Я рухаюся в Україну

Я рухаюся в Україну is Ukrainian for "I am moving to Ukraine." And that's exactly what Jim and Arlene McCauley are doing. In March. In like, 30-ish days. Jim has written the following as his farewell:

Several people have come to me in the past few weeks and said that they heard I was going to leave for a while. They have asked where I am going and what it is I am going to do. I would like to take this opportunity to give a general answer to both of those questions.

We are leaving on March 10, 2014, for 18 months to serve a mission in the LDS temple in Kiev, Ukraine. We are going to go live in the capital city of a country which is the scene of severe unrest as it is being torn by mass demonstrations against an authoritarian government. There are thousands of police dressed in riot gear facing hundreds of thousands of demonstrators that have set up barricades in the city of Kiev. Arlene and I are in our mid to late 60’s. We have a nice home in a wonderful community. We have 6 of our 7 children and 23 of our 24 grandchildren living with 25 minutes of us. We have a good business with sufficient income to be comfortable. We are in good health and have always wanted to be able to travel a bit as we got older. We will live in a small apartment in a country where we do not speak the language, shop in grocery stores where we do not read the labels and get up at 4:30 many mornings of the week to work 8 to 10 hours in the temple for no pay. We will leave our children and miss our grandchildren’s births, birthdays, baptisms and other significant events for the next 18 months. There must be some compelling reason why we would volunteer to do this.

I have come to the conclusion that it must be for purely selfish reasons. Let me explain. There are two parts to each of us: our physical body and our spirit body. Our spirit body was created for us by our Heavenly Parents and our physical body was created by our mom and dad. Sometime during the development of our physical body our spirit body united with our physical body and we became a living soul. It is pretty obvious that our physical bodies need constant nourishment. When I go about 4 hours without anything to eat I begin to feel hunger that causes me to start to think about eating. If I go 6 hours I begin to look pretty seriously for something to eat and when I go 8 hours without eating I begin to get downright anxious to eat. When I go longer than that I can get pretty cranky about eating.

Our spirit body also needs nourishment but it does not come from the refrigerator. That food comes from feasting from the scriptures, from sincere and earnest prayer, from association with good people, from uplifting music, from the words and thoughts of enlightened writers of the ages, from the words of prophets and from service to other people. Just as our physical body can get sick and weak from eating tainted food or from the lack of food, so can our spirit become weak from the lack of spiritual food or sick from the effects of degrading music or movies or books or the improper use of the internet.

Arlene and I have always had plenty of opportunities to serve – almost to the point of too much to do. As we have “matured”, those opportunities for spiritual food from the service source have decreased. In order to make up the difference we have needed to look for other ways to meet the needs of our spirit body. It is so tempting to think that it is ok to just retire and sit back and relax from foraging for food for the spirit. It would be so easy to say that we have served our time and it is now time for the younger people to do the service. We have been blessed with good health and with sufficient means to use in the service of other people. If we are able to serve and choose not to serve, I would fear the result of that course of action. Consequently, I must be selfish because I want to feed my spirit by serving my fellowman where the services I can render are sorely needed.

Arlene and I believe that when we die our physical body separates from our spirit body and remains here in the earth while our spirit body goes into a world of spirits to wait for a promised resurrection or reuniting of the physical body and the spirit body. While they are waiting those spirits have the opportunity to continue to learn how to live as families in the presence of our Heavenly Parents. We will help people from Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Romania and Moldova find the names of their ancestors and bring them to the temple where they can be united as eternal families.

If anyone has questions about what we are going to do or about where we are going to go, I would be happy to visit with you personally or to respond to questions at my personal email jim.mccauley@gmail.com.

Thanks for listening.

Jim

Beating out the dirt and grime

In the brief research that I conducted to find an image to go along with this post, I found this impressionistic painting of The Washerwomen. Since then, I have quickly become a fan of Camille Pissarro. In this painting you can see three women at the riverside washing clothes. One of them has a fairly aggressive approach to keeping her clothing clean. She is beating the dirt, grime and sin right out of her linens. We are calling on each of you to, like this turn-of-the-century washerwoman, take an aggressive approach to keeping our village clean.

As we've added more inhabitants to our CPS village we've noticed an increase in wear and tear at the village green, the village well, the village privies, the village tavern, and the village thoroughfares. Translation: our break room, bathrooms and carpets are getting some serious traffic. We're acquiring carpet stains faster than we can shampoo them out.

Here are a few things we'd like you to consider as you travel from cottage, to tavern, to privy, etc.

Please wipe your feet.

As you come in from the snow, gravel, tar, asphalt, bird poop, etc, please spend whatever time you need to clean your shoes. There's a very high probability that stepping on the walk-off mat by Brandon Petersen's cubicle isn't going to get all of the "outside" of your shoes. Please take a few seconds and make sure your shoes are clean. Many thanks.

Please tidy up.

After using the privy (bathroom) and washing up, please feel free to run your had towel across the counter to clean up any spills. We do a pretty good job of this. Thank you, please keep it up. Please also take a look at any impact you've made to the break room when preparing your meals. A quick pass with a hand towel to get rid of crumbs and water would be great.

Hit the can.

Our cleaning crews have mentioned a couple of times that they're finding a lot of discarded staples in the carpet. Please make sure that staples make it in the trash. They get caught in the carpet and damage the carpet and the vacuums. Additionally, please make sure all trash is discarded properly.

Accidents happen.

We understand that accidents happened. Spills happen. People trip, or get distracted, or gesticulate wildly while holding a glass of red Kool-aid. It happens. When it does, do your best to clean it up. If you think it will leave a stain, please contact Todd for some additional help. We appreciate all the hard work you do.

Have I got a deal for you!

Do not change the channel. What I'm about to show you will only take a moment, nay a brief moment of your time. I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse. (seriously though you can't refuse because I paid these mob guys to enforce it. Did you know they actually charge extra for any punches they throw. I guess mafia unions are pretty strict about hazard pay.)

So here is the deal, on February 19th we will have a company luncheon catered by the Which Witch, and you'll have the opportunity to wear jeans to work.

But wait, there's more! In order to get exactly what you want, you need to access this document and fill out your order. (options are listed on the right hand side of the document.)

But wait, there's more! In order to get your boxed lunch you need to fill out this form before February 12th.

But that's not all! act now and Stephen Post will wash your car*! Still not enough? Well if you fill out this form in the next 10 minutes, Blake Poole has offered to let you tag along on his next family vacation to Hawaii**! As a bonus we'll give you not one, not two, not three, but four, that's right: four birthdays for the month of February: Tracie Fulk, Luke Merrill, Brenda O'Neil, and Jeff McCauley+.

So what are you waiting for? Fill out that form now!


* Stephen has in no way agreed to this directly, but some time ago he said 'I'm good for whatever' which I grossly misinterpreted as consent to wash everyone's cars.

** Blake was pretty mad when I told him about this, and refused to take other people with him to Hawaii. So... this offer may not be valid.

+ Birthdays are a non-transferable... apparently.

I am serious... and don't call me Shirley.

Sometimes life requires you to be serious. Fortunately, you get to enjoy your time at a company that has no concept of when to be serious. For example, coworkers have been asking for years when am I going to jump off a bridge. I know they're not serious, but I'm compelled to point out that I'd more likely fall off a bridge than actually jump.

These experiences have led me to believe that the current educational system has failed to teach them a basic understanding of statistical probability and the laws of physics. (And also that people get really upset when you continue to point these things out.)

So at the risk of being asked to fall off a structure carrying a road, path, railroad, or canal across a river, ravine, road, railroad, or other obstacle, I'd like to make an announcement:

Shanna Clarke has moved from Sales Support back to Customer Support.

Filling her vacancy in the Sales Support role will be a new member of the CPS family: Rachel Kent.

Rachel recently graduated from BYU-Hawaii, and will be joining the Sales team on Monday Feb. 10th. Among her many accomplishments: she is a certified personal trainer, dance instructor, volleyball player, cheerleader, vampire hunter, guerrilla warfare specialist, and allegedly an international art thief. She has left all this behind however to fulfill her suddenly realized, lifelong dream to be the support to four Sales Reps. Derek, Erica, and both Brian's. Welcome Rachel we're happy to have you with us!

Changing of the guard

The first time I watched a Star Wars film I was about 8 years old. After watching this epic piece of cinema, I wanted a light-saber more than anything. Being a Jedi would have been the best job ever. However as I am now much older and slightly more senile; I realize that had the universe granted my 8 year old wish, I likely would be a quadriplegic. A much safer profession would have been a stormtrooper.

Now it's true they get shot at quite a bit, and the 'armor' they wear is incredibly ineffective. But think about how easy it would be to switch jobs. Here's what I envision:




Officer: "Hey TK-47, you're supposed to be on latrine duty"
TK-47: "Oh uh, hey commander, I'm actually TK-53"
Officer: "Oh, well if you see TK-47 let him know he's on latrine duty. Let's see TK-53... You have leisure time scheduled."
TK-47: "I can handle that sir, and if I see TK-47, I'll let him know"

Changing jobs would be a snap since you look just like the thousands of other clones around you.

Now when it comes to switching jobs at CPS it needs a little more than identical uniforms. So until we are all given identical jumpsuits to wear to work, here are some new career moves around the office:

Shanna Clark has made the move from Customer Support to Sales Support. and inversely Julie Berreth has made the switch from Sales Support to Customer Support.

Stephanie Joiner is excitedly taking over the Idaho warehouse as the new director.

Now you may be wondering what that means for Todd Waltman, our previous warehouse director. Well Todd is taking up a new role as the Executive Assistant. He'll be in charge of facility maintenance, luncheons, office supplies, employee benefits, time card adjustments, CPSU updates, and CPSU Athletics. As well as all of our zoo-keeping needs around the office.

We wish everyone the best as they move into their new roles. Congratulations!