If You Put Some Missionaries on Coronavirus Lockdown . . .

Are you familiar with the children’s storybook, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie . . .? It’s about what happens when a hungry mouse shows up on your doorstep and one thing leads to another. You give him a cookie. He asks for milk. You give him milk. He wants a mirror to see if he has a milk mustache. The book was so popular that it became a series of If You . . . books. If You Give a Pig a Pancake . . . If You Give a Moose a Muffin . . . 

And now, it seems that Sowers4Pastors has the opportunity for their own spinoff: If You Put Some Missionaries on Coronavirus Lockdown . . . 

The story will probably go a little something like this:

If you put some missionaries on coronavirus lockdown, they are going to want to stay busy. They’ll look around for projects to keep themselves and their crew working. They’ll probably look up toward the heavens and realize that Russell and Iris need clay tiles on their metal roof. After they put the tiles on that roof, they might look around to admire their handiwork and realize that Allen and Trish need a new roof, too.

Allen and Trish's ten-year-old roof

This idea doesn’t actually come out of the blue. A few weeks earlier, they had experienced some blustery days and that didn’t do Allen and Trish’s roof any favors. The roof is made up of three parts. There’s the interior wooden ceiling, a layer of sheet metal, and then clay tiles on top. When the roof was originally put on, the metal that arrived for the project was kind of cheap and not in the best condition. Still, they went ahead and installed it because it’s what was available. And if you give some missionaries roofing materials, they’re going to put on a roof! At the time, they knew it would only last about ten years.

The missionaries originally think they will just spruce up the existing roof. A third of the back side of the roof never had clay tiles because the original plan was to leave a place where they could use solar power to heat water. That's where the roof was having problems, with wind blowing up the pieces of metal. So, the missionaries first think they will add clay tiles to that spot. However, knowing that ten years had passed since the roof was installed, Allen realizes it would be good idea to go ahead and change out all the metal at this time.

The missionaries and their crew will want to put on new sheet metal with a 50 year life expectancy. They can do this because the hardware stores have now reopened. So they’ll climb onto the roof and start taking off the clay tiles. They’ll plan on removing the metal from the front pitch of the roof first, replacing the metal on that portion,  and putting on the new clay tiles, and then repeating the process on the back pitch of the roof. But when they start to put the clay tiles on the oiled metal roof, they’ll realize that the tiles are sliding right off the roof! The tiles were supposed to just stay in place, as they do on other homes in the area, including Russell and Iris' house. But it seems the missionaries will underestimate the effect of gravity, along with the lack of friction, when clay tiles are put on slippery oiled metal with this level of slope. So, they’ll scrap the original plan and finish replacing the metal roof on the rest of the house. (They’ll plan on trying to put the clay tiles on again after the rains have washed away some of the oil coating.)

If you remove the old metal roof from a house, dust and other sketchy sorts of mud dauber debris are going to fall through the wooden boards that serve as the interior ceiling. This is going to shower a coating of dust down upon every conceivable area of the home, via nooks and crannies in the wooden ceiling.

A lovely depiction of the type of debris falling into the house
(from: https://ssec.si.edu/stemvisions-blog/inside-one-wasps-lair)

If dust showers into the home, the missionary who is isolated from her handy-dandy roofing crew is going to realize that she needs to clean up her nitty-gritty abode. She even gets to clean up extra things because she has asked Ben to bring in some stored items from the bodega so she can sort through them while she is quarantined from the others. Trish, the quarantined missionary, will probably pat herself on her dusty back for being so industrious.

The missionaries will be extremely grateful that a potential leaky roof problem is caught before the rainy season comes in a few weeks, as some of the metal roofing that was removed was completely rusted through. Trish will laugh at her good fortune that about the time she gets through cleaning up the current grime, it will be time for the annual arrival of the flying termites. The flying termites always arrive with the first rains of the rainy season. They will fly in, mate in the air, their wings will fall off, and they’ll die. Their little wings and separated bodies will be in every nook and cranny of the missionary’s newly roofed - and recently cleaned - home. There will be several swarms of termites over the course of a couple of weeks, so Trish will try to keep them cleaned up in the kitchen and out of the food, but will save the big, whole-house termite cleaning for the end of their season.

An actual photo of some of the debris that Trish is currently cleaning up

She will probably want to eat a cookie while she contemplates the fact that she has the opportunity to do so many deep cleanings in such a short amount of time.

And if you give a missionary a cookie, she’s probably going to want a glass of milk. And a lot more cookies!

 - posted by Christi