Missionaries are Great at Recycling. Even Dogs.

If you go to a friend’s house in your missionary community, and you admire a piece of her furniture, no need to ask, “Where did you get that?” so that you can find one too. Just be patient. Eventually your friend will leave and voila, you can buy it off her. 

We got my girls’ bunk beds that way (thanks, Kathy). There’s a great shelf I really liked at a friend’s house, and thought, “That would be great for storing toys.” Except when they left the country, they sold all their furniture to one family, darn it, so I couldn’t nab it then. Instead I had to wait another few years until that family left, then I could make my move. It’s now happily storing my kids’ toys.

Kinda cool. Except, kinda weird and creepy. Makes me wonder who is eyeing the contents of my house, waiting for the day I will sell everything.

But hey, my point is that missionaries are great at recycling. Take this booster chair, for instance. The McFarlane family had a carpenter make it, and it was used by their boys. Then the Shenks bought it and used it for their kids. We bought it at their leaving sale about 10 years ago and it went through all four of our kids. Last month, we passed it onto another HOPAC family. It might be, like, 20 years old now. We should have all engraved our names on the bottom.

But I never anticipated we would one day recycle a dog. 

Eight years ago, our Minnie gave birth to her first litter of puppies. One of those puppies went home to our friends Jim and Lisa, whose small son Gabriel named her ‘Snoopy.’ When Jim and Lisa left, another HOPAC family loved Snoopy for several years. 

In December, Minnie died. We thought about getting another small dog, but weren’t sure we wanted a puppy. Then we found out that Snoopy’s owners would soon be leaving Tanzania and were looking for a good home for her. 

Voila. Recycled dog. Snoopy is now back in her birthplace.

See? This was 2010.

Josiah refused to re-enact the kissing picture, because “you will post it on Facebook.” Unfortunately, he also no longer owns overalls. So this was the best I could get.