A Flooded Apartment, Valentines Day and the Cutest Shed Ever!

 February 10-16

Monday morning, we called the Owner of the sister's apartment that had flooded and explained to her that the apartment was still wet, and something needed to be done.  She went over herself and looked.  Yes, it was a wet mess. She called for blowers to come in and dry the carpet.  We thought the problem was solved.  Staff meeting, President talked about needing some extra beds in the Millennial Apartments for transfers.  He thought they already had some and asked us to make sure. If not, we needed to put some in.  He also wanted to know when all the Senior Apartment Leases were up.  After our meeting we went over to the Millennial Apartment where the Social Media Elders live to see what it looked like.  Bunkbed? NO Room for bunkbeds? Probably, but it would be tight.  When we got back to the office, I put together all the Senior Leases to share with President at our next meeting.  We have some bunkbeds in the Storage Unit and decided to put them in on Thursday.  

Tuesday, the sisters called again about their apartment and said it stinks so bad, they couldn't stand it.  We told them to start packing all their things up and we would be there as fast as we could.  We called President and explained to him the situation and he said to get them either into another apartment or a hotel.  So we took off to help them move.  We call 2 sets of missionaries and asked them to meet us there and help move the sisters, someplace. In the meantime, the owner called and said she had another apartment in another apartment complex, that we could move the sisters into if we would like.  She said it was very much like the one they were already in.  So we took it.  It was just around the corner from where they already were.  When we got there, the sisters had packed up almost everything.  They were such good sports about moving and worked so hard to get everything done. We appreciated the Elders help.  We got home around 8:00 that night, so tired!

Wednesday, we were still pretty tired and weren't moving very fast.  We went over to the Storage Unit and loaded up the bunkbeds into the trailer.  It wasn't easy, they were buried under lots of stuff.  So, we had to move things around to even get to them.  But we did it!  

Thursday, we had planned to put the bunkbeds into the Elders apartment. Elder Howe had some of the bolts we needed to put them together.  So, first thing in the morning we drove over to the Howe's house and had a good visit with them.  They were the Housing Coordinators before us, and we had got to know them pretty well.  I had a few questions for Sister Howe and as we were talking, we mentioned about putting the bunkbeds into this apartment.  Sister Howe said that she had put some camping mattresses, good quality ones, in that apartment for that very purpose. After we left their house, we called President and asked if those mattresses would work or did he want us to put in bunkbeds.  Thankfully he said those mattresses would work!  Yeah, we didn't have to put them up.  Now we had a little extra time, so we drove over to the Sandy Creek Apartment. We keep hearing how bad it is and so we needed to see for ourselves before we started looking for another apartment.  When we got there, the Elders weren't home, so we let ourselves in.  (We had told them beforehand that we were going to go in) It was definitely dirty, but we didn't think it was as bad as everyone kept saying.  My expectations of what apartments should look like, has really gone down.  If they would clean it up, I don't think it would be that bad. So, Dan called them and talked to them about being cleaner and told them they had to clean it up before next Tuesday. We had forgotten about a meeting we had with the Finance Department, so we had to hurry home and meet with them.  We have to let them know about leases that go up and verify with them monies that are spent on housing.  It's pretty easy on our part. Thank goodness for Elder Connell.

Friday was Valentines Day.  It was also Debbie Craig's birthday.  She invited me to come have lunch with her and a few of her friends. It was fun.  We went to a place in St. Louis called Pappy BBQ.  Dan had dropped me off and was just going to hang out close by so he could pick me up after.  He is so good to take care of me in that way.  After lunch we went back to the office.  I had just found out that I was responsible for setting up all the gas, electric, water, trash, sewer etc. for the new Mission Home being built and it had to be done before Tuesday.  It took a while, but I got it done.  That night we played a couple of games together and watched movies. We stayed up way to late, but it felt good to just not worry about anything for one night.

Debbie and Me out for lunch

Emily and Jane sent us a Valentine!!  

Since we hadn't gone out for dinner or really done anything for Valentines on Saturday, Dan took me out for breakfast.  It was a cute little place called The Shack. Good food.  After, we went over to the St. Louis History Museum.  It was really interesting.  I learned about the St. Louis World's Fair.  Lots of history here in St. Louis and I loved learning about it.  When we got home we watched "Meet Me In St. Louis" It's a cute musical.

It snowed pretty good Saturday night, and everything was white when we got up for church on Sunday. 

We had a little time after church before we went over and visited Robert Taylor.  Rocky, another friend from the Ward, had told us about a shed he had built several years ago.  He told us sort of where it was and so we decided to go and look for it.  It's so cute!!

He stores his lawn mowers in here!

Rocky just happened to be there!!

 After seeing Rocky we went over to Robert's.  He is going through a new treatment of Chemo hoping that will stop the Cancer a little faster.  He always looks so good when we see him, combed hair and dressed nice.  We love him.  Then we went over to visit Gene Gutierez.  He had a stroke and is having a hard time recovering.  His speech is a little off and his thinking isn't always clear.  He really appreciated coming to visit him.  He said he hadn't seen many people since he had been in this facility.  He felt sad.  After we left him, we got a text from some sisters nearby.  Their furnace wasn't working, and could we help them? We talked with them and decided that they needed a space heater to get them through the night, until we could get maintenance out and fix it. We have 2 at home but decided that would take us 2 or 3 hours to go home and come back. We were only about 15 minutes from their apartment. So, we found a Walmart and bought one. They had told us they were headed out to a meeting, but we could go in through the garage. So, we brought them the heater and left it on the kitchen table for them.  They have a really nice apartment.  By the time we got home we were tired.  We had some dinner and rested the rest of the evening. 

We are learning so much in this new assignment. I love serving the missionaries.  They are so appreciative of everything we do.  It makes it all worth it.