Mission Memoirs

Day 260

Again I have been debating about including mission stories on the blog here. I included one about my mugging a few months ago but I have not shared much of my LDS mission here. I just don't want to flood this blog with a ton of mission stories.

But I am stuck. I have no clue what to blog about today and I am a little pressed for time. I have choir practice shortly and I won't have much time after church since I just want to hang back and relax. I am excellent at justification and since it is Sunday, maybe sharing a mission story would be alright. I promise I will do these in moderation!

I couldn't decide which mission story to share. This one was the only one that immediately came to mind.

MARCH 21st 1994

Something pretty funny happened today while Hardy and I were on one of our marathon tracting days. We were clear up to the northeast part of our area where there are a ton of apartment buildings. We were knocking on doors to some success and we got to this one door and it was my turn to knock.

This attractive young girl answers and I give my spill introducing us as missionaries and she says "Would you like something to eat?"

Now under normal situations this would be a strange thing to ask but after working for three months in this area I have found that most people are willing to share food or drink with missionaries. Most of the time we get orange juice or water and butter cookies and so this request was not strange at all. My companion Elder Hardy must have felt that this was strange because I could immediately tell he was not a fan of going inside. We had already been asked to come in and have something to drink a couple of floors above us so I was not sure why Hardy acted the way he did. I said sure and we entered her apartment.

I wanted to have a picture of us tracting (knocking door to door) so I quickly snagged this. I look horrible in this picture. Another missionary cut butchered my hair and I must have gained 15 pounds.

We chatted for a little while and I told her more of who we were and what we wanted to share with her. She finally said that she will be back with something and to wait just a sec. I had no problem with this but Elder Hardy was freaking out. He was saying stuff like "I cannot believe we are doing this" and "why are you doing this" and similar remarks much to my surprise. I guess Elder Hardy worked differently than I did. If the lady wants to feed us, I say we accept. It is a kind gesture and we should honor them for trying to honor us. I told him to relax and that I did this all the time. Hardy was incessant that we leave.
"We gotta get out of here!" He told me forcibly. But I was not having it; I thought it would be disrespectful to just leave.
"What is your problem?" I asked impatiently.
"I cannot be part of this." he said right back to me. I was getting a little hot under the collar. What was Hardy's big problem?
"This is how I do things. If you don't like it, that's too bad! If she wants to give us something to eat, we should respect that!" I whispered back.
"Eat?" Hardy replied.
"Yeah, she wants to feed us something and it is real nice of her to do so!" I about yelled back, I was soooo mad. Hardy looked at me with his eyes wide open.
"She didn't ask if we wanted something to eat!" He said with a tinge of panic in his voice.
"What did she say then?" I asked.
"She asked us if we wanted to smoke some weed!" He whispered angrily back. What? There is no way she said that.
"What?" I asked back.
"She asked us to smoke some weed with her and you said yes!" She came back in and sure enough, she had these two joints all rolled up nicely. I laughed, not just because it was funny but because I was a little nervous. She said 'smoke some weed' and I heard 'something to eat', how ridiculous. She looked at me because I was laughing and I explained to her what I thought she said and she quickly kicked us out. I swore she said 'something to eat'. No wonder Hardy was ticked. What did he think of me when I was saying that I did this all the time? He didn't think it was as funny as I did.

Looking back I feel a bit bad for Elder Hardy. What must have been going through his mind when I told him I did this all the time? Poor fella about had a heart attack.