Tiwi

Oct 19, 2015

Dear Family,

This week was long. It was probably the longest week of my mission, so here we go. 

Monday was P-Day. Nothing special happened.

Tuesday was a normal day.

Wednesday... Wednesday is where things get interesting. That's when we drove up to Louisville to get the Tiwi's installed. The meeting was long. We had to be there at 9:30am and we didn't leave until about 5pm. The Tiwi representative from Salt Lake was probably the most serious guy I've ever met. He said everything with a straight face. Some of the missionaries were asking really stupid questions about speeding and he just kept rolling his eyes. Pres. Brough and Elders Money & Bennett gave good trainings on member-missionary work. After the meeting we went to Mellow Mushroom. After hearing about that place for the last 6 months I finally got to eat there. Boy was it over-hyped! I have no idea what the other missionaries see in that place. It was okay. It did not agree with my stomach at all. After Mellow I went on exchange to Glasgow with Elder Gough. We rode with the Sulphur Well Elders.

Thursday was the exchange day with Elder Gough in Glasgow. We biked all over the place. This was actually a positive bike experience because Glasgow is much flatter than Corydon. I also found Peach Nehi's there.

Friday was a normal day

Saturday Elder Jensen went up to New Albany for a baptism. Elder Larson from Columbia, KY came up and we were on exchange for most of Saturday. It was a fun day. One of the Campbellsville branch presidency's daughters got baptized. That was fun to watch.

Sunday we ate at the Jensons. They have a really, really nice house. Bro Jenson talked a lot about his mission and how much it meant to him. He said he wouldn't be where he is now without his mission.

Well, that was basically this week. It was long. Wednesday didn't help. Miss R's baptism is going to have to be pushed back. Her mom is still apprehensive about it. We're not sure why.

I'll often call upon my JCW's skills and cook myself a delicious deli sammich. Breakfast is soda. Yesterday was my first meal appointment with the Jenson family. Their "weekend home" is down here. They live up in Lexington KY during the week. 

It's getting pretty cold down here. Remember the humid winters? Well I'm about to experience my first one. I'm going to need a lot of thermals. Service varies. There are some weeks where there's none, weeks where there's a little, and weeks where there's a lot. I've done everything from mowing lawns to shoveling donkey crap out of a barn.

Have a nice week!

-Elder Ben

Treasure from Glasgow

*yay* I'm so happy

This card allows us to log into our new friend, Tiwi.

Here's the close up of the Tiwi.

See that little black and white box? That's the Tiwi.
A lot of missionaries suck at driving. They view the mission cars as toys.
The church buys brand new cars for us. I'm driving around in a 2015 Chevy Cruse right now.
They did this to 25 test missions over a period of two months. In those two months
they had over 375,000 violations and about 370 of them were approaching 100mph.

Crestwood and Louisville Zones

Let me tell you what this is. The church installed these at a conference in Louisville on Wednesday.

They monitor our seat belts though the car's computer. They monitor the car's speed through the GPS.

And they monitor any "aggressive" driving (turning fast, RPM violations, breaking too hard, etc.)

through the accelerometer. It talks to you. It sounds exactly like Hal 3000.

If you speed, it'll tell you to slow down. If you don't slow down, it'll tell Pres Brough.

If you don't have your seat belt on, it'll tell you to put it on. If you don't comply, it'll tell Pres Brough.

If you're aggressive with the car, it'll automatically email Pres Brough.

The card I showed you has an RFID chip in it. We have to log into these things in order to drive the cars now.
So when you violate anything, there's a name, time, location, and description of the violation
that Pres Brough will get to see.