September 24, 2013
Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and
warn you before you read this. It's only fair.
DISCLAIMER: THE HILARITY OF THIS STORY IS SUCH THAT YOU WILL LIKELY PEE
YOURSELF WHEN READING IT (on account of laughing so hard). It would be wise to
use the restroom now, and then don't consume any liquids until after the
completion of this email. Disregard this at your own risk. Sister McQuivey will
not be held responsible for any accidents that occur as result of not heading
her words of wisdom.
Ready? Here we go:
The world's best thing happened this week when we went to
our appointment with investigator Theresa.
Okay, background on Theresa: she's a 70ish year old black woman with no teeth
and no memory. It's a little bit like teaching Dory from finding Nemo. Like,
one lesson she'll start asking questions about the church so we'll introduce
her to the Book of Mormon. She'll yell that it's from the devil and she doesn't
want it in her house. But as we're leaving, she's like, well this has been
lovely, when can you ladies come back to teach me about your church? The next
lesson we'll teach basically the same exact thing (because she'll ask the same
exact questions), and when we get to the Book of Mormon, she'll say, "Oh
how wonderful! How can I get one?" so we'll leave her with a copy. We've
been teaching her for a few months now, and every time we make a little
progress, she'll totally forget it all by the follow up visit. But she's a
sweet lady and really does want to learn, so we keep trying and praying that
she'll retain something we teach.
Back to the main event: Theresa's not in great health, and
she's always home so we thought she'd be a good investigator to bring a member
to the lesson with because she wouldn't cancel on us or randomly not be home.
We pick up the investigator, 17 year old Stephanie from the ward and go to see
Theresa. We start knocking on the door..no response. She sometimes takes a
while to get to the door, so we wait a little, and then knock again..nothing.
We assure Steph that Theresa's never missed an appointment with us before, that
she's always home, and that she'll answer any second..not a sound from the
inside. We get out our phone and call Theresa, and can hear the phone pick up
from the inside and a groggy voice answer, "hello?"
us- "Hi, Theresa! This is the sister
missionaries!"
T- "WHO?"
us- "Sister Cassell and McQuivey"
T- "WHO?"
us- "The sister missionaries! From the church? We've been teaching
you?"
T- "Oh, that's right. What can I do for you?"
us- "Well, we have an appointment with you today"
T- "Okay"
us- "Like..right now"
T- "Yes"
us- "Well..we're here!"
T- "Where?"
us- "Standing on your front porch"
T- "Oh, you are? Well I'm not feeling too well today. I
went to the doctor and when I came home I wasn't feeling too well so I just laid
down for a bit. I was resting until the phone rang"
us- "We're so sorry to hear that! Do you feel well
enough for a short lesson and prayer with us?"
T- "No, no, I'm really not feeling well. Let's
reschedule for another time"
us- "That's too bad! We'll try back tomorrow and see if
you're feeling better!"
T- "Okay, have a nice day now"
us- "You too! We hope you get some rest and feel better
soon"
We apologized to Stephanie and walked back to the car to take her to our
back-up appointment. Our phone is hooked up to the car via bluetooth, so when a
call comes through we can hear it loud through all the speakers. As we get the
in car and start driving, we receive a call from Theresa. Thinking maybe she
wanted us to come now after all, we picked up and said, "hello?"
On the other end, we hear this noise. First it starts as a
low rumble. Slowly it builds until it reaches the volume of a chainsaw at close
range. Briefly the volume lowers, and then..jackhammer status. It took us a
while to realize that after we'd left, Theresa had gone back to sleep, had
called us in her sleep, and was now snoring over the phone the biggest and
loudest I'd ever heard. Imagine an entire colony of full-size polar bears, all
with terrible colds, hibernating in the deepest sleep of their lives, and you
might have a slight understanding of the noise we heard that fateful day. We
laughed our heads off for 5 minutes, and then decided this was just too
precious and too sweet to keep to ourselves. So we 3-way called in our zone leader,
Muir.
M- "Hello, this is Elder Muir"
us- "just listen.."
M- "What the..oh my gosh, is that someone
snoring?"
us- "Yeah, our investigator called us in her
sleep"
M- "Are you serious? That's hilarious!"
us- "We're thinking we'll just go ahead and do the
lesson we had planned. Maybe she'll absorb it in her sleep"
M- "I'm game"
We went on to teach the
Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ over the phone. Every once in a while
we through in something like, "when you wake up, you'll be in love with a
man named Elder Muir" to which he responded, "No, you will not".
After probably 15 minutes, Muir finally ends it by announcing he has to go eat
lunch before their next appointment. But they're on the street corner when this
is happening, so he has to kind of yell to be heard over the traffic. When he
gets done, all of a sudden we realize with great terror that we no longer hear
snoring on Theresa's end. We're panicking that she woke up, but Muir doesn't
notice so he just yells out a loud "goodbye!". On Theresa's end: dead
silence. We hesitantly respond, "goodbye". And then, breaking through
the silence, we hear a sleepy 70 year old voice mumble, "bye".
Theresa had woken up at the very end of the conversation, she'd fallen asleep
talking to us, and said bye. We about died laughing as we recounted the story
to everyone we could for the rest of the day.
I've been in the Wa-Tac 17 weeks, and the church is true
here too!
-Sister McQuivs
