A crazy week

The latest in mission casual wear?

Over the course of the eighteen plus months, rare has been the Monday that I've not been able to carve up my schedule so that I could dedicate time to the letter from TMFKATB. There have only been a couple of occasions where I've not been able get his letters or give him a decent response. This past Monday was crazy for me. Ironically, he entitled this week's letter 'A crazy week.' I got his email about 15 minutes before my craziness was hitting 11 as I was about to go on stage with Doug Parker, CEO and Chairman of American Airlines, to chat him up in front of 700 or so industry colleagues. Suffice to say, I wasn't able to interact much with TMFKATB this past Monday.

So that's the excuse for posting this week's update a little late. As for the update, he did have some craziness. He and his companion had been told as of last Monday they'd be training a new missionary. Within a matter of days, the threesome became a foursome and by the end of week, the two new missionaries were on their own, opening a new area. Things change quickly when visas come through for missionaries and that was exactly the case with the fourth missionary (a Mexican national serving in his home country until his US visa cleared, allowing him to head behind the Zion Curtain to serve the balance of his mission assignment). Suffice to say, it made for a bit of craziness for them all, but they seemed to get through it with flying colors. That's always good.

This week's pearl of wisdom came from TMFKATB in the form of this endorsement:

Draper is so sick!

For those of you who either do not live behind the Zion Curtain or are not familiar with the cities and towns that make the Zion Curtain what it is, Draper is a town south of Salt Lake City. Its greatest claim to fame, and it's dubious, is that it houses the charm-free Utah State Prison and was the site of the execution of Gary Gilmore. It is also the place where the first IKEA in the whole of Utah was built. A prison and an IKEA, going all 'Ebony and Ivory' is rich, given that they are both meant to hold people against their will.

Into the Scrum

With the stunningly patient and mighty fine SML running hither and yon this morning visiting several of the women she is now working with in her Church service, I found we needed a few things from the extortion grocery store. So I went to the grocery store. This was an epic mistake (well not quite as epic as say "What do you mean there weren't any WMD's in Iraq?"-level mistake), but it was a mistake just the same. Why? Because the grocery store parking lot had been turned into a rugby scrum, wherein the players had been replaced by cars. I am not kidding you when I tell you every.single.parking.spot in this heinous store's lot was occupied. Cars were poring in and began moving in a pack, or a scrum, in search of an open spot. I almost - almost - felt bad for the unsuspecting shoppers leaving the store. The lead car saw them and would lead the hunt, stalking the shopper, giving them a few precious seconds to toss their overpriced goods into their car before the blaring of the horn from the lead car would begin. It was like watching the Kardashians stalk someone with cash in their pockets.

I watched this foolishness for a little while as I sought an opening and saw one. It was then that I remembered that driving a large 4-wheel drive SUV in a crowded parking lot does have its advantages. It's been says size matters and today, it did. I broke from the conga line of the damned, swinging around someone driving Connecticutistan's favorite car, the Subaru wagon (in any of its variants), and gunned it to the open spot. I think the way I squeezed into the spot so suddenly shocked the two store workers sitting in the car next to mine. They were clearly on their break and given the amount of cigarettes they were burning through, it suggested that things were going to be rough in the store. And they were.

I'd forgotten that today is the day before Valentine's Day and given the hysteria inside the store, you'd have thought we had another Super Storm Sandy event bearing down on us. Nope, not a super storm, just its merchandising equivalent. Turns out, at least here, people actually buy those heart-shaped boxes filled with dusty chocolate of questionable quality. They buy a lot of them because every check out line was backed up, with one exception. The apartchik that runs this particular store renamed one check out lane as "Lovers Lane" (I literally just threw up in my mouth writing that) and it was dedicated to floral purchases only. In every other lane, at least every other shopper had just flowers, and the last I checked, flowers constitute floral items, but the floral lane remained inexplicably closed. It wasn't like there wasn't a dearth of workers scurrying about, encouraging people to go swing by Floral and grab some flowers. But please don't use the lane dedicated to floral purchases. It's closed. Yep, it made sense to me too.

Happy to have made it through the (kind of) Express Lane sans flowers or V.D. accoutrement of any kind, I got back into my car and barreled my way out of the scrum and back to the sanctity of my basement to watch the end of the spanking that Chelsea gave to Newcastle. All was well in the world again.

Crazy ideas about us

Post-game recovery

If you've ever been inside an LDS meetinghouse / chapel and tried to use the free Wifi, you'll know that descriptors like "lightning fast" or "strong reliable signal" do not apply.  Ever. No matter what building you are in. Whoever sourced the service left that out of the RFP (allegedly). So it should come as no surprise when I tell you that we are now in week three of bizarre issues with the server through which TMFKATB sends his weekly emails. For instance, the stunningly patient and mighty fine SML got his weekly letter right before 2PM our time when he sent it. I, who was included in that same group, got it three hours later. I got a couple of pictures in an email and she, also included in the same group, has yet to get them. I know it's not us because I forwarded that picture email to her while using the most craptastic WiFi on the planet (gracias, Amtrak) and she got it instantly. But I digress...

Server foolishness notwithstanding, TMFKATB served up another good, reassuring letter this Monday. He's busy, so he's a little more tired than he'd like to be. He's ready for winter to end, saying "I am so ready for short sleeves!" (Thanks, Sipowicz - let's just say I'm not a fan of short sleeves and ties.) He also mentioned for the first time something that happens to almost every Mormon missionary in the course of a mission and that was coming up against anti-Mormons. Given that he's serving in the belly of the beast as it were, or Mormon Mecca, it's not unsurprising that there is some virulent opposition to the Church. While he spent no time on the details, he said this, "People...have some crazy ideas about us." He seemed pretty non-plussed by it all, taking it in stride and content to stay focused on the happiness he is found during the course of his missionary service. That seemed a pretty reasonable response to me.

Crazy ideas about the way people believe abound. Just ask a Muslim. What a world it would be if we truly let people practice their faith without prejudice. What a world it would be if we didn't have preconceived (and wrong) notions about a faith different from our own. I don't claim to be a perfect member of my faith. I can assure you I am not. I really do hope that as I've shared the mission experiences of TMFKATB that we've been able to dispel some of the 'crazy' that's out there about our faith.