Mission Memories -- Port Charlotte -- Sister Vega: Part Two

Apparently the only time I took pictures in Port Charlotte was when I was wearing my white dress.  :-) Seems like every picture I am in -- that is what I am wearing.

I guess, Sister Vega and I  were having too much fun to take very many pictures because I don't have very many of her compared to my other companions.

So this post will conclude my time with Sister Vega.  :-( Hopefully I will be able to share most of the stories anyway.  If my memory holds up :-)

This was at a Member's house.  As I recall, she let us pick a bunch of oranges off of the tree behind me.  :-)

this was kind of a strange area.  They had a bunch of streets and street signs and no houses.  Apparently, they started to develop it and ran out of money or something.  There were areas that were developed nearby.  But lots of streets and signs without any houses.  I guess it's obvious why I am standing by this particular sign :-)

obviously we were out tracting again  -- As is apparent by the clipboard and book of Mormon that I'm holding.

One thing I wanted to mention about Florida, and specifically tracting was about all of the animals.  We would come across.  In areas like this picture above, where there is lots of grass, and more densely populated.  There were always lots of lizards running around as we walked.  Our footsteps probably scared them.  But you would kind of have to watch where you are walking or you could easily step on one.

I already mentioned the frogs would come out when it rained.  And of course the mosquitoes.  And don't forget the alligators :-).  There were also black snakes.  I don't know what their technical name is but they were all black.  :-) So we called them black snakes.  Anyway, one time I was driving and a black snake was in the middle of the road.  There was nothing I could do but try to straddle him between the wheels to avoid hitting him.  He was pretty long, and barely fit between the wheels.  Although I do think I avoided killing him :-).  Oh yes and let's not forget all the cockroaches.  More on that in the next area.  :-)

And of course there were the usual dogs and cats.  We saw a cat kill a bird once while tracting. :-(

So if you don't like animals, the Florida Tampa Mission is not where you want to serve :-)

I guess this would be a good time to share an animal story.

Sister Vega and I were going to the church to do our nightly call-in with our zone leader.  So it must've been about 9:15 PM.  And of course it was dark.  So I got my key out to the church and was unlocking the door.  As I opened the door to go inside the church a frog fell on my head.

Sister Vega started panicking and yelled, "Sister Stone, there's a frog on your head!" 

I remained calm.  I don't remember if she got it off my head or if I brushed it off.  Or if it jumped off.  But I thought it was funny that she was panicking and I wasn't :-).  It was quite hilarious!

this was our district leader and his wife.  I can't remember their names.  :-(  I think that might have been one of their investigators.  I really don't remember who she is.

The funny thing about having district leaders was that we never has district meeting.  The only time we saw them was at a ZDM or zone conference.  We always had a senior missionary couple as a district leader.  Until my last area.  More on that later.

another version of the same picture.

these cars were everywhere.  I thought they were cute.  It is an extermination company.  And the cars always looks like mice.  So of course I had to get my picture by one of them.

this was a part member family.  She was a member.  He was not.  We taught him the discussions, and he was baptized!  His name is Jay.  The one thing I remember about them is they had a son who was in the military.  They always talked about him.

If you are observant, you will notice that Sister Vega is wearing my dress.

yet another self-portrait.

Sister Vega was sometimes a little pessimistic.  One time while we were tracting she started complaining about everything.  We were tracting in a fairly upscale neighborhood, which generally meant we would not have much success.  So needless to say, we weren't having much success tracting.  After a few hours of not having any success, Sister Vega started complaining about the heat, her feet hurting, wasting our time because no one wanted to listen to us, the rain, the humidity, being thirsty, just everything.  And I was just sitting there listening to her vent.

Well, let me back up a little bit.  In Florida, a lot of the streets, especially in Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda are paved using broken seashells instead of gravel.  I thought it was pretty cool myself.  

So we were walking along in between houses and Sister Vega tripped on one of the seashell pieces sticking up out of the asphalt.  Then, without missing a beat, said something like, "They don't even have normal roads here -- they're made out of seashells instead of rocks."  At that point, I totally lost it.  I started laughing so hard I couldn't control myself. Maybe you had to be there, but it was hilarious.  She didn't even realize how much she was complaining.

Hurricane Andrew.  I think this was actually the day of the hurricane.

Sister Vega standing in front of a Toys "R" Us store with the windows and doors boarded up.

I remember in the days before the hurricane hit.  We were receiving several pages from our mission president.  Updating us on the status of the hurricane.  And a lot of the people we were tracting out were telling us that a hurricane was coming.

In Port Charlotte/Punta Gorda.  We were on the southern part of the mission.  I think the only areas more southern than us were Fort Myers and Naples.  And they were both Elders areas.

Well, the hurricane ended up hitting in Homestead Florida which was in the Fort Lauderdale mission down by Miami.  And it's about a 3 Hour drive, I think from Port Charlotte.

I don't remember if we were advised to stay indoors that day.  I don't think we were because if President had told us to stay home-- I'm sure we would have.  But as it was, we went out tracting that day.  It was rather useless because everybody thought we were crazy for being out.  But, the weather wasn't really that bad.  A little more windy than usual and rainy, of course.  We actually had tropical storm hit, Madeira Beach.  When I was serving in Seminole, which was a lot worse than hurricane Andrew, for that area.

looking back, we probably should have just stayed home, but staying home would've driven me crazy.  I didn't like being idle.  And it was actually kind of fun to be out during a hurricane when nobody else was out.  We had the whole city to ourselves :-) as you can tell by the pictures, no cars in the parking lot.

Sister Vega in front of some stores with the tape on windows.  In preparation for the hurricane.

if you look really close.  You can see me standing in front of the store.  :-)

standing in front of the mailboxes, where we checked our mail everyday.

undoubtedly retrieving a letter from dad :-)

not sure why I have this picture.

again in front of an orange tree at a member's house.

Cruisin' In Our Ford Tempo with the pedal to the metal and still going slow.  :-)

I think I skipped this picture in my last post.  If not, I guess you'll get to see a duplicate :-)

pretending to go in the swimming pool.  This is at, a member's house in Port Charlotte.

I'm actually not sure who the girl in the picture is with us.  :-( With all these pictures of her I should remember who she is.  I don't :-(

I think this is the member's house whom we borrowed the vanilla ice tape from :-)

I seem to remember working on our lyrics and practicing at this house.   

it looks like we had a lot of fun with this girl, but I don't know who she is.  :-)

I was wondering what this picture was but then it came to me. I was wondering what Sister Vega was holding.  Now I remember that she used to fold her letters to the mission president like a frog.  :-)

I think she even had me doing it :-).  I don't know if President Brimhall appreciated or not.

For those of you unfamiliar with mission life, we had to write a letter to our mission president once a week.  And we also had to -- in the FTM -- keep track of every minute of every day of how we spent our time.  So for instance, 

930 to 9:45 AM.  Travel time

945 to 1245 tracting

1245 to 1:15 PM lunch

115-415 PM tracting

415-445 member visit

445-5:00 PM, travel time

5 PM to 6 PM DA with member

six o'clock-6:30 PM, travel time

630-8:00 PM, teach third discussion

8:00-9:00 PM Street finding

9:00 PM-9:15 PM, travel time

915-9:30 PM call in's

Then we would have to add up all our productive hours for the day.

so for the above example it would be: 6 hours door finding, 1.5 hours member visit, 1.5 hours teaching, 

1 hour street finding, 15 minutes call in.  Total hours: 10.25

We had to do that everyday, and at the end of the week.  We would add up our hours for the week.  Which generally were between 70 and 80 as I recall.

noticing the cassette tape on the table reminded me of making tapes to send home to our families.  I will talk more about that later.

my hair looks extra F dudish -- yes, I just made that word up :-)

looks like I should be wearing a RATT T-shirt :-) brings back memories of sitting behind mullets and heavy metal T-shirts in junior high.

You gotta love the awesome hairstyles from the 80s and 90s!

the legendary duo of Stone/Vega.

Sister Vega had a tape recorder that she liked to bring while tracting and traveling in the car in which she would talk to her family or boyfriend (not for long -- he quit writing her fairly early on) and send tapes to them.  So that was a common thing with her.  In fact, I think I followed suit and started doing the same.  We probably have several tapes that I sent home to my family.  That would be weird to listen to those again.  I'll bet a big theme of those tapes is, "hated it."  :-)

That was a fun way to pass the time in between houses.  Sister Vega and I also liked to talk about the cute Elders in our zone.  :-) That was a frequent topic of conversation.  As I mentioned before, as sisters we were kind of isolated from the rest of the zone.  We even had separate P-days than the Elders. so the only time we saw them was at our zone meetings once a month or so.  I'm sure if we would have actually gotten to know the Elders very well, we would have just thought they were dorks :-)

probably one of those streets with seashells instead of gravel in the asphalt :-) of course this is how we spent most of our time -- therefore many pictures of door finding (tracting)

Did I mention that it was a mission rule in the great Florida Tampa Mission that we had to tract a minimum of 15 hours per week?

It might not sound like much but that is a lot of walking around.  It actually became one of my favorite things to do.  And also was the way we found most of the people we baptized.

I was always very diligent in making sure we got our 15 hours in.  Some weeks, when we were busy teaching or whatever else we were doing, we would end up having to do six or seven hours of tracting on Saturday to get our hours in for the week.  That's a lot for one day!  But I always enjoyed it :-)

It seems like a shame to me that missionaries now don't get to have that experience.  Those are some of my fondest memories from my mission.

Sister Vega with her letter to President Brimhall.  :-) Once again, wearing my dress :-)

I think the five on the wall was our baptism goal.

I'm not sure what this picture is about, but I'm sure it was hilarious :-)

once again -- beautiful F dude hair :-) and of course I'm wearing the white dress again.

Sister Vega was transferred to somewhere on the Atlantic coast.  I'm thinking it was near Cape Canaveral. Vero Beach sounds familiar. unfortunately I never got to go to the Atlantic side of Florida.  I was always on the Gulf Coast.

Anyway, when Sister Vega left, I received a greeny to train from the MTC -- Sister Wilson. Sister Wilson was a lot of fun also.  Wilson and Vega were my two favorite companions.  I'm sure I could tell many more stories about Sister Vega, but this will have to suffice for now.  :-)

Sister Wilson and Sister Vega actually ended up serving together later on -- I'll bet they had a lot of fun together also.

The last I heard from Sister Vega was a year or two after our missions and she told me that she was marrying a military guy -- who unfortunately was a nonmember -- and she was living in Virginia. I was rather sad that she was marrying a nonmember. I hope she was able to convert him.  After all, she was the master of flirt to convert.  :-)  I lost all contact with her after that.  :-(