We enjoyed our first meeting with our younger missionary colleagues
this week. I am very much impressed with their abilities, enthusiasm,
and spiritual depth. To me they seem better qualified for this work
than I was at their age. We also spent 2 evenings at the Southampton
Center for Young Adults, being oriented and trained by Elder and Sister
Andrews.
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| Our Living Room |
Shopping: We have spent most of our first 10
days in Southampton shopping to furnish our "flat" or townhouse (unsure
whether a townhouse is a flat), with considerable success, acquiring a
sofa ("settee") from Ikea, a nice used oak table and chairs, dishes,
utensils and miscellaneous other items needed to fill a home.
Wheels turn slowly... We
should have Internet service in 2 weeks, until which time we get by
with wi-fi at the church or by infrequently renting BT wi-fi for
£5/day. A week after opening a local bank account, we received a letter
saying our initial deposit in the form of a check in US dollars would
be credited to our account in 6-8 weeks, which seems rather slow for the
21st century. We withdrew cash from an ATM with our US debit card and
deposited it in the local bank in order to have a balance with which to
qualify for Internet service.
Looking good! Yeah, that does seem slow . . . odd. We love your updates!
ReplyDelete6-8 weeks?! That is slow! We have friends who just moved to Canada and it seems like things happen slower than expected there too. But I thought we used up all your American money!
ReplyDeleteI can explain the slow bank process a bit. It's fraud protection. Without the waiting period, a person could deposit a forged or fake check for a large sum and then withdraw it and make a run for it before the check bounces back as fraudulent. A person could have $0 in their own bank account and just run around to different banks depositing bad checks, withdrawing money, and running. 6-8 weeks is especially slow but I guess foreign checks take longer to process and they are riskier, too. At America First, we would allow them to withdraw $500 until their check cleared. I had the job of calling on large checks to see if they cleared earlier than the required 4 weeks so we could let people access their money sooner. If you want to avoid the waiting period, you need to deposit cash or a bank certified check. But even the bank certified checks are becoming a little risky. The assistant manager at AFCU just barely caught a fake certified check. It was a fabulous imitation of US Bank check. I think they may still mail checks back and forth although I heard talk of switching to electronic scanning/processing. So, there's the explanation. :)
ReplyDelete