Missouri Independence Mission Oct. 2022-April 2024

 I'm not in much of a mood to write this evening so this will probably be short and mostly just the highlights of the week with some pictures. Weather today was weird. It never really out and out rained but had a misty fog all day. It made me think of what London must be like. Tonight there is supposed to be rain, strong winds, and thunderstorms. We'll see. Looks as if the weatherman was right about snow in Utah. We've seen some pretty impressive pictures and it looks as if the snow has piled up. Good for Utah! What a nice surprise and visit! Had a surprise visit from Carl Bench and his wife. That was fun. Every time I see him I have to think, "Now is this Carl or Scott?" As they get older it is getting easier to tell. In their younger days I would call them Scarl cause I didn't know who I was talking to. Wednesday, Doyce Stracener and his wife Melissa took us out to lunch. Doyce is one of my old Navy buddies, Uncle Bill (we call him uncle) being the other one

It was a cool week with temperatures mostly in the 30-40 degree range with nights in the teens. One morning the car had thick ice on the windows but I had covered the windshield so it wasn't bad although it took awhile to scraped the driver's side window. We've been pretty lucky with not having to worry about ice on the windshield.  Lots of money went out of the office this week with rent being mostly paid and a good portion of the utility bills also getting paid. I still have a few rent payments to make this week as they are problem children. Two of them I'm supposed to pay on the portal but there are balances which have already been paid. The portal makes you pay that balance along with the rent. One of the ledgers says we have a $1300 credit (LOL) which is incorrect and will have to get figured out. Another is a place we just opened up and haven't gotten a W-9 from them. The goal is to have all the apartment payments balanced by the time we are released. Probably

I had an interesting sacrament meeting today. There is a young boy in the branch with autism and the branch president asked me to be in the foyer to direct him as he passes the sacrament as he tends to get off task and distracted during the process. There were a few people coming in late and one lady kind of staggered in. I could only see her back but she was sloppily dressed and one of her sweatpant legs was up over her knee. She went on into the chapel and Bro. Ross, who was also in the foyer, changed seats so he could watch her. A minute later she came back out to the foyer and Bro. Ross got up and escorted her out the door and also out the gate at the front of the church. He said she was high on PCP as he smelled it. I hadn't smelled a thing. I happened to look out door and saw she was coming back in the parking lot so Bro. Ross went back out. The sacrament had started so I stayed with my calling. After the sacrament was over I went back to check things out. The lady was on the

This has been a slow but somewhat frustrating week for me. Two apartment complexes (four apartments) have decided they no longer will accept checks for any type of payment. We pay both rent and utilities by check. I told last week about trying to use our mission credit card, named PC-1, for payment but when I tried to get the portal system to accept the card it wouldn't allow for the number 1 as the first name. I spent hours on the phone but couldn't get it resolved. SLC suggested using either President or Sister Ames' credit card. That seemed to be the answer as the cards are in their names. I again spent literally hours this week trying to get the portal to accept one of their cards. Each time I tried to enter the credit card number an error message popped up saying I needed to enter a valid MasterCard number. The portal managers, who are in India, have gotten to know me. They are really quite nice and very patient and I could understand two of the three I've dealt wi