To be honest, this "mission" is more like a job than a typical mission. It has taken me awhile to understand that but I'm learning to appreciate that any contribution we make to helping missionaries do well is worthwhile, even if we're not the ones out teaching and serving others.
There are many others who do this type of work in the area office. There are volunteer attorneys, real estate experts, couples over public affairs, humanitarian projects, family services, young single adults, self-reliance. And that's just in our office. There's a financial office with "missionaries" and of course, a family history center and temple which are partially staffed with missionaries. Here's a picture taken Sunday when Elder Hallstrom spoke to us. Surrounding him and his wife is the Area Presidency - Texeiras, Kearons and Dyches. The rest is our new senior social group. (We're on the far right).
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So here's our office where we go most days. (That's Frank helping set up our computers).
Rand's main responsibility is to advise and consult with mission presidents' wives or nurses about the young and old missionaries' health concerns. He writes no prescriptions and only makes suggestions about treatment, including seeing a doctor. Rand's on call 24 hours a day. In our assigned missions there are about 3000 missionaries serving in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, one mission in Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and France. There's a non-English-speaking nurse in one of the French missions so I get to help Rand with her. He also reviews and passes off the health histories on missionary applications from those countries. There are also meetings to attend, reports to fill-out, notes to make and follow-ups with sick missionaries.
The main medical issues in order are orthopedics, gastrointestinal, psychiatric (there are three mental health advisors), trauma/accidents, neurological, infectious disease, dermatology, and ear/nose/throat It's gratifying because he explains things well and is a great resource for making decisions. He is enjoying the relationships he's developing with mission presidents and their wives. They are remarkable and show their love of the Lord through this huge service. The challenges of the job are not being able to get the health information other than by second hand reports, trying to understand what's going on long-distance, and not being able to make decisions about treatment. He is an advisor and not a care-giver or decision-maker.
I'm Rand's "lovely assistant". This is what several of us wives whose husbands have a job and we come along for the ride call ourselves. This picture shows some of us doing a project - Debbie Riggs and Marsha Castleton's husbands are in the Office of General Counsel, Sharon Greenwood and I are the doctors' wives. Marsha is also the Frankfurt mission's nurse so we helped her make packets for the missionaries one day in our office.
I finally found a job last week helping track service missionaries in the Europe area. These are young and older church members who want to volunteer for the church but aren't serving missions. It's a computer job but fun to work with Silvia from Italy, Olinda from Portugal and Coraline from France.
Which reminds me of our international ward. There are members from 42 countries and we come together on Sunday mornings to worship the Savior. We always have visitors; in fact Sunday a Ryser family from Switzerland showed up!
So that's why most of our posts are about eating or trips. What we do during the week isn't that picturesque.
