'Senior Missionary of the Year'

Business: Our son, Joel emailed me a one-line summary of the BYU-Hawaii game: BYU was in the rear end kicking business and business was GOOD!

Now that we have conducted the business, herein follows some other stuff. So it does.

Top o’ the mornin’ to you. No one here actually says that, but I know you expect them to, so I am fulfilling your expectations, so I am.

Missionaries are divided into small groups for reporting and training purposes. For example, we are assigned to the Bangor District. Besides us, we have two young elders and two young sisters who are in our district. All of the districts in Northern Ireland form a zone. Our zone is called the Belfast Zone. In our zone, we have two senior couples and 18 young missionaries. Down south, in the Republic of Ireland, there are an additional two senior missionary couples and one set of older single sister missionaries. In Scotland, there are several more senior missionary couples. Remember this, as there will be a quiz later. So there will be.

We had a district meeting this past week. Our district leader is a young missionary from Utah. He is a great teacher and missionary. This does not bear on the story, but I just want you to know. There was another district having their meeting in the same building at the same time. Our zone leaders, who are both young elders from England were also there, to make sure the doctrine was pure. So they were.

We had a lovely (this is a great adjective used in Northern Ireland – everything that is good is either lovely or brilliant) doctrinal discussion about scripture study and some other stuff. At the conclusion of the meetings, all of the missionaries decided to go eat lunch together. We went to a Thai restaurant that offered a lovely lunch special for £6 (approximately $9.60 in Wasatch County money). As we waited for our food, the young missionaries were having a good time, as they are want to do on these occasions. The conversation turned somehow to one of them quoting Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. So it did.

The elder said, “I don’t know how to put this, but I’m kind of a big deal….People know me.”

After several seconds of silence, I said, “Do you have many leather-bound books?”

The entire group erupted into sustained laughter. One of the zone leaders, Elder Thomas, leaned over to me and said, “I think you have just won senior missionary of the year.”

I was delighted that they were delighted that an old guy like me even knew what they were talking about. It was lovely. So it was.

You are now asking yourself, “How can Elder Blickenstaff top this?” Well, I am glad you asked. Today Sister Blickenstaff and I drove about 10 miles south to the neighbouring city of Lisburn, where we attended church meetings with the Lisburn Ward. We had a lovely time and even met a lady who knew where Heber City is. Years ago she was an exchange student and attended high school in Evanston, Wyoming. Now I know that people from Heber City don’t always think about Evanston as a potential answer to the question, “What large city is Heber City near?” However, I recommend it should you be given the opportunity in the future. So I do.

Anyway, we really enjoyed the people and meetings. The testimonies were good and we felt honoured to be there. At the conclusion of the meeting block, we had a short discussion with the bishop about the YSA in his ward, who are really a great strength to our Centre. Finally, we were finished and headed out to the car park (a Northern Irish term for parking lot). So we did.

We punched up the address to our flat in the GPS and headed off. Now you might be asking yourself why didn’t we just retrace our route and just return back the way we came? Well, Mr. Know It All, it ain’t that simple! For one thing, the road we came on was closed. Now you might be asking yourself how did we come over on it if it was closed? Well, Mr. Know It All, we aren’t saying, just in case the NIPS (Northern Ireland Police Service) are monitoring this blog. Suffice it to say that we could not go back the way we came. Like many of life’s highways, once you make up your mind there is no turning back. So there is not.

The first three routes that our trusty GPS took us down all ended up in the same place, staring a ROAD CLOSED sign in the face. Finally, we just decided to drive off in some randomly selected direction and ignore the first several orders to turn. This decisive action eventually got us into a roundabout. For those of you who live in Utah and have never been to the state’s only roundabout in Park City, a roundabout is what they build in Europe to control traffic at an intersection instead of using traffic lights. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, where civilised people still drive on the left side of the road from the right side of the car and spell civilised with an s rather than a z, one always enters the roundabout turning left. You drive around the circle to the left until you come to the road you desire to exit onto and then you signal left, and turn right. Yes, for those of you who are still with me, you have to turn left to go right, but not until you have first signalled your intention to go right by turning on your left blinker. So you do.

[Note: in Belfast, it is quite common to add a wee 3 or 4 word sentence at the end of whatever it is about which you are talking. So it is. The addition is completely superfluous and adds no clarity or helpful information whatsoever. So it does not.

Anyway, after entering the roundabout, I became brain paralysed (which is correctly spelled here with an s) and could not decide where to exit. So we drove around the circle several times while we held a calm conversation about the probability of getting home. At one point, Sister Blickenstaff helpfully said, “I sure hope we get home before dark.”

After a good laugh, I just decided I should do the manly man thing – I closed my eyes and punched it. When I opened them, we were driving down a lovely country lane. About 6 miles later, we popped out on a road we recognised (can you tell I have British English turned on in me wee spell checker?) and had an otherwise uneventful drive home, arriving just before dark. It was brilliant. So it was.

Now, you may be asking yourself, “How in the world can you ever top that, Elder Blickenstaff?”

Well, I am glad you asked. I had a wee eye infection when I first arrived here. I had to go down and register with a local physician. The only doctor’s office we had seen was just a mile down the road so we went there. There was a lot of paper work so we decided to both sign up, in the even that Sister Blickenstaff might need to return at some point in the future with a malady. The nice lady helping us asked if I wanted a male doctor, which I did. She asked if Sister Blickenstaff wanted a female doctor, which she did.

So we are all set up and they asked us both to return and have an initial exam, just to make sure they had a baseline on us. We went back and it was all well and good. Until I started to read the handout they gave me about the medical practice. In the handout, I discovered two interesting facts:

1. By law they are only allowed to treat patients who live, “within four miles southeast and southwest of the office and three miles north.” In fact, they are the only doctors in that prescribed area. While we definitely qualify, I just thought it was an interesting restriction on their practice.
2. All of the physicians in this practice are gynecologists. This is the first time in my life that I can brag to my cousins, “My doctor is a gynecologist.”

If any of you run into any of our children, please encourage them to write; we miss them. So we do.

It’s lovely, so it is.

Elder Blickenstaff