Despain Family: October 27th 2019 Rotorua

Kia ora

Missions are FABULOUS AND BUSY!!!!

While we seem to be getting into a routine, there are always “curve balls” (notice the tie to October and World Series Time?!?! Linda didn’t get it!)…

Our weeks go like this

Week 1. Prepare for Transfers (Missionaries going out, missionaries coming in and various other missionaries moving from one location to another…)

Week 2. Transfers

Week 3. Zone Conferences with Interviews

Week 4. The rest of the Interviews (Over 40 hours of interviews total!)

Week 5. MLC

Week 6. Quiet Week! (Not always!)

Then Start all over again…

Some of the “curve balls” are medical / nursing related…

Not all of the 50 or so calls & texts she gets everyday from the missionaries are critical, but it does take time – sometimes its explaining that leaving left over chicken out all day and then eating is the cause of their upset stomach and no it is not appendicitis… Or the breaking out itchiness is really Scabies (Scabies is a contagious skin disease caused by a non-visible parasite called the scabies mite. Symptoms include itchy skin and rash)

Linda shared how Scabies is passed along – Handshakes! Every time you meet with missionaries, everyone shakes everyone’s hands when they arrive and when they leave…So I decided to start doing a “Wynn Fist Bump” (sometimes with the “boom” and sometimes without…) instead of shaking everyone’s hands several times each meeting – It’s catching on… And we have avoided getting Scabies so far…

Elder Rojas made it safely home to England – Chicken Pox appears to have passed – Doctor visits are still quite common (we go with the missionaries to help ask the right questions) – Dental work has been a bit of a surprise (cavity, impacted wisdom teeth and root canals)…

Other “curve balls” are logistical…

Our missionaries come from either the Auckland MTC or Provo MTC which means a pick-up at the airport (we only had to go to the airport [which is 1-1/2 hours to 2 hours away, depending on traffic] 2 times this week!) – When we have regular transfers, everyone gets picked up at once – sometimes we get mid-month incoming missionaries and have to adjust as they “trickled” in this week (3 different trips to Auckland – fortunately there are several of us to share this activity!)

Last week we finished up our second week of interviews in Rotorua – we were able to find some time to hike a Redwood Forest…