Shelter in Place

Saturday afternoon, December 26th, while Elders Lunt and Jennings were Skypeing their families, we took Elder Dalton and Elder Gutierrez to the base for a service project. The Pelletier family has a 22-month old son, Victor, and 9 month old twin girls, Rose and Ella. Brother Jon Pelletier is putting up a fence and apparently it's been a work in progress for about a year. The missionaries had helped him some before we got back to Japan, but there was a lot left to be done. We got to their house around 2 p.m., and I helped Sister Pelletier (Candice) inside with cleaning, holding babies (my favorite) and food prep -- Candice had invited us and all four elders to dinner.

Around 5 p.m., Bruce left with Elders Dalton and Gutierrez to go pick up Elders Lunt and Jennings and bring them back for dinner. They'd been gone quite a while when Jon got a call telling him of a "Shelter in Place" order on the base. Apparently, "a suspect got onto a U.S. air base in Japan on Saturday with a suspicious package, prompting a temporary lockdown and investigation."
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/26/world/japan-us-air-base-security-incident/index.html

Shelter in Place means the base is on lockdown and wherever you are, you stay put. If you're shopping at the commissary, you're stuck there. If you're at home, you stay there. If you're out driving your car, you turn around and go home. Which is what Bruce and the elders eventually did -- well, not home, because they couldn't get off the base -- they came back to the Pelletiers after waiting at the gate for some time, not sure what was going on. They were unable to contact the other two elders, since Elders Dalton and Gutierrez had both companionships' phones.

The base and ward Facebook pages helped people communicate and get updates, including the link to the CNN article. Jon was sending and receiving texts to coworkers. Several ward members who live on base couldn't go home, and members who live off the base took them in for a few hours.

We had dinner as planned (with two less missionaries to feed) and then just visited for the next couple of hours. Pelletiers were prepared to pull out cots and blankets, if needed. The elders were great about communicating their rules to Candice, and she was great in supporting them in not watching TV or playing card games. The elders presented a message on the Proclamation on the Family which was appropriate and timely for this family. Jon is not a member and Candice has recently come back to church after about ten years of inactivity. I think the message was well-received.

We told our bishop about this later, and he said, "Ha, that's funny. All the rest of us were fussing about being locked down and locked out of the base, but the Lord knew that the Pelletier's needed some EXTRA INSTRUCTION! Maybe the "suspicious character" was one of the 3 Nephites." Bruce and I got a good chuckle out of that!

Around 8:30, Elder Dalton called President Wada and explained what was going on and that he and Elder Gutierrez likely would not be back in their apartment by their 9:00 curfew. I hated to wear out our welcome at the Pelletiers' home (we'd been there since 2 p.m.!), but we didn't have much choice. We were very happy to hear the "all clear" at about 8:50 p.m., and we immediately headed home, getting the elders back to their apartment just a few minutes late.

And Candice Pelletier must be a glutton for punishment, because we're going back next Saturday to finish the fence and have dinner -- again!

Here's the Pelletier family (am I going to get in trouble for stealing photos from Facebook?). These twins are just adorable and may be the happiest, smiley-ist babies I've ever seen! I told the missionaries this is not normal and that these babies are false advertising!