It's been raining here in Salt Lake City, pretty heavily since last night. Heavy rain, lots of water puddles and idiots who don't slow down in the rain.

I was driving south on I-15 and they have those sign things overhead every few miles. One at about the 400 South exit said "Standing Water Possible. Please drive carefully" and literally a few hundred yards (give or take) later, there was about 6 inches of standing water. I hate driving in the rain.

When I came home, I saw 2 missionaries walking down the sidewalk, under big black umbrellas. At least they weren't on their bikes.

I could see how wet and miserable they were, so I assume they were on the way to a visit somewhere. Whoever they were going to see thought "Oh, those missionaries won't show up in this rain." Put that pot of coffee on!

Invite them over to watch some rated R movies and do some vodka shots. That'll warm them right up!

Oh, I HATE seeing stuff like that. They are just kids - and most of them are good kids. They don't deserve to be put in a situation like that.

I had a similar situation happen a couple of years back, but instead of rain (which we Southerners are used to), we had many days of back to back temperatures that were above 100 degrees hot.

And ours is a humid heat -- not the dry heat you folks have out west. Dry heat is much easier for the body to tolerate. Humid heat will cause people to pass out, have heat stroke, even DIE.


Well, I'm driving down a rural highway, and I see two missionaries WALKING down the side of the highway. This is a remote area. Whereever they went, and whereever they were going, they had a long journey that they would be walking.

At 3 pm in the afternoon - the hottest part of what was probably the hottest day of a very hot summer.


I HAD to make a U-Turn, and go back to pick those boys up.

I don't care what my feelings towards TSCC, they were two boys that needed help. Help I could give them in the form of an air conditioned car.

I stopped to offer them a ride (as a lone female in the car), and I could see the struggle for a brief moment as they were trying to figure out if they should bear this unbearable heat, or accept a ride in an air conditioned vehicle with only one other occupant - a female.

I knew their dilemma, so I quickly said something to the effect of "I'm LDS (it was not the time to point out that I had left the church. I wanted them to feel safe with me, so they would accept my offer to help them), and if you both sit in the back seat, they'll be enough distance to honor your commitment. Your mission president doesn't want to see you have heat stroke out here on this highway."


I saw relief on their faces and they plowed into the back seat of my car. I asked them where they needed to go (which turned out to be back to their apartment) -- and it was 5 MILES from where I picked those boys up! In 100+ degree, humid heat!

The news was telling people to limit their exposure to the outdoors because of how dangerous the heat was, and here these two boys are walking down a two lane, rural highway WITH NO WATER, no umbrella, NOTHING to protect them -- and they STILL had 5 miles to go yet!

I still get angry when I think about it. Did their parents know they were put in that kind of danger?


I took control of the conversation, asking them where they were from, tell me about your life back home -- things like that. Because I did NOT want to discuss church stuff with them.


It was a pleasant ride, and I was glad to do it. By chance, I happened to have a bag of vine ripened tomatoes I had picked out of my garden a few hours earlier. I had other plans for the tomatoes, but when I dropped off the missionaries, I handed them the bag of tomatoes and told them I hoped they would enjoy them.

You made me feel guilty for not stopping to give the missionaries a ride, but I was just going home for a minute and had to go to pickup my 14 year old granddaughter from her friends house, where she had spent the night.

Maybe next time :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2017 12:46AM by memikeyounot.