Popeye, the Sailor Man Take 2

 The week of March 3-March 9

After Staff Meeting we had several Landlords that we needed to call and report problems to.  Dan called one Landlord to report that there was no ceiling in the hallway of this one apartment.  So he called him and was telling him of the problem and asked if he could fix it.  The Landlord was quiet for a minute and ten said, "well, let's just part ways!"  Dan was confused so he said, "What do you mean?" The man said, "Let's just part ways." and hung up on him.  Dan was so confused and worried, was he kicking our missionaries out of the apartment?  What were we supposed to do now?  He sent him an email and apologized if he had offended him.  It was crazy, we didn't know really what we were to do with the situation.

Tuesday, we were off early to Carbondale to clean an apartment that had been closed for a couple of transfers.  We weren't quit sure what we would find.  To our surprise it looked great!!  It felt like it had already been cleaned.  So we just freshened it up, vacuumed and wiped down the kitchen and bathroom.  We were done in about 1 1/2 hours.  As we started back home we decided to stop by the missionaries apartment that was missing the ceiling, just to see it for ourselves.  We had brought the key just in case the missionaries weren't home.  It was raining pretty hard and as we were standing on the door step knocking on the door, the missionaries pulled up.  They had an appointment but decided to come home first and get an umbrella.  Yay, they let us in and we got to visit with them for a few minutes.  We couldn't believe the whole hall was ceiling was missing.  You could look up and see all the pipes and the AC unit.  We told the missionaries we would get it fixed one way or another and hoped they wouldn't be kicked out because the Landlord was mad at us.  After we left them we were driving through Chester, IL.  We had been there one time before on a Monday and had gone to the Popeye Museum, but it had been closed.  So we had a little extra time and thought let's see if it's open today.  It was!!  It was so fun to go in and talk to the lady that owns the place.  It was fun to learn that most of Popeye's friends were real people he based their character on.  So many cute things.  We each bought a Popeye shirt.  Before we started for home we stopped and had a late lunch/dinner.  It turned out to be a fun day.

Wednesday we had 2 Brothers come from Salt Lake to talk to us about Missionary Safety.  It was very informative.  They are hoping to present it to all the missionaries.  We thought about some things we could even talked to the missionaries about.  We had woken up to snow but it stopped fairly early and Dan had a meeting with Jack Howe to get some of his things out of the Storage Unit.  Since the snow had stopped Jack wanted to come, so Dan met him over there and I stayed at the office and did some catch up.  I feel like everytime we are in the office, we are always trying to get caught up on emails and other problems with the missionaries. But at least we have that time to do it.

Wednesday was another early morning.  We left the apartment just after 7:00 to head over to Champaign.  We first stopped at the Jones' house.  They are housing inspectors and they needed a key to one of the missionary apartments.  We had a pleasant visit with Sister Jones.  They have been doing this for 2 years.  We let her know how much we appreciate all their service.  Then we were off to Rantoul, where we needed to deliver a dryer. When we got there, the missionaries had already taken the old one out into the living room and came out and got the new one.  As Dan got it all connected up, they took their old one into the trailer and secured it so it wouldn't fall over, locked the trailer up.  As we went back into the apartment, Dan was already done.  Wow, that went really fast!  The missionaries are the best. Next we needed to go clean out another apartment.  We were so hoping that it would be as clean and nice as the one we did on Tuesday.  As we pulled up we saw some missionaries coming out of another apartment.  They live just across the parking lot of the one we were there to clean.  We talked with them for a minute and then went over and unlocked the door of the one to be cleaned.  We were so happy and surprised to find it in really good shape.  We only spent about 1 1/2 hours cleaning it up.  We were pretty tired when we finished but we still needed to stop by and see another one of our housing inspectors.   He suggested that we meet at a rest stop, it would be closer for us than to go all the way out to his house.  So we stopped at the rest stop and had a good visit with him and gave him the key case and the apartments he was in charge of inspecting.  By the time we got home it had been another 11 hour day.  We both were so tired.  Dan went to bed at 8:00 I made it till 9:00.

I was dreading Friday morning just a little.  We had an 8:00am meeting at the office with another housing inspector couple.  I was feeling a little too tired but in talking to them, they had left their house at 4:30 that morning to get there.  Then I felt guilty I had been complaining about the 8:00 meeting.  After the meeting we were meeting the Anderson's at the temple.  They are a Senior Couple that we have got to know and have met at the temple a few times and then had lunch together. k They go home in 2 weeks and we wanted to have lunch with them before they left.  After lunch as we were headed back to the office I thought, well this has actually been a great day.  We are having a Zoom Meeting this Sunday with all our Housing Inspectors.  I wasn't so sure how to make it all happen and Sister Smith (who is my go to person for help) wasn't at the office.  I had forgotten she was doing a luncheon for all the new missionaries.  She is amazing!  Dan helped me and we did get it all set up, but I stayed till Sister Smith got back just to be sure I did it all right and how to actually log in on Sunday.  

Saturday, I seems to always be to tired to want to do anything but rest.  So that is what we did.  

Sunday after church we made some visits with friends in Fairview Heights.  We visited the Waidmann's first.  I love them so much.  they are in their 80's and don't get around very well.  But they just make me feel so happy when I'm with them.  Next we went over to Sister Trayners. She lives in an assisted living Place.  We hadn't seen her for a few months and she was not doing well.  We only stayed for about 15 minutes, she didn't really remember who we were and was not making much sense when we talked to her.  Next we headed over to Andrew Perkins house.  We had a good visit with him.  He hadn't been to church for a while but he said he missed it.  He gets a little upset when he goes to another church and they don't do the Sacrament the way we do.  But he has friends there and likes to go see them.  After seeing Andrew we went over to see Robert Taylor.  He was pretty tired, his son had been there for a couple of hours before, so we didn't stay too long.  After we got home we had a fast dinner and got ready for our Zoom Meeting with our Housing Inspectors.  We decided since we set it up on the Office Computer, it might be easier to get connected at the office.  So we went over to the office about 20 minutes early.  But we could not get on.  First, we realized that our computer didn't have a camera or mic.  So we texted Sister Smith and asked if we could use her computer.  She gave us the password, but we couldn't it to work.  Well it's about 7 minutes to 6:00 when we are suppose to start.  We decided that we needed to go home and use our computer.  So we flew home and got on just a couple of minutes late.  But our mic wouldn't work.  We could hear everyone but they couldn't hear us. We were just ready to say, let's reschedule and someone said, We can hear you!!  Yay!!  It took me a minute to settle down, but once we did, things went pretty well.  We proposed a new inspection form to use.  Everyone had some input on it, to make it a little easier.  It was all good advise.  After the meeting I revised the form to send out to them.  After the meeting I was just done, too tired.  It was such a busy day and week.  Some days I wonder if I'll be able to keep going at this speed for another 5 months.  But then the Lord always blesses me and I'm ready for the next week.