23 June 2009 – Tuesday
Most of our day was spent taking a Port Durnford sister who has AIDS and her mother to the Government hospital so she could see a doctor and get some medicine. Since she can not walk and does not have a wheelchair, she can not take public transportation. Even if she had a wheelchair she probably could not get on and off the Kombis and buses she would have to take. Besides that the public bus drivers were on strike and all the Kombis – or taxis as they usually call them – were pretty much full. The bus drivers tend to strike on a regular basis – that is once or twice a month. The regular riders – who usually buy a monthly pass – are unhappy of course. Not only do they then have to try and get a place on the now over stuffed kombis but they have to pay for the privilege.
So we were up at 4:30 so we could be at her house by 6 so she could be at the hospital by 7:00. We arrived just after 7:00 and about 5 hours later we were on our way back to her homestead. It was a nice day and we both had books to read – we are re-reading “The Work and the Glory – so the time we had to wait went by rather quickly.I know that some people might be worried about transporting an AIDS patient in their car, but for some reason it does not bother either Mary or myself. I am not sure that I would feel the same way about a seriously ill TB patient – one of the big killers of those with AIDS – but this sister – other than her not being able to walk – is really in fairly good health.Â
When Mary tried to work on the 1920 Utah census tonight, she found that it was already done. It seems everyone wanted to work on it. I still had a couple of batches that I had downloaded a couple of days ago so I could work off line and was able to finish them. I hope I was not holding up the whole census.The ability to download up to 5 batches and work on them offline is a great blessing. That means if you want to you can take work on them while you wait for the doctor, or at the airport, etc. It gives everyone who is interested a way to serve during those times that are often wasted. I just wish I knew another language because there are many different ones needing indexing.