A Christmas Story II

My Childhood friend served in Idaho/Washington and sent me this.

Here is a funny one... so one night; my companion and I were walking down the street in the freezing cold! (Much like it is now) we came to an intersection and decided we needed to wait for a gap in the traffic so we could dash across the street. As we were waiting I was right by a stop sign. I looked at the pole that the sign was on and said to my companion, "do you think its cold enough that my tongue would get stuck to it if I licked it?" he replied, "I don’t know... try it!!!!" So without hesitation I stuck my tongue out and landed it square on the pole. Immediately I knew it was a HUGE mistake! I thought to myself "I need to get it off!" So by reflex, I ripped it away. My tongue felt as if it had been cut in half! After screaming out in pain and jumping around I looked at the pole and found that my taste buds were stuck to the pole! I talked with a lisp and could not taste any food for a week! It was horrible! I think back to that and tell myself that was the stupidest thing I ever did on my mission! Can you imagine being one of those people driving past and seeing that out your window?! That would be the funniest thing ever!

Meant To Be Stomach Cramps

One of the missionaries I met in Sao Paulo was Elder Ivie from Idaho. He told me a very cool story.

"Here's a really condensed version of a story.....I was walking down the street with my companion and within a few minutes I went from being perfectly fine to cramps in my stomach. It just so happened that we were down the street from a health clinic so obviously we went so I could get checked out. We walked in and sat down next to a girl and her mom, she was sick too. We scheduled a meeting with her and within a couple weeks she was baptized along with one of her friends. I later found out that the night before we met in the health clinic, she prayed to know what church she needed to go to because she was going other churches and they didn't feel right. Lord works in mysterious ways."

Bathroom Break

My high school Blake sent me this story...it's very simple and entertaining haha.

"A black guy broke into my house at 2 in the morning with a crow bar and stole money from my companion. When my companion heard our door break he woke me up and the only thing I could think about was how bad I had to pee."

The Pass Along Card

One of my closest friends, Austin, served in North Carolina.

I served my mission in Raleigh, North Carolina. During the course of my mission I had the chance to serve in a lot of different areas that had dramatically different feels to them. I spent a lot of time on the coast, where the people are usually rich and well to do and the neighborhoods are nice. One of my areas was not like those areas at all, it was in Southeast Raleigh, or “the ghetto.” You can get the feel for the area if you watch the “Rise Up by Peetey Pablo” Music Video on Youtube… Rather, how do you say, interesting?
One week, we took our area map to the police officers at our church and had them mark a couple areas on the map that we should avoid if possible, they marked our apartment complex. I sat there and stared at the officer with that, “you’ve got to be kidding me” look on my face. They were serious.
Later that week we went to the store to get some food towards the end of the day. The store that we were going to was called Food Lion and it was right across the road from where we lived. While we were walking out of the store with out food, a man came up to us and mumbled something that we didn’t quite hear. I looked at my companion and he had the same confusion that I had so I asked him what he said. Now let me stop and say that I am 6’1” and 215 pounds and my companion is three inches taller and forty pounds heavier than I am. This guy is about 5’6” and maybe 150 pounds if he had swallowed lead that morning. Anyways, back to the story. He looked up at me, dead in the eye and said, “Give me your dollars.”
I sat there in shock and looked back, chuckled a little bit and said, “Um… No…” and that was that.
When he repeated the sentence again, I informed him that I didn’t have any money and didn’t carry cash on me (especially in that area). I did tell him that instead of money I had a card for our church. That must have caught his interest because his next comment was, “Well what church do you go to?”“The church down on Aversboro Road, across the street from Aversboro Baptist,” I continued, “you should join us sometime.”
He sat there and took the car and thought for a second and said, “I will have to drop by sometime!”
“Great!” I replied. “Is there anything that we can do for you, sir?” I asked.
“No,” he responded, “that should be all.” And with that last remark, he turned around and walked along his way and we booked it back to our apartment.
Now, I do not know if we had divine intervention on our side, which I am sure we did, but I like to think of this experience as the time that we tricked a potential robber with a pass-a-long card. We never did see the man again and the problems that we had in that area were limited and we were actually protected by the people of the hood on more than one occasion. It almost makes me miss that on-edge feeling that comes with walking around a dangerous area at night

Brazilian Bandits

My friend Jake was one of the first persons that I personally knew who served a mission in Brazil, he came back with many stories. Here's one of them.
"One evening, while working with a Brazilian elder near one of Brazil's infamous favelas, we found ourselves waiting at a gas station for a member of the church to take us to teach one of his friends. At this point, I had been in Brazil for roughly one month and my Portuguese was still pretty weak. As my companion chatted with the gas station attendant, I found I could not follow the conversation and began to daydream and listen to the American pop music playing over the gas station speakers.

With my back to the road, I suddenly noticed that my companion and the attendant had stopped talking and were looking over my shoulders with great concern while slowly raising their hands and walking backwards. I turned to look and found a man with a black pistol pointed at me, shouting orders in Portuguese. Not being able to understand exactly what he wanted, my companion grabbed my arm and pulled me along as we, along with the other gas station attendants, were led into the small booth where the cash register was kept.
The man, clearly imbalanced and not someone with whom we could have reasoned, continued to shout at me as we were herded into the booth. He gestured at my bag with his pistol, repeatedly bringing it up to where I could clearly see down the barrel. As I did not understand what he wanted, my companion reached over, opened the bag, and said, "See, only a Bible. Nothing more." My companion also pulled up my shirt sleeves to show that I was not wearing a watch and said, "We are missionaries of Christ. We have nothing, my friend."
Meanwhile, another man that I had failed to notice (likely because a presumably loaded gun was pointed at my head) was cleaning out the cash register through the window of the booth. Once he had finished, the man with the gun requested a lock, shut the door of the booth, and locked the 4-5 of us inside. I was the closest to the door followed by my companion then the attendants in a line behind us.
After about 3-4 seconds, he suddenly gave a loud shout and brought the butt of his pistol against the glass of the booth door, sending small shards of glass into my hair, neck, and shirt collar. When I looked again, the two men were running around the corner, back into the favela.
We immediately climbed out of the booth window and my companion began to help me clean the glass off of my clothes and skin. Small streams of blood were running down my left arm but almost all the shards brushed away easily. I had just wiped the last of the blood from my arm when the church member we were waiting for pulled up to the curb, welcomed us into his car, and we sped away to our next appointment."
-Jake Dinsdale

A Good Friend

One of my closest and childhood friends served in British Columbia and sent me the following.

"Well, when I was in BC, there was an older gentleman who became one of my best friends. He was a nurse his whole life and loved helping people. Despite his service, his family didn't communicate with him and he hardly had any friends. He didn't have any legs, but he still did mostly everything by himself. We had an instantaneous bond and we completely trusted each other. He called me half pint because my companion was 6 foot 6 and I am only 5 foot 6. We tried to visit him as much as possible, but his health was declining. He had major heart problems and diabetes. He was a heavy smoker and the infection in his legs was getting worse. I loved this man and would do anything for him. He had a hard life and if you didn't know him, he would be very gruff. He could make a new missionary cry. Despite his physical and emotional pain, he wanted to feel peace from God. He prayed with us, read scriptures, and attended activities when he could. This man changed my life, and he found hope through prayer to help him push forward. I was able to visit him about a year after I had left that area. I cannot explain the joy we both felt to sit and talk and catch up. We helped each other through hard times and he gave me great advice for my future. He told me to always push forward and not to make the mistakes he had. He is a mountain of a man and I look up to him so much. He died a few weeks later, but I knew that he was in a better place and he knew that at least a few people loved him. Unfortunately he was unable to be baptized before he died, but had a desire which will stick with him. This just shows that anyone can make a difference in another persons life for good."

-Jordan Herzog

The Machete

Before I left on my mission my brother gave me some advice that was something that really pertained to my mom. He told me that out in the mission field I would have experiences that could at times be a little unsafe or in other words, experiences that would make a loving mother worry. I knew that being away for 2 years in a foreign and potentially dangerous country my mom would naturally worry about me. Not wanting her to worry more than necessary my brother told me not to write in my letters anything bad or dangerous that had happened to me that would scare my mom. This being said I had many experiences in Brazil that would have frightened my mother but she never heard about them until I was safely back at home. One of those moments I can remember perfectly to this day. I was working in a city in Brazil called Itabuna. Itabuna itself was a very dangerous city and actually had the highest murder rate amongst teenagers in the entire country. In the midst of all the shady areas and danger I never once felt in danger. On a religious side note I knew what I was doing was for the good of God and through this God would protect me as long as I was doing what I was supposed to. Well one day I was working in the hot afternoon sun in one of the many poor neighborhoods in Itabuna with my companion. We knocked on a door hoping to share a message of the church with whoever was inside. A very small and middle aged woman opened the door. Her face seemed to have a permanent sad and worried look on it. She let us into her house and we sat in the front room on opposite couches ready to visit with this woman. Right away it was easy to tell this woman didn't like contact with other people and seemed very tense. She would only stare at the floor and speak very softly and quickly. She was on edge and kept looking at the doors and windows. It was very obvious something was wrong with this woman. After talking to her and showing her we were here to help she opened up a bit. She explained how she lived in the house we were in with her abusive alcoholic husband. Not long after telling us this the front door busted open. A tall skinny man came bursting in yelling right away at this woman, her husband. He was instantly angry and I felt very sorry for the relationship that this woman was in. When the man busted through the door it took him a moment in his rage to realize that me and my companion were sitting on the other side of the room. He saw us and for a split second seemed startled but that quickly turned into madness. He drew a long and very sharp machete from his side, held it up in the air and then brought it down to my face pointing it centimeters from my nose yelling at us to get out of his house. I was more than happy to obey his commands not know how crazy he was or what he would do to me with that machete if I stayed any longer. Me and my companion grabbed our backpacks and scurried out the door with the angry machete man behind us. We got out onto the street a little startled at what had just happened. A few moments late the man left the house and quickly went down the opposite way down the road. After that the woman we had been talking to came out and brought me my Bible that I had left on the couch in the midst of all the commotion. She apologized and I could see the hurt in her eyes. As she quietly returned back to her house and shut her door. We continued on our way but that day has never left my memory. I remember exactly how I felt, an angry and crazy man had held a sword to my face and I felt perfectly calm....the entire time I just had a thought in my head and a feeling in my heart that no matter what, I was going to be just fine and nothing bad was going to happen to me. It was a very strange situation but I can take positives out of it, a natural human being feels threatened or fear when a weapon is placed at their face, but only a God can give you the strength not to let it bother you and get out of a situation like that perfectly calm with no worries. Without the power of God there's no telling how many times I could have gotten into some sort of dangerous situation in my mission that would have resulted in terrible results....but only because of God I was always safe and to me this will always be a perfect example. I can also take from this story how glad I am I was raised in a home with a father that loved my mother and would never hurt her. I saw a lot of broken homes like this one on my mission with drugs, alcohol, abuse and ruined relationships. It was hard seeing people like this but made me so much happier knowing how well I had in in my house with both my parents.