Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Mission home vs the earthquake

I have become the unofficial facilities guy for the mission home.  I've been submitting work orders to get things cleaned up and repaired in anticipation of the new mission president who is scheduled to arrive July 1.  Getting the earthquake damage fixed has been part of that.
  Today we had a work crew come out to clear the plaster off the main bearing wall at the center of the house.  A bearing wall means it bears the weight of the walls above and ultimately the roof of the house.
  This a photo of the bearing wall at the side of  one of the doors.  I've been very worried about this from the day of the earthquake.
The door won't close since the earthquake, because the bricks in a big wedge moved and forced the door frame to bow.  Now that the plaster has been cleared away, the movement is obvious.
  It is a little harder to see this, but there is a heavy slab of concrete above the door - the lintel of the door.  Its job is to hold up the wall above the door opening.  Often in today's brick homes the lintel is poured over a much larger width than this one is.  Anyway, the broken wedge of bricks extends about the same distance to the right as the lintel, which means that if they pull out the broken bricks to repair the wall, there won't be anything holding the lintel up.
  The workmen stopped at this point, because they have to have an official inspector come in, assess it, and tell them what to do next.

Somewhat related to this; we anticipate being reassigned to another location, but we won't go until the church authorizes church meetings again, AND the construction on the Mission Home is complete.  The mission president wants me to be here to oversee the work.  And we aren't really needed anywhere else until the members meet together again.
   It is interesting that the country of Croatia has officially authorized church meetings to resume, as part of their phased relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions.  The official announcement of it was phrased in terms of Catholic church meetings, which applies to most people here.  But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has not yet announced that we should resume church meetings.  We won't be holding any meetings until the leadership in Salt Lake give us the OK.


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