Hunting, Gathering, Dumping, Dispersing

We thought you might be interested in people's perception of us as we go about our lives here in Calgary.  We wear our black name tags everywhere we go, so when we are out shopping people come up to us and ask for our help, thinking we are store employees.  We're always happy to oblige in whatever way we can.  If they actually take the time to look a little closer at our tags and notice the Elder or Sister and the name of Jesus Christ, they often assume I am a nun and tell me about their relatives who are nuns or that Eric is a minister of a church and they say, God Bless You.  When they see us buying tons of household items they ask who it is for and when we say, missionaries, they put their arms around us or give us a hug or or pat on the shoulder, comment on what a good thing we are doing, or go out of their way to make sure we get the best deal possible.

We do most of our shopping at thrift and second-hand stores like Value Village, Good Will, Dollar Giant and Wall-Mart.  All the clerks recognize us now and if they don't see us together at the check-out they ask, Where is Sister?

  
We also get donated items like couches/tables/dressers from members and others who don't want to move large items themselves.  To get them back to our storage unit we take the van and trailer to pick them up.  A few weeks ago we stumbled unto 4 fabulous love seats at a thrift store and bought all of them.  Two were reduced to $10,00 and with the purchase we sent some underprivileged kids to camp.  

Since we had the worst flood in Canadian history in June, members of the church have been very involved in helping with flood recovery.  They are required to wear bright yellow shirts that say "Helping Hands" on the front so people know they are approved helpers.  When we were paying for the love seats the clerk recognized our name tag and said he had been living in High River before the flood wiped out the whole town and he couldn't get over the number of members from our church who have come there to help day after day.  Other people have also commented about the 1500 members who showed up one day to help dig out their homes or provide food, or the 40 missionaries we bussed up from Lethbridge.   They told us, "We knew you would come."

Besides gathering stuff up we also have to throw things away so we load up either the truck or trailer and take it to a land fill.

At the office we have a large closet that I like to refer to as my "store".  Since all the missionaries arrive by plane and are very limited in what they can take home, they often leave behind things that won't fit in their suitcases.  They drop them off at the office and I look through them and pick out what is still usable, take it home and wash it, and bring it back to our closet store.  The missionaries love to "shop" in it when they come into the office.