Work At Home Day

We worked in our apartment today.  We have a meeting with the Sarasota Stake High Councilor responsible for missionary work tomorrow.  We helped set the agenda for the meeting, so I want to be well prepared.  We are going to discuss how to help the wards develop ward mission plans.  So far as we know, none of the wards (or branches) has a mission plan.  I suggested that we also discuss how to help train the ward mission leaders.  I don't think that the stake has done much in training.  I have volunteered, but so far no one has asked for my help.

In my preparation, I found an excellent website, everydaymissionaries.org, based on Clayton Christensen's book, The Power of Everyday Missionaries.  It provides many examples of how members can be engaged in missionary work.

Another Inspection

We inspected another newly leased apartment today.  This apartment is also in Bradenton and is in one of the apartment complexes that we looked at in January when we first arrived.  It is located in central Bradenton which is a good location for the missionaries but would not have been a good location for us.

Because of an emergency transfer (ET in missionary speak), there are three Elders in a small one bedroom apartment.  It is crowded for 2 and really crowded with 3 missionaries.  Nevertheless, the apartment was in reasonably good condition.

We then drove to the Ellenton Outlet Mall, and I was able to find the pants I have been looking for.  We drove by the Mall at University Town Center near us.  They have a lot of outdoor lights and it looks quite nice.  They don't have many interior decorations though.

Apartment Inspections

We did three apartment inspections today.  One apartment is up for lease renewal, and President Healey wanted us to take a look at it.  The Elders who live there are assigned to the Beneva Spanish-speaking branch.  Although the apartment isn't great, the Elders tell us that it is a good location with lots of Hispanics in the neighborhood.

The other two apartments are in Bradenton.  They are both newly leased, so this was the first time that we inspected them.  One of them was OK, the other was immaculate.  The only difference between the two apartments is the missionaries who live there.

My clothes are beginning to wear out.  I had to buy some new shoes last week.  Today, I started to look for a pair of pants.  I had hoped that my clothes would last until the end of our mission, but that hasn't been the case.

Another Dental Day

We drove to Brandon for an appointment with the oral surgeon who pulled Renee's tooth.  This was a scheduled follow up.  Fortunately, everything seems fine and is healing correctly.

We then drove to the mission office.  We needed to pick up some additional keys for apartment inspections.  Also we picked up some materials for missionaries.  But most importantly, we were able to visit with Sis. Tollerton, the mission secretary, and President and Sister Healey.  We haven't seen them for awhile, so it was good to catch up with them.

This morning while Renee was getting ready, the water in our apartment stopped.  Renee had to finish washing her hair in the kitchen sink using bottled water.  I checked with the apartment office, and they told me that they are doing some work on the water pipes and had turned off the water.  They said they had distributed a letter about this.  I told them that we had not received the letter.  When I returned to the apartment and told Renee about this, she remembered that indeed they had delivered a letter, but she had not bothered to read it!

District Meeting

We drove to Arcadia to participate in the district meeting for the south district of the Sarasota Zone.  The district leader, Elder Menlove, is a relatively young missionary, but he is doing a good job.  The training topics were on working with members and teaching the restoration lesson.  There was more emphasis this week on asking the missionaries to share successful experiences.

After the district meeting, we drove to Lake Placid to conduct an apartment inspection.  The apartment was much cleaner and orderly than we saw in our previous inspections.  Hopefully this is a positive trend.  Of course, there has been a change in the missionaries living in the apartment, so that probably has more to do with the improvement.

P-Day

Our big activity for today was taking my car in for repair.  The needed parts had finally arrived, so they finished replacing the ignition coil and spark plug wires.  This seems to have resolved the problem, and our car is running better as well.  We would really have a problem without a functioning car.

Visit to Beneva Branch

We visited the Spanish-speaking Beneva Branch today.  This is the third Sunday in a row that we have visited a Spanish-speaking branch.  Although the branch members seem to appreciate our visits, from a selfish standpoint, we get more out of the meetings when we can understand what is being said.  We will be back to English-speaking units beginning next week.  We will be starting another rotation through the units in the stake.

I asked the branch president, who understands English and can speak some, if he or anyone from the branch attended the priesthood leadership meeting with Elder Soares two weeks ago.  He said no one from the branch was there, but they had received some information from a high councilor.  From the information given us by the missionaries, that training would have been helpful for the branch leaders.