Unfortunately, all my mission photos are GLUED in a scrapbook so I can't scan them individually. So here are a few pages from my scrapbook with photos that are relevant to the following story. The top two photos are some of the ladies in the branch posing outside the church building one Sunday. (They are standing by one of the few cars that one of the members owned.) The middle and bottom left photos are of me and Sister Perry posing outside the 3rd branch building with some of the kids in the branch (Sister Perry is on the left and I am on the right.) The bottom right photo is later that night at the baptism of Rebecca Jones. Elder Gillman is the baptizer. Sister Lata is posing with me because we had taught Rebecca together. Sister Lata was transferred out and Sister Perry was transferred in a few days before the baptism, but Sister Lata was nearby so she was able to come to the baptism. All these photos were taken the day before the P-Day events that are the subject of my story.
The top left photo of this page shows the Birmingham 3rd Branch church building on 1st Ave. The bottom photo shows one of the elders driving the 3rd Branch 15-passenger van loaded with members. The top right photo is of some of the members inside the 3rd branch buidling. The other photos were taken outside the stake center before a baptism. (I'm posing with some of the girls in the branch in the middle right-hand photo. This was my first Sunday after I transferred into the Birmingham 3rd Branch Area.)Please don't drop my blog because I'm talking about my mission! You can always skip this feature if it's too painful. I have been thinking for a while that I really need to record some of my mission experiences in a journal because, sadly, I got so busy doing missionary work that I never had time to record it. I was an avid journal writer before my mission and was sure that I would come home with a fat journal but I was wrong. And I really did have some incredible experiences that I need to record somewhere--they are evidence of how much Heavenly Father loves each of us and so I feel like I need to leave a record of it for others. Since my journal writing is confined to blogging at this time, I realized that I would probably "get around to" recording my mission experiences sooner if I did it in installments on my blog. And since I will have been home from my mission 18 years at the end of this month, it's way past time to get started on this.
(Disclaimer: Since it has been 18 years, there is a possibility that some of the details will not be strictly accurate but hopefully the overall stories will still be essentially truthful--my memory won't get too far off the track.)
So I am starting with a story of a time that I messed up on my mission, just so you know that I was NOT a perfect missionary--not even CLOSE. This experience was actually kind of funny but it taught me a lesson without, thankfully, dire consequences.
It was the beginning of January 1991, so I was actually just a few months away from coming home. I was serving in the Birmingham 3rd Branch, which was in the inner-city of Birmingham. I had been there since October. My companion, Sis. Perry, was new to the area--she had been transferred in to serve with me at the end of December. Our branch had 3 sets of elders as well as an older couple companionship with the elder serving as the branch president. A local member had donated an old clunker of a 15-passenger van to the church that we used to transport members to church on Sundays. Most of the members there lived in the projects or equally dismal living quarters and most didn't own a car. The church building was a tiny 3-room office building that was rented. Our apartment didn't have a vacuum cleaner so we borrowed the one from the church to vacuum our apartment (yes, sister missionaries do vacuum their apartment on P-days!)
It was P-day. We had the vacuum cleaner that we needed to return to the church building, and we also had the church van that we needed to take to one of the sets of elders in the branch. Our plan that morning was to take the van to the elders and return the vacuum cleaner to the church on our way. Then the elders would drop us back at our apartment where we would pick up our laundry and our car to go to the laundromat. We went out to dump our laundry in the trunk of our car and I noticed that it was looking very cloudy and threatening to rain (not unusual for Alabama!) A thought popped into my head, "Go and get your rain boots!" I thought, "I don't need to get my boots now--we are just going to drop off the vacuum cleaner and the van and we'll be back here in ten minutes. I'll get my rain boots when we get back." So we hopped into the van with the vacuum cleaner and headed to the church. As we pulled into the church parking lot, another thought popped into my head, "Leave the van running while you take the vacuum cleaner into the building." I immediately thought, "What? That would be crazy! In this area? Someone will steal the van in two seconds flat if I leave it running!" So I turned it off. We took the vacuum cleaner inside and came back out to take the van to the elders. Can you guess what happened? Yep, you're right--the van wouldn't start. We tried it a few times, waited a few minutes, tried again. But no luck--the van wouldn't start. This was before the days of cell phones and the church didn't have a phone either, so we decided that the best thing we could do would be to walk back to our apartment, which was about a mile away, and call the elders to explain that the van was dead in the church parking lot. So off we went, and I bet you can guess what happened next. Yes, it immediately started to rain! I still remember walking down 1st Ave East in Birmingham, in the rain, thinking: "You really messed up! You should have known those weren't random thoughts--they were promptings! If you hadn't turned the van off, you wouldn't be stuck walking and if you'd gone back to get your rain boots you wouldn't be walking with your feet getting soaking wet!" I was thoroughly chagrined that I hadn't listened. I also realized that I was lucky, that in this case, ignoring two prompting only resulted in getting stuck walking in the rain with wet feet. We were able to laugh at the situation we had gotten ourselves into. Nobody got hurt or died or anything. Thankfully we didn't get mugged and beaten as we walked through a part of town that wasn't the safest. But the thought I had was that the next time I might not be so lucky, I better listen! Because I really should have recognized that those were promptings because of the way that they came, and how I felt. But I was so busy being sure that I knew better (!) that I didn't listen. That's a lesson that I have always tried to remember.
P.S. Maybe I will post photos with this eventually, but blogger keeps giving me an error so I give up for now.
(Disclaimer: Since it has been 18 years, there is a possibility that some of the details will not be strictly accurate but hopefully the overall stories will still be essentially truthful--my memory won't get too far off the track.)
So I am starting with a story of a time that I messed up on my mission, just so you know that I was NOT a perfect missionary--not even CLOSE. This experience was actually kind of funny but it taught me a lesson without, thankfully, dire consequences.
It was the beginning of January 1991, so I was actually just a few months away from coming home. I was serving in the Birmingham 3rd Branch, which was in the inner-city of Birmingham. I had been there since October. My companion, Sis. Perry, was new to the area--she had been transferred in to serve with me at the end of December. Our branch had 3 sets of elders as well as an older couple companionship with the elder serving as the branch president. A local member had donated an old clunker of a 15-passenger van to the church that we used to transport members to church on Sundays. Most of the members there lived in the projects or equally dismal living quarters and most didn't own a car. The church building was a tiny 3-room office building that was rented. Our apartment didn't have a vacuum cleaner so we borrowed the one from the church to vacuum our apartment (yes, sister missionaries do vacuum their apartment on P-days!)
It was P-day. We had the vacuum cleaner that we needed to return to the church building, and we also had the church van that we needed to take to one of the sets of elders in the branch. Our plan that morning was to take the van to the elders and return the vacuum cleaner to the church on our way. Then the elders would drop us back at our apartment where we would pick up our laundry and our car to go to the laundromat. We went out to dump our laundry in the trunk of our car and I noticed that it was looking very cloudy and threatening to rain (not unusual for Alabama!) A thought popped into my head, "Go and get your rain boots!" I thought, "I don't need to get my boots now--we are just going to drop off the vacuum cleaner and the van and we'll be back here in ten minutes. I'll get my rain boots when we get back." So we hopped into the van with the vacuum cleaner and headed to the church. As we pulled into the church parking lot, another thought popped into my head, "Leave the van running while you take the vacuum cleaner into the building." I immediately thought, "What? That would be crazy! In this area? Someone will steal the van in two seconds flat if I leave it running!" So I turned it off. We took the vacuum cleaner inside and came back out to take the van to the elders. Can you guess what happened? Yep, you're right--the van wouldn't start. We tried it a few times, waited a few minutes, tried again. But no luck--the van wouldn't start. This was before the days of cell phones and the church didn't have a phone either, so we decided that the best thing we could do would be to walk back to our apartment, which was about a mile away, and call the elders to explain that the van was dead in the church parking lot. So off we went, and I bet you can guess what happened next. Yes, it immediately started to rain! I still remember walking down 1st Ave East in Birmingham, in the rain, thinking: "You really messed up! You should have known those weren't random thoughts--they were promptings! If you hadn't turned the van off, you wouldn't be stuck walking and if you'd gone back to get your rain boots you wouldn't be walking with your feet getting soaking wet!" I was thoroughly chagrined that I hadn't listened. I also realized that I was lucky, that in this case, ignoring two prompting only resulted in getting stuck walking in the rain with wet feet. We were able to laugh at the situation we had gotten ourselves into. Nobody got hurt or died or anything. Thankfully we didn't get mugged and beaten as we walked through a part of town that wasn't the safest. But the thought I had was that the next time I might not be so lucky, I better listen! Because I really should have recognized that those were promptings because of the way that they came, and how I felt. But I was so busy being sure that I knew better (!) that I didn't listen. That's a lesson that I have always tried to remember.
P.S. Maybe I will post photos with this eventually, but blogger keeps giving me an error so I give up for now.
4 comments:
Thanks for sharing that great story!!! I like the Monday mission story idea!!! Maybe some day I will be organized enough for that!
I've found that so many promptings are not "life and death" but just meant to make our lives a little easier--to avoid pain, disappointment, or even inconvenience! What an amazing and loving Heavenly Father we have! (And sometimes I don't listen either!)
The inside of the branch building reminds me a lot of where we met in Jena and Gera. Of course, in both of those cities a 15-passenger van could have held all the active members with room to spare... And we couldn't have a nice sign outside since we just used the buildings on Sundays...
Hopefully those branches have grown now so there are more members and better buildings. I know Birmingham 3rd branch is now Birmingham 3rd Ward and they have a real church building now. When I was there, the church had bought the land for a building, they were just waiting for the branch to grow. We used to drive by the land and hope we could help the branch get their building. I have seen a photo of the building now and it made me happy for those faithful branch members!
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