Some Joys and Woes of Missionary Work

Today has been a holiday—President’s Day 21 February 2011, and we thought we would be able to find some people home. We had two appointments to teach in the neighboring little city of Lakin, which is about a 25 minute drive west of Garden City. However, in the morning one of the families had to reschedule because of an emergency with their grandpa in the hospital and the mom was gone, then in the early afternoon the other family asked to be rescheduled. So we decided to just go out and try to visit some of the other less-active families on our list, but everywhere we went the people were either gone or couldn’t have us come in to see them. Aside from some productive study and catching up on some important bookwork we needed to do this morning, it has been a rather unproductive day.

In driving around to find people and missing them, we decided to look around for the Sunflower Electric Power Corporation plant. We finally found the plant that Elder Howlett has been looking for ever since we got here in Garden City. It was southwest and way out in the rolling hills of the prairie.

The following pictures are of the Sunflower Electric Power Corporation plant. It is a coal-burning power plant. Notice the moveable conveyor belt next to the large pile of coal that the train brings in.

It seems to provide enough power for all the city and surrounding areas, even though it is a comparatively small coal-burning power plant. Having worked a lot in electrical work, Elder Howlett was fascinated with how a power plant works. The guard wanted to know why we were stopped at the front gate gaping at the plant, but he didn’t mind once we told him what we wanted to see. He was a young man who didn’t know much about how the plant works, but he was very nice anyway.


Here is a photo of the middle section of conveyor belts which carry the coal up to the burning furnaces where the water is heated to steam and pressurized to run the turbines.

On our way back into Garden City we tried to find the Bison range, and the zoo, but only found closed gates. Typical! Oh well, we decided to go have dinner out and stopped at a restaurant called “Jade Buffet.” It turned out to be an Asian buffet and was very good. As we were being seated we found Brother and Sister James from our ward with two other missionaries, Elder Lyman and Elder Viehweg, whom they were treating to dinner. So we joined them at the six seat table and had a good time. We found out that the two elders had been having a hard time finding anyone home, too, so we decided it wasn’t just that we looked too funny or too old to scare off the families we were trying to visit.

This picture shows the front of the Sunflower Electric plant. Notice the long conveyor belt going up to the tall building holding the turbines which create the power. It was fascinating to see.

The James’ and the Elders left before us and when we tried to pay our bill, we found out that Brother James had already paid for our dinner too! That was a very nice treat. Kevin and Stacy James is a couple who are parents of two other active families in the ward and they are owners and operators of a company that makes and fills huge, long silage bags (many of them 300 feet long), which usually just rest on the ground in an owner’s field.



In this photo you can see some steam rising up from the massive area where they condense the majority of the steam to recycle the water back for use in producing more steam to turn the turbines to produce the power. It seems to be a good system.

These bags very successfully preserve the food value of the grains and grasses that are harvested, and are widely used all over Kansas and the neighboring states. The James’ are a very fine family and a great asset to the Garden City Ward.

The first photo shows a silage chopper which chops up the grains and stores them in the back hopper ready to fill the bags and the next photo shows the long white bag of silage resting on an owners property.

So, this is just a little taste of missionary work on President’s Day in Garden City, Kansas.