Wednesday, 27 June 2018

One of the things you cannot help noticing in the South is kudzu. This vine was imported in the 1930s as an ornamental, for cattle feed, and to prevent erosion. I've heard it referred to as the vine that ate the South. It ubiquitous along road and railroad tracks wherever this is open broken ground. It grows fast and climbs and is know to overwhelm bushes and small trees. Here are a couple of pictures from across the street from our doctors office.

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Wednesday, 13 June 2018

We knew a couple of months ago that there was a new MLS (Member/Leader Support) senior couple coming into the mission but didn't know until more recently that they would be assigned to LaGrange, GA in the far northwest corner of the mission. It takes about six weeks to pull together everything to get a new apartment set up for missionaries and this was no exception.

Here are the steps to get a new apartment setup:

  1. Find a suitable housing unit;
  2. Make an application to rent the unit which usually involves money, anywhere from a few tens of dollars to a few hundreds—in this case, $500. We've lost out on apartments waiting for a church check, someone else got there with the money first so I wrote a personal check to make sure we would be first in line.
  3. Get approved to rent the unit.
  4. Get a W9 from the owner of the unit so the church can set them up as a vendor. The accountants in Salt Lake are very persnickety. Every detail must be exactly right or they kick the W9 back. I've had this take as long as two weeks getting all the kinks ironed out.
  5. Get the lease signed. President and Sister Grayson were beginning to be concerned a couple weeks ago that we hadn't finalized this unit. I was more optimistic having meet the people in LaGrange and we did get everything signed and sealed on Monday. And got the keys which didn't work on Monday but which the complex manager had them fixed and they worked on Tuesday.
  6. Get the utilities turn on. If it's Georgia Power, it's simple. We already have numerous accounts and I can get the electric power turned on with a phone call. If it's a local provider of electric, gas, or water, it can be tricky. Often you must have evidence that you have actually signed a lease and go into the town offices. We got the electric power turned on Monday as well.
  7. Furnish the apartment:
    1. Find in storage what we can use; or
    2. Buy what we need;
    3. We've spent the last two weeks assembling furniture and kitchen stuff. The kitchen stuff required cleaning so the living room floor became the temporary storage for dishes, tableware, glasses, pots and pans, knives, an iron, rugs, etc., etc.;
    4. We spent $1200+ for a sofa, mattress and box spring, lamps, office chairs, and end tables at a place in Forsyth that specializes used hotel furniture;
    5. We spent $200+ at Salvation Army for dressers and book shelves; and
    6. We spent another $200+ at Walmart. (You can see we don't go to high end stores to furnish even senior missionary apartments.)
    7. Truck all this stuff to LaGrange. It took two trips with the pickup and trailer. We've been driving the pickup a lot. It has close to 22,000 miles on the odometer, most of which we've driven in the past year. Moving stuff is hard on the stuff. We had a lamp from the shed that didn't work when we got to LaGrange on Monday. Monday afternoon we tested another lamp before putting it on the trailer but when we got to LaGrange on Tuesday, the switch was broken. There is another lamp in the office waiting for the new missionaries to take with them tomorrow.
    8. Get the stuff from the trailer into the apartment. The LaGrange elders and Summer (pregnant granddaughter) and Jake (granddaughter's husband/lieutenant assigned to Fort Benning) helped and we got all of the furniture including the washer and dryer into the apartment and set up. It looks pretty good.
  8. Do all of the paper work in the office to manage the unit and pay the landlord.

Along the Way

Three times we passed Barbie Beach going between Macon and LaGrange. The fourth time we stopped and took pictures:

Gottwalls Books

There is a book store with several outlets in central Georgia which we've grown to appreciate. They have a large selection of both new and used books at great prices and you can bring in books for store credit. Here's the facade of the store in Macon: