2 Hostile clerks and crashed servers

 What a week it has been! Nothing out of the ordinary and nothing particularly funny this week. I think of Pres. Hinckley's quote that most of life is ordinary and that is true.
    After Sarah's baptism last week, a somewhat hostile ward clerk approached my husband and said," Is the mission going to get this baptism entered into the system or do I need to do it?" "The mission" happens to be me in this case and it is "my mission" to accomplish this. No offense taken and no, I don't need your help to do what i do. Two days later an Elder phoned me to say his ward clerk was really upset with me because I hadn't entered a baptism yet. I calmly  ask for the name--not recognizing it at all. When I ask for the date I almost laughed....7-6-12. "Elder, we weren't even a mission until 7-1-13." So this upset clerk will have to find someone else to blame. That was a year before I got here.
    One of the miracles we are seeing every day is that people approach us. Our UPS man has been coming into our office daily for months now. He just randomly stopped at my desk and said, "Where do all these missionaries live?" I explained they lived from the Wisconsin border down into Indiana. "Who pays for their apartments?" I explained they pay their own way. My own children saved for their missions. "Who pays for your apartment? Does this job pay for it?" (Wait for it----I'm going to blow a mind here) "We aren't paid for the work we do here every day. This is all volunteer. We work for free--8-10 hours a day....and we pay for our own car, gas, apartment,insurance, food,or whatever we need" Then came the kicker...."Why would you all do this?" (oh, did I fail to mention there are 84,000 strong around the world) Why would we do this? 1. We love The Lord and have made covenants to build His kingdom here on earth
2.  We love serving these young Elders and Sisters and would do anything to help them succeed
3.We made a goal years ago that is now being fulfilled. We go hand in hand as a companionship.That is when we are at our very best.
4.Hopefully our example will prompt someone to follow in our footsteps and have the same wonderful experience we are having.
    There are 7 1/2 million people in our mission. We are amazed by reports from our missionaries that many they come into contact with have never heard of the Mormons. We have plenty of opportunities here.
    The Lord's hand is in the details. I said a quick,humble prayer this week in front of my computer, "Heavenly Father, there are many areas that never get a referral. Could they just get one occasionally?" That day I assigned referrals to 6 companionships who had never had a referral. I got a Polish language referral and when I assigned it--it was in the area of one of our Polish sisters. Coincidence? Not at all. Then Thursday and Friday all of the servers at BYU crashed and our referral system crashed with it. I can't assign anything without that system!
    Thus, the field trip with Elder Taggart to Chicago to buy parking permits for our cars in downtown. When your companion says,"Lock the doors as soon as I get out and don't let your Iphone show." I happened to be talking to a daughter. By the time we leave here we will have seen the best and worst of every neighborhood, I believe.
    On our P-day this week we went to the Skokie Holocaust Museum. There are 7,000 survivors of the holocaust in that city alone. We have a huge Polish population in Chicago. It was a sobering experience, reading, seeing, actually standing in one of the rail cars that transported Jews to the concentration camps. Our name tags were a reminder that our past holds some injustices--even in this very state of Illinois.
    I was reminded of our need to hold family close to us. I felt a need to shout to all the world, BE NICE TO EACH OTHER!!! I was haunted by what standing idly by and remaining silent can mean. I came back to my modest apartment more grateful for sacrifices made by my ancestors. Only two words this week......BE KIND!
Love,
Sister Taggart