LOCK DOWN

On Monday of this week, NZ’s prime minister announced that NZ was going from level 2 to level 3 emergency that day, and beginning at 12:01 a.m. Thursday morning we would be going into level 4 lockdown, due to the Covid 19 scare.  Level 4 requires that you stay in your apartment and not go to work unless it’s an essential service.  I indicated that our apartment is too small for both Sis. Gubler and I to live here and work here.  With all the empty apartments as a result of senior missionaries going home early and new senior missionaries not arriving, I snagged one of those on the next level down, B 302, to use as my new office.  Since Alisa is still in self-isolation due to her trip to America, that left me to do my own moving.  Wednesday afternoon I stopped answering the phone and emails, loaded up my computer equipment, office supplies, and even my leather chair and floor mat into our little car (3 trips) and moved it all to the new office apartment and set everything up again.  It actually is larger than the apartment we’re living in, with better views of the downtown city of Auckland.  Then I spent the next 3 days trying to get caught up on my work from the down time, going into my new “office” at 4:30 a.m. on Friday and staying until 6 p.m.  The nice thing is that I don’t have to pack my lunch anymore, but can go “home” for lunch every day now, one flight of stairs up.

The Church has given the Sr. missionaries serving in Australia and NZ the option of going home now if desired, and being released. It is now mandatory for the young missionaries to return to their home countries. A number of senior couples have already left because they have nothing to do, in areas such as family history, institutes, and communications, where things have shut down.  In Alisa’s department, 3 couples and the college intern went home early, so it’s just her and Rich Hunter, the area director of church communications, in their department now, and there’s a lot less to report on, other than Covid 19 stories!  However I’m busier than ever now, with all the contract issues that have arisen, such as do we continue to pay contractors on construction jobs that have shut down like the new Auckland temple, do we scale back work for businesses that clean our chapels once or twice a week when no one is using the buildings.  We just signed in February a 3 year catering contract for the NZ MTC, 3 meals 7 days a week, but the NZ MTC shuts down in a week!  A lot of these contracts will need to be re-negotiated. I’ve also been working on including Force Majeure or frustration of purpose clauses in our contracts going forward.  One of the locals commented to me that lawyers are like cock roaches, you can’t get rid of them!  I got a good chuckle out of that, it was like at my old firm, when times get tough, work for me multiplies.  We’ll try this remote office thing for the next month during lockdown to see how it will work, in the event we get sent home to the states, and finishing our missions there in a home office.

Not much else new here, other than I’m working 6 days a week just trying to keep up.  Briefly, I’ll relate some of what I’ll call the Covid 19 hysteria induced silliness.  The city buses drive by the window of our apartment about every 5 minutes, but other than the drivers, they’re completely empty.  Supposedly they’re for those who have “essential jobs” (who mainly drive cars anyway), such that it would be wiser to decrease the frequency of the bus runs? In Tonga, they just announced a complete lock down of the citizens, even though they don’t have one reported case of the virus.  Maybe they should have just closed their borders?  And then there is Papua New Guinea which just announced that they have no ability to handle any corona virus patients.  Don’t think that will stop the virus if it makes it there!

Everyone stay safe!