flood in Cedar Rapids.

   We will be getting 34 new missionaries in July.  The increased numbers will necessitate the need for 11 more apartments complete with basic furnishings in several new areas of our mission, bringing our housing totals close to 110  units.

   In case we haven't described the size of our mission, it is huge, stretching from the border with Montana on the south, to the border of the next Province Saskatchewan on the east, to the city of Edmonton on the north, and the eastern part of British Columbia on the west.  Some of our missionaries are more than five hours from Calgary and we only get to see them once a month.

   There were several areas in and around Calgary that were devastated by the floods, leaving whole towns underwater.  The missionaries through "helping hands" have been putting in long hours helping with flood recovery efforts in High River.  13,000 people lost their homes and everything else there and probably won't be allowed to go back for months.  

Groups of missionaries from Calgary have been working there for the past week and on Friday we rented a school bus and transported 40 missionaries from the southern part of our mission out of Lethbridge to spend the day lending a helping hand.

   In the mean time, Elder Bryant has been working with local leaders to identify places we could rent for the incoming missionaries in the new Zones.  This has now become a monumental task because of the flood displacement.  Cost of living is quite high here, so rent is high, making it even harder to find reasonably priced suitable apartments with people who are willing to rent to us.

   We work at the office from [or later] so we don't have a lot of time after work.  The Church provides all the basic supplies for missionary apartments i.e. beds, desks, lamps, kitchen table/chairs, utensils/pots & pans/dishes, irons/boards, vacuums, mops/brooms, shower curtains, carbon monoxide detectors, etc. so we have spent many evenings and Saturdays pricing out the things we will need to set up each of the new apartments.  Then we created a master list [of course] of all the items and where we found the best prices. 

We rented another storage unit and bought and put together three large sets of shelves so we could organize and store all the items. This past week we spent every spare moment gathering up all the stuff and putting it in the storage unit [while it was either 95 degrees or raining rather hard, I might add].  Yesterday, we finally finished that project and have it ready to go.  Because of our careful shopping, we were able to save over $900 per set of missionaries over the price the Church offers for furnishing kits from SLC, and we even provided many additional items that aren't included in the Church kits.

 Yesterday [Saturday} morning the mission held their monthly Leadership Council Meeting here in Calgary.  Sister Bryant was asked to speak to the group of Zone and Sister Leaders [at Zone Conference] about properly filling out and submitting baptismal forms.  She was also asked to lead the music for the opening hymn while Sister Nicholas played the piano.  33 mission Leaders were in attendance.

   The Senior Couple, Brother & Sister Lawlor, who work with us in the office have almost completed their 18 month mission and will be returning home to Centerville, UT on July 19th.  Brother Lawlor has been in charge of all the cars and trucks in the mission, maintenance/upkeep, and the gas cards used by the missionaries.  Sister Lawlor is in charge of referrals and supplies and helps Brother Lawlor with the cars.    Brother Lawlor has been a great help to me because of his knowledge of computers.  I've been telling him he should extend or I will have to call him on the golf course in Utah for help.  Last week, their replacements, the Trimms [who live here in Calgary], came in to train with us so they will be ready to take over.  They are very nice and will be fun to work with, but we will miss the Lawlors.  

   We are feeling more secure about being able to fulfill our responsibilities with each passing week, but are hoping when things settle down at the end of the year we won't have to put in so many hours beyond our regular 8-5 day. 

   We love being here and having the opportunity of working together to support the missionary effort in Calgary.  We love the gospel of Jesus Christ and the blessing it has been to us and our family.  

   We love and miss all of you and pray that you are doing well in your corner of the vineyard.

Elder and Sister Bryant