Louisiana Rain

Marc and I just had one of our funniest experiences since arriving in LA. The Louisiana Rainstorm! I equate it with a California earthquake. One second your fine, the sun is shining and you're dry, and one minute later you aren't. Seriously, in less than the minute it took to run across 20 feet of Sam's Club asphalt and throw 3 small boxes in the truck this is what my blouse looked like. And, yes, we were using an umbrella! Now I know the true meaning of soaked to the bone. Plus, I look like a drowned rat, smell like wet dog and won't need to remove mascara tonight. Marc said my hair looked like the old leather football helmet. Yeah, that's a pretty accurate description. And the rain and 2 sisters in the office for 10 minutes were the best part of my day.

Let me just preface today's comment with this statement: I still love it here! With that said, do you remember "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day?" From the minute we arrived today nothing went right. Without giving a blow by blow account, I'll just make a list of the day's woes.

     Top priority--organizational and phone rosters. Couldn't enter all the new phone numbers in to the system because one of the zones with a new phone didn't exist in the system yet. Forget rosters till office elders get here. They'll know what to do.

     Get yesterday's and today's referrals out of the way, but lds.org/find a meetinghouse was psycho. I'd put in a Louisiana address, and it would give me a chapel in Mexico or Brazil or South Carolina--anywhere but Louisiana! So I went to google maps to find the location then back to lds.org to figure out the ward and mission district. For EVERY SINGLE REFERRAL! There were 12. Never mind that lds.org uses google maps to locate meeting houses.

     Try to get rid of a referral that's come to our mission 4 times but belongs to the Texas Houston South Mission. I finally called Salt Lake for help.

     After waiting impatiently for any elders to arrive I remembered that district meetings are always on Friday when it's a transfer week. Boo:( That means no elders till at least 2 pm because they always go to lunch after their meeting.

     Try to sort mail. Go to old phone roster to see where missionary has been for the last 6 weeks then try to find him or her on the new transfer sheet which has itty bitty pictures and names in -10 font, white on grey. If they aren't where they used to be, search the entire page for their new location.

     Try to make new incoming packets, because I'm down to 1. Print LABRM mission statement, 6 per sheet, then cut on paper cutter, which is buried under a dozen very padded moving blankets. Scratch that. I'm not moving all those blankets.

     Enter 4 recently received Baptism & Confirmation records. Oh, right, the reason I didn't enter them yesterday is because the elders had neglected to include birth city and state. There are several things I can omit on B&CRs, but that's not one of them. After speaking to the elders yesterday I thought for sure they'd leave the info on the answer machine. Nope. 

     Add 2 more B&CRs to the pile and put it aside till later.

     

Here's the bright spot in the day--Sister Stevens and Sister Steele. Sister Stevens was just transferred here from Marksville on Wednesday. She and her previous companion, Sister Paulson, lived in our first apartment in Mansura and Sister Steele's companion, Sister Baird, was transferred to Lafayette on Wednesday. And that's why SS & SS are together.

Did the 2 rosters ever get printed? No
Did the B&CRs get entered? No
Did the incoming packets even get started? No                         Was it still a great day? Of course!