Carol was scheduled to be baptized on Saturday, but she couldn't quit smoking. We're working on that. I was pretty disappointed, to say the least, but hope has not left us.
Transfers were this week. 5 weeks ago I worked and worked towards the glimmer of hope that was June 26th. On Sunday I said goodbye to all of the members in the branch, just in case I got transferred. Here it was, the moment Elder King and I had been waiting for ever since February(I joke, but not really). Would we finally part ways and get to work with someone else? Of course not. We are stuck together for 4 more weeks, making 6 months total together. I feel like I've been with Elder King for 3 years. I would have loved to serve with him for 3 weeks. 6 weeks was too much, 6 months is complete overkill. Like Cain, I am tempted to say, "My punishment is more than I can bare." The monotony is painful.
Anyway, enough of that. I guess God won't let me leave until Carol gets baptized. Or perhaps there's something else we need to do here. I don't know. But I'll keep on keeping on. Hopefully the second coming will happen soon and we won't have to go the full 4 weeks.
So last week, one of the zone leaders came and traveled me while Elder King went to Barrie. The zone leader wanted to go run on the beach in the morning for our exercise. I haven't ran in decades. So we went out of our apartment and walked down to the beach. It was the first time I had seen it since I've been here. We were always afraid there would be a ton of bikini-clad women there but at 6:30 in the morning we were pretty safe. The zone leader I was with was in the US air force so he was pretty fast. We ran on the beach; it was a great reminder to me of how much I hate running. But that's not important. We got back to the apartment and went to open the door. Locked. Oh no...! I had never left our new apartment without Elder King before and Elder King always grabbed the keys. I didn't even know our door was locked. Hastily we brainstormed what we could do. There was water boiling on the stove and we only had minutes left until the whole building caught fire! Ok, that last part wasn't true. But we were really tired and sweaty and we were going to be late for our morning studies. It was 7: 20 am. There's a member that lives next door to us, but he's probably sleeping. We'll try the window first. Darn, it's locked. We'll have to wake up Stan. We banged on the door loudly. No answer. Again, no answer. We knocked a third time and --suspense-- he answered. "Ugh...what do you want." "We're locked out of our apartment." "Did you try the window?" "Yeah, it's locked." "Alright, let me get my sledgehammer." No, that's not right! What he really said was, "Here try my key, maybe it will work." We tried it, no luck. "Well, you'll have to talk to Roy. He's probably asleep so be careful." Roy is the dreaded landlord. "Oh no...!" I thought. My stomach dropped down to my left foot in fear. "This could be the last door I ever knock on," I thought to myself as I walked down the stairs and banged on the door. I gulped in anticipation. Out came this old man in a robe. He was quite pleasant actually. He gave us a giant key ring and said, "I'm not sure which one it is." Great. We walked up the stairs back to our door. It was a much shorter walk this time. I tried the first key. It didn't work. I tried the second key. It didn't work. I tried the third key. It didn't work. I tried the fourth key. It didn't work. I tried the fif--Ok, none of the keys worked and we wasted like 30 minutes trying to find the master key. "Isn't there another window around back?" Elder Coats queried. "Well, yes, but there's no way we can get to it. We're on the second floor." "Let's go check it out." "Elder Coats, have you gone mad?!?" "Don't worry, Elder Wade. I'm in the Air Force." We walked behind our apartment building and gazed at the unconquerable distance between us and the window. Our air conditioner was in that window, so I knew that if somehow we could reach the window, we could open it. My mind raced, and I conjured all of the mental capacity I could muster to no avail. "Elder Coats, how could we possibly get up there?" The window taunted us and laughed at our inescapable predicament. "Well, we could use that ladder," Elder Coats said."Oh, I guess that could work." We brought the ladder over and I watched as Elder Coats climbed all the way up and barely squeezed past the air conditioner onto the bedroom floor. It was 8:00 by the time we got into our apartment. And we both lived happily ever after.
Have a good week everybody!
--Elder Wade
