Stolen Cars, 9-11 and Good Company

Had a nice P-day all planned yesterday, but life got in the way of some of the plans!  Diane, Sister Petersen and I had tickets to go to a small, private 9-11 museum in the morning, then planned to relax and get a few things done in the afternoon, then go to the yearly senior missionary dinner at President and Sister Reynolds home in the evening.  One out of three happened, for me!

At 8:00 AM on the way home from working out, I noticed that the newest mission car (red 2017 Subaru Legacy) was missing from the place I parked it, 100 feet or so from the church.  (I try to get any extra cars out of the church parking lot for Sundays.)  I knew the key was in my desk, so I checked first with the missionaries with keys to the office, and they denied it was an inside job.  Then I checked the church mission GPS system, to see if I could see where the car was, and I couldn’t see anything, so I figured the car was stolen and the thieves ripped out the GPS unit, when it started yelling, “No driver!’ every ten seconds (which it does if a driver doesn’t log in).  I finally called the police at about 9:00 and reported a stolen vehicle.  They showed up in only about 15 minutes (and it wasn’t Jamie Reagan and Eddie, much to my disappointment).  (That’s a ‘Blue Bloods’ reference, for the rubes in the audience.)  Much to my embarrassment, the officers, after checking around for 15 minutes, told me that the vehicle had actually been towed away!  They were nice about it (semi-believed my protestations of innocence), gave me the impound lot info, and I slunk away to spring the car from lockup.

That’s another long story that I won’t get into much…Can you believe towing cars is such big business here that they have reverse valet parking at the lot!!  After paying the $200, you show your receipts to a nice uniformed officer in a Prius, and he takes you to your car, wherever it is in the 1000 car lot!  Very efficient way to collect big $$!  (There were 20 in line when I got there, and they got quite a laugh about NYPD towing off a church vehicle!)  Now I just have to figure out if it’s possible to get reimbursed for the damages the towing company did to the car (with under 2000 miles on it).  Looks like they dragged the front wheels sideways, popping and tearing one tire and breaking something in the suspension so it clunks loudly at every bump.  I finally got the car home at about 3PM.  (Two trips there—not enough proof of ownership information my first trip.  The elders that were with me to drive one car home enjoyed seeing some of the nice industrial area in the North Flushing area twice.)  Lesson learned: while concentrating on parking at least 15 feet from a hydrant, don’t overlook the other no parking sign hidden in the construction overhead walkway!  Enough about that!!

Diane and Sister Petersen rode the subway to Manhattan and really enjoyed the small museum!  It was put together by the man who was the official photographer of the 9-11 cleanup and recovery efforts.  The museum is in one room on a 2^nd floor, and consists of pictures and items found during the cleanup.  Both sisters said it was very wrenching emotionally, and said they heard a lot of sobbing (some theirs) during parts of the headset tour.  I wish I could have seen it, although I had another emotionally wrenching experience at the same time!

The largest piece of glass recovered from the twin towers.

The senior missionary dinner was wonderful!  Not much to it—dinner, talking, telling everyone a little about yourselves, getting told how great we are.  What’s not to like!!  We’ve said before how much like working in the temple it is, associating with really good people who love the Lord and are trying their best to serve!  Gives you another glimpse of what Heaven will be like!!  It always amazes me how much different each of our missions are!  Two office couples (but assigned to totally different branches in different areas of the city), a nurse, a family history coordinator couple, a housing couple, a CES couple teaching institute classes, a records retention couple that spends fulltime photographing historical records in downtown Manhattan, and a MLS (Member Leadership Support) couple out in the Hamptons.  As a senior couple, you could stay right here in this mission and serve nine completely different missions!  We love it!  We get tired (exhausted, my companion calls it), but we never doubt we are doing what the Lord wants us to be doing right now!  (But I am still looking forward to being retired sometime…) 

Me and a little friend at the Dyker Heights Zone Conference