We've Arrived in Garden City Kansas

At 7 a.m. on Saturday, 15 January 2011 we left Provo heading for the Colorado Colorado Springs Mission home. It was a long nine hour trip on I-70 through central Utah and over the Rockies down into Denver then south to Colorado Springs. We were so grateful that there was no snow in the mountains and only a bit of fog in the morning to slow us down a bit, but it was really a beautiful drive, though long. However, as we drove through the high mountains, we realized what a blessing it had been that we didn’t try to go through them during that stormy night when we were traveling in the opposite direction.

The Colorado Rocky Mountains rise high in Western Colorado. I-70 crosses them at a high elevation where there is a lot of snow. Many skiers were on the slopes visible from the road. On this trip, the road was open and safe, but there are several places where there are gates that can be closed to stop traffic when the road is snow-covered and too dangerous to travel.

On arriving at the mission home we were greeted by Elder and Sister Gifford, the housing coordinators of the mission, who took us on a tour of the mission Office. Afterwards, they took us over to their home where we were to stay the night. That evening they had a dinner party that included several of the senior missionaries working in the area. Our mission president was not there as he was attending a zone conference in another area of the mission, but it was nice to meet with the Giffords, the Paces and the Cherrys (who all work in the Mission Office in Colorado Springs), the Williams (President Williams is a counselor in the mission presidency), and the Basses (who are missionaries to the military ward in Colorado Springs area). Elder and Sister Bass said they are in the same ward with our nephew, Jeff Whitford and his wife, Mindy . We wished we had time to visit with Jeff and Mindy, but we were scheduled to leave the next morning to follow the Giffords out to our assigned area in Garden City, Kansas. We did get to talk to Jeff on the phone later, however.

After a night’s rest at the Giffords place and Sacrament meeting that started at 8:30 a.m., we headed out on the 5 hour trip to our new area. The Giffords were so kind as to bring along a picnic lunch which we shared part way out. When we arrived at our new apartment the Zone leaders of the Garden City zone, Elder Lewis and Elder Murphy, were here to greet us.


Our car by our apartment building here in Garden City. Our front door is at the end of the sidewalk, in the back of the building.

Garden City, Kansas is one of the larger little cities in the state, but it is not a big city with skyscrapers. It is surrounded by agricultural fields and stock yards. On one of the roads close into town there are five dealerships selling tractors and other farming equipment. There are several meat-packing plants in the area that provide work so that there is little unemployment. Thousands have come here from Mexico and other depressed countries to find work. There are a significant number of Hispanic stores spread out around the city, and large numbers of Hispanic people can be found everywhere we have been. They are apparently used to being accepted quite well by the Anglo-American citizens, as they will easily smile and talk with us when we meet them. Our impression after just a few days is that this is a friendly little city.



Here is a picture of a water tower near a main street in Garden City, Kansas. There is also a sign identifying a local Garden City bank.

There is a “Garden City Kansas Stake” and it is huge in size. However there is only one ward in Garden City, though there used to be another Spanish branch. Lack of Priesthood leadership forced them to combine the branch with the larger English-speaking ward. The G.C. ward building started out as a very small building, but has been enlarged in stages until it is now a large building with a stake office suite. The stake boundaries extend about 100 miles in all directions. Some members of the Garden City ward live about 30-40 miles out of the city, east or west.

Family members who have driven between Columbus, Ohio and American Fork, Utah will remember Kansas as a long, flat state where the road just goes on in a straight line for mile after mile. That is a good description of the route of I-70. G.C. is south of I-70, and here the roads aren’t quite as straight. And they are not as smooth as the Autobahns of Germany, or even of I-70.

Traffic doesn’t move at high speeds here, however, so it really doesn’t matter that the signs warning you of a railroad crossing may only be a hundred feet before the tracks. The RR crossings are really pretty smooth here – not like those in other states where the constant changes in the weather result in them being very rough. There are a lot of tracks, evidence that a lot of big stuff is on the move. Refrigerated cars carry a lot of beef out to the nation.

It is amazing how many radio towers there are. While driving home last night, we counted 13 that were visible at one time. All of them are at least 200 feet tall, with the majority twice that or even taller. There are a bunch of radio and TV stations in town - probably 8-10. We don't watch or listen, but we see signs.

It was snowy in Colorado Springs, CO when we left there, but the further East we came the less snow we saw. There wasn’t any snow to be seen when we got to G.C., but that didn't mean winter was behind us. The next day it started to rain, but with the ground temperature being way below freezing, the roads quickly became a network of black ice. We had to drive very carefully for a couple of days. We had to postpone our first meeting with the ward's Bishop because he cancelled all meetings to let people stay home and stay off the roads



At left and below are pictures of ice-covered trees and street signs during the ice storm. The sun is shining through the ice-covered trees.



There is an old city center in G.C. that is no longer the heartbeat of the city. There are some really nice homes there, but also a lot of the “lower” middle class. City sprawl has moved North, and East. There are some really nice areas to the South too, but they have been built a mile or so out of town, with just the tracks and some farms in between. Some of the old homes in the old city are huge, and would have to have been real mansions in their day, but the newer parts don’t seem to have been built to display the owner’s wealth. It is refreshing to find people of wealth content to live in reasonable homes.

Walmart and a gaggle of other stores have been built in what was just a few years ago open fields on the East side of the freeway. But there are also home-grown stores in other parts of town that certainly meet the needs in a pleasant way. There is a KFC and an A&W within just a couple of miles, so we have all that is really needed. Oh, yeah, they do have a few pizza shops for those emergency meals, and there are also a lot of Mexican places, but they tend to be smaller “Ma and Pa” eateries. It would be good to understand the Spanish menu when going to eat there. G.C. is a place with a past that has not been outgrown, and a future that is becoming accepted.

One of our first concerns was to get our apartment set up properly. There have been missionaries living here for several years, and this was evident from all of the pin holes in the walls. We bought some wallboard "mud" and some trowels, and we've been able to fill all of those and get it looking nicer. Some of the old furniture was pretty battered, and we’ve repaired or upgraded some. We got an internet connection installed, and it is a good one – better than what we had in Columbus - even though we didn’t have to pay a high premium to get it. We have fiber to the building, and coax inside with wireless connections to the computer.

One of the first things we learned when we arrived was that the Zone Leaders had scheduled appointments for us to visit some of the ward and stake leaders during the first two weeks. We’ve used our GPS extensively, and it seems to know its way around better here than in Ohio. We've found streets that weren't even shown on the maps. We’ve had multiple short visits or dinner appointments almost every day, and we have nothing but praise for the leadership. We attended our first Ward Missionary Correlation meeting this week (it was cancelled last week due to the icy roads), and I’ve never seen a ward’s leadership with such excellent missionary orientation. No wonder they had over 90 baptisms in the ward last year, and 10 already during the first month of this year. They are doing pretty well with retention too, and are only one percentage point below church average. Our role will be to help with that.

Our zone leader, Elder Lewis, on the right, with the district leader from the Dodge City district. They were in our house for a training session.

Spanish is common here. With five sets of missionaries in the ward (counting us) two are full-time Spanish, a third is working with both English and Spanish, and only one set (plus us) working only in English.

Big industrial-style hay farms, huge feed lots to fatten cattle, and mega-sized meat packing plants provide quite a stable economy. Tyson has one of their meat packing plants here. Many of the church members work in agri-business occupations that don't exist in Ohio. Like the Germans, these people do their farming with zeal.

Our introduction to our missionary assignment has been a “wow” experience. Of course we had four and a half days at the MTC during which we struggled to become acquainted with “Preach My Gospel”, but we find that was really just an introduction. The implementation of that goes way beyond what we learned in the MTC. We feel like we are just beginning to comprehend the general features of the system that has been put to work to produce the high rate of success the mission has had. They have been ranked second in the world in their baptisms. With all of the special attention to our training that we’ve had, we might yet get the vision and be able to participate in it in a proper way. The Zone Leaders have met with us almost every day with some kind of training for us. We are very blessed.