Vehicles were inspected last week. Sisters Machado, K. Hall, and Nichols couldn't wait to show me the sign they have on their dashboard.

On Saturday there was a Senior Missionaries Conference and 15 of us attended "Heritage Days" at a park near downtown Edmonton. This annual event features dozens of big white tents scattered throughout the park showcasing food, costumes, crafts, and entertainment from immigrants' home countries. This year there were 71 nations represented. It was an amazing sight! 

Croatian Doughnut (we shared!)

Last week during inspections, technicians installed tracking devices in all the mission vehicles (except the Pattisons). These devices, called "Tiwis," primarily monitor speed, seat belt use, and aggressive driving. It will now be my assignment to monitor the driving behavior of the missionaries, and mentor them when the devices register violations. The Canada Edmonton Mission and one other mission in the US are the last two missions in North America to receive these devices.

Several years ago when the Church was evaluating the use of Tiwis, they established benchmarks by collecting data for 30 days from 1400 mission vehicles. Normally when violations occur drivers are alerted, but during this evaluation drivers did not receive alerts. The recorded violations were quite revealing:

                                                                 Speeding: 105,945
                                                             90+ mph speeding: 370
                                                           Hard accelerations: 1,171
                                                                 Hard brake: 1.109
                                                                 Hard bump: 2,936
                                                                 Hard turn: 12,695
                                                                 Seat belts: 12,634

Interestingly once the device alerts were turned on, violations dropped by over 90% in every category. We were told that the single greatest liability the Church has is missionary drivers. Reportedly the use of these devices and the resulting improvement in driving behavior by the missionaries is saving the Church millions of dollars.