{"chapter_no":"17","chapter_title":"Getting Organized at Home","book_id":"3","book_name":"Springville","subchapter_no":"0","page_no":"465","page_number":"1","verses_count":0,"total_pages":2,"page_content":"

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Chapter 17<\/span><\/p>

Getting Organized at Home<\/span><\/h1><\/p>

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Leftover materials from the Christmas tree village are put to use as worktables to map out the
Springville East Stake’s homes and streets.<\/i><\/span><\/p>

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The downstairs bedrooms of the Chandler home had been linked to the large family room
through a home renovation project. In preparation for the Christmas Eve party, Kathleen and
Mark had set up a wooden platform in one of the adjoining rooms for an electric train and
miniature village. A few weeks later, in January, this platform was disassembled and put into a
storage closet. In the second week of July, however, the platform was set up again in the same
room, but with some interesting changes. First, the height of the platform was increased from one
foot to more of a standard desk height of twenty-eight inches. Second, instead of having the two
sections side by side as before, an open space was left between, allowing a person to walk
through easily or sit down on a chair and do work upon either side. Next, not satisfied with the
selection of wood and materials he had used before, Mark purchased more expensive walnut
wood at a discount through his connection at the hardware store. He used this to rebuild the
underlying supports and the tabletop of the two platform sections, giving the structures a smooth
finish and the look of more permanent furniture. In the middle of each of the four sides, sliding
drawers were added. The room, thus, contained two very large custom-made work tables.
Carefully crafted by Mark, the tables were intended to last for many years.<\/span><\/p>

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The next step was to replace the smooth finish of wood on the top of each table with
something that could be written upon easily with a magic marker. After making a few phone
calls, Mark had a solution––he would have custom-sized sections of porcelain whiteboards built
to spec. Finding a company that did such work, he immediately placed an order for what was
needed and took delivery of the order at home a few weeks later. After removing the sections of
whiteboard from the shipping box, he took them and carefully lined them up together until the
tabletops were both fully covered. He then fastened them down snugly with screws. The new
work tables were ready for use.<\/span><\/p>

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Next, Mark took out eight large sections of white blueprint paper that were stored in
tubes, each having a map of a different ward of the stake. The maps had been compiled by
membership clerks of the individual wards. Like a city planning document, each map had the
streets, homes, addresses, and names of the current ward members laid out with simple boxlike
lines. Using a ruler and a permanent marker, Kathleen began the process of transferring the street
and home layouts from these maps onto the whiteboard facing on the tables. The first ward took
a couple of hours to transfer. Kathleen used an erasable marker to write in the names of each <\/p>

household, names which were subject to change as persons moved in and out of each ward. It
soon became obvious, however, that they would need more table space, since at current usage,
they seemed to have enough room for only six wards, keeping it large enough that it could be
seen and written upon easily. Fortunately, Mark had ordered extra whiteboard material, so he
would only need more wood, which he could get locally, in order to build a third platform.
Picking up the wood that same afternoon, he went to work on a third table and then added the
whiteboard facing. The following day, it was ready for Kathleen to put in the last two wards,
which she did. All the streets and homes in the stake were now mapped out upon the three tables. <\/span><\/p>

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Finished with their labors, they looked at all that had been done. The worktables offered
an early view of the work that lay ahead of them. It was a physical layout of the existing stake,
but also a roadmap of the new Zion-like stake they hoped to create.<\/span><\/p>

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In an adjoining room downstairs, Mark set up a large computer desk, which he and
Kathleen planned to share. Mark’s appointment calendar for visits would be maintained there,
printed out at the start of each day.<\/span><\/p>

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