Long Drive for an Apartment Inspection

We decided to drive to Lake Placid to inspect the Elders' apartment there. That is a 90 minute drive for us.  Before heading there, we stopped at a shoe store for Renee to exchange some shoes.  We have found a store that carries shoes with good arch support, though they are not inexpensive.  Renee had purchased a pair of shoes but unfortunately they were rubbing on her feet because they were too narrow.  She returned them and was able to find a better fitting replacement.

We then drove to Lake Placid.  This is probably our least favorite apartment.  The challenge is that Lake Placid is a small town without a lot of rental options.  This apartment would be better if the Elders maintained it better, such as not leaving dirty dishes in the sink and making their beds.

On the way back, we stopped at the church building in Arcadia.  I wanted to get a picture of it because we may not be returning to Arcadia for Sunday meetings.  We don't have missionaries in the branch and Pres. Cusick would like for us to focus our Sunday visits on units with missionaries.  As you can see from the picture, there are actually two buildings.  The brick building on the right houses the small chapel, branch president's office, media center, and a classroom.  The building on the left is actually a double wide trailer which has several classrooms.

Arcadia Branch building

When we returned back to Sarasota, we decided to go to Siesta Key Beach to watch the sunset.  Since today was our anniversary, I guess this qualified as an anniversary activity.  The sunset was OK but not spectacular.  However, we were able to talk with some people about the Church and why we are in Florida.  So it had some benefit.

Renee at the beach

Our selfie at the beach

 And here is the sunset:

Renee's take on the beach and sunset

My take on the Siesta Key Beach sunset

More Inspections

We drove to Venice to inspect the Sisters' apartment today.  They happened to be leaving as we arrived.  They didn't recognize us until we got out of our car.  They obviously weren't expecting us.  Fortunately, their apartment was in good shape.

We got back in time for Renee to go get a massage.  She had a coupon for a discount at a nearby massage studio.  While there, she said that she had talked with the people about missionaries and the Church, so I guess that qualifies as a proselyting effort.

It didn't rain on us at all today, so maybe the stormy period has ended.

Apartment Inspection

Today we continued with our apartment inspections.  For the most part, the missionaries are maintaining their apartments quite well.  At least they are taking care of the most obvious things such as vacuuming.  The most common problems we find are mold in showers, dirty ovens and stove drip pans, dryer lint filters clogged, and dirty air conditioning filters.

The Healey's were in Sarasota looking for additional apartments, so we met them for dinner.  We will be opening one new apartment in Bradenton and one in Sarasota as part of the effort to accommodate the increase in missionaries we will have at the next transfer in September.

And The Rain Ceased (Mostly)

We awoke to sunshine this morning.  This was good because we were to drive to a district meeting in St. Petersburg today.  To get there, we drive over the Skyway Bridge.  Yesterday during the major rainstorms, they were saying to be cautious in driving the bridge because of the high winds.  No such problems today.

We were able to get to the district meeting without any difficulties.  The district leader, Elder Gneiting, is new, both as a district leader and as a missionary.  He has only been out three months.  I think he is a good missionary and is going to be a leader in the mission.  About 1/3 of the missionaries in the district are still working on the 12 week missionary training program.  This will be an ongoing challenge in the mission for the next several months.

The district meeting lesson for this week was a continuation of last week's lesson on engaging the youth in missionary work.  Although they discussed it last week, the missionaries did not meet with the youth in the stake.  All of the Priests and Laurels in the stake were on a combined activity -- a trip to Nauvoo.  I;m not sure how that fit into the Church's activity guidelines.

Following the district meeting, we drove to the Mission Office to pick up some apartment keys.  We will be starting apartment inspections again.  Our general directive is to inspect each apartment quarterly.  So we will be rotating through the apartments that have been assigned to us -- roughly half of the apartments.

P(recipitation) Day

We arose this morning to a torrential rainstorm that lasted most of the morning.  According to the news, it had rained most of the night.  All of the rain caused some major flood problems north of Tampa.  Nothing was reported about any major problems in the Sarasota area.  Although the rain ended by the afternoon, we just stayed in our apartment and did our preparation day chores.

Spanish Sunday

Today we attending the Cortez Branch, a Spanish-speaking branch that meets in Bradenton.  In the branch council, Sisters Jahnel and Bryan translated for us.  However, for the rest of the meetings, they were with investigators and they should have been.  That meant we were on our own.  In Priesthood Meeting, they asked one of the branch members to translate for me so I could follow along with the lesson.

Many of the members speak and understand Spanish, so we could talk with them between meetings.  I understand that they conduct their Primary in English because the children prefer English to Spanish.  I guess the adults want to maintain their Spanish.  And there are some branch members who do not understand English.

The Sisters told us there were 10 investigators, including children, in attendance.  Obviously this is good news.  The other good news, at least for us, is that they meet on the 1 pm block.  And the Bradenton chapel is only 30 minutes from our apartment.

Computer Day

We didn't have any assignments today, so we worked at home.  Renee worked on her financial affairs, paying bills, tithing, and so forth.  My accomplishment was updating the operating system on my main laptop computer to Windows 10.  I didn't have any real challenges with the update, but it was very slow.  That is probably because the laptop is old.  I only have three more computers to update, including Renee's laptop.  I'm not looking forward to updating her computer because it has very little free disk space.