A Hole

I've mentioned before how incredible Ann Arbor, Michigan is. One of the coolest things about it is the amount of diversity the University of Michigan brings. I met people from what seemed like every foreign country while I was there. One such man was Nic Jain, from India. His basement had flooded because the heavy clay surrounding his house created a pool of water against his house and together cracked the foundation. I was one of the four elders who agreed to help this nice man with this problem.

June 29th - Work began on this project. We dug a little against the wall of the house until we uncovered the crack in the foundation. We patched the crack, so leaking would stop, and made plans to prevent future cracks and leaks. There's typically a layer of pea gravel underground a ways to allow a less dense (that freaking clay) place that water can run off. The plan was to dig a hole down to the gravel, then fill the hole mostly with new gravel so water would never pool against this part of the house again. We dug the first couple feet and called it a day, making plans with Nic to come finish on July 4th, at 10:30 (ie just after studies).

July 3rd - (Note: This part of the story would be much better given in person. Having watching Apu from the Simpsons for 16 of the first 19 years of my life I've developed a pretty okay, Indian accent.) We got in for the night and called the Hill Street elders to confirm our plans. Elder Wade said Nic had left a message saying we should start at 8:00 because, "Elder Ledbetter likes to get an early start!" Considering our daily schedule consisted of two-hours of scripture study from 8 to 10, we could all only laugh at the ridiculousness of him saying this. Nic then called us and said Elder Wade was hoping to get started early. We couldn't believe this dude was lying to us when we were already willing to help.

July 4th - Anyway, he offered to make us breakfast so we decided to move our studies up an hour, and told him we'd be there at 9:00. BIG mistake! It was clearly the first time this man had ever made oatmeal, which I say because it was basically like eating chunky water. It was so bad that midway through my bowl when he announced he'd now be making us toast, his voice sounded like an angelic choir. Bread, a toaster, and jelly and butter packets he'd obviously stolen from IHOP.... can't go wrong there right? WRONG! Minutes later he brought us each a piece. We expected toast, but were blessed with crackers, completely blackened and sprinkled with stale crumbs from previous uses of the toaster. We choked down that round of toast and, before he made more, we taught Nic how to empty the crumbs from the machine which had never been done. With two slices of "toast" and a bowl of "oatmeal" in each of us, we were ready to go to work on the hole.

Really the next few hours (I do not recall how much time we actually spent) were a lot of fun. Clay is super hard to dig, and the deeper we got, the harder it was to lift it out, but it was a great time with three friends and an experience I'll never forget. We dug, and dug, and played the movie game while we dug, and told mission stories while we dug, and it was a blast. However the longer we were there, and the deeper we went, the more ludicrous our task seemed. We kept expecting to hit the pea gravel but it just wouldn't come. Three feet down, nope. Four, five, six, seven feet. Nope. Time passed and finally we stuck the gravel and rejoiced! We had dug a hole in clay wide enough for the four of us to stand in and nine feet deep (on stomachs filled with only the breakfast described earlier).

July 14th - Time between digging the hole and now had been used doing actual missionary work. We had placed a board to keep too much water from going in the hole, but simply didn't have the time until today to fill the hole with gravel. In the meantime, we'd been receiving calls from Nic all the time. He seemed to have all the time in the world to accept our help, while we truly had no time to finish the project until now. We went to his house and filled the hole, put a thin layer of the original ground on the top and the project was finished. Throughout the project, he'd continuously been telling us how much he wants to hear what we have to say about the church when we get done, so we pulled out our planners to see when we could arrange a lesson. Turns out July 14th is the last day he has any time to do anything, so we were unable to set up an appointment. (For the rest of my time in Ann Arbor, he never met with us, nor talked to us again.)

I'll leave interpretation of the title of this blog to you. Does it describe four elders bonding while digging a nine foot deep hole, or does it describe a man who "abused our kindness and fed us the worst oatmeal ever distributed unto man?" Or maybe both?   

I'm Catholic, I don't need Jehovah

The title you have just read is just one of the hundreds of funny things people said to be over the course of two years while tracting. I think most who have served missions would admit that at the start of their mission, tracting wasn't their favorite thing. It was scary. It was hard work. It was difficult to see whether what we were doing had any affect. The majority of us have these feelings initially and over the course of time either let them continue, or learn to embrace tracting. I for one learned to love it! Not only were some of the funnest (and funniest) experiences of my life had during tracting, but also some of the coolest people I've ever met were met while tracting.

Tracting is the door-knocking part of missionary work. If you're not teaching, you should be finding. Tracting was our chance to knock on doors with no idea of who would be on the other side. Now that it has been defined, I will give a few short experiences I've had. Expect more of these in the future, because there were far too many to post in one blog.

Powerup Guy - I don't like Japanese cartoons, but I'm aware there are times in them when characters will "power-up." They will be alone on the screen, standing there, while seizure causing blinking lights are going on. Once the character is sufficiently powered-up he procedes to go berserk. This story is an example of me being too much of a smart alec and what it caused a grown man to do. I'm assuming it had been a long day, and hope I wasn't a jerk very often, but here it is. "The man opened the door and I told him we were sharing a message about Jesus Christ. He readily replied, "I'm not interested," and I said, "You're not interested in Jesus Christ?" He responded in a delightfully humorous way. He actually did a powerup! He closed his eyes and clinched his teeth. He stood there and all of his muscles got tense and he started shaking. At the top of his lungs, he they yelled, "Get lost!" We bid him farewell and a pleasant night."

Alien Expert - "We met a man today who went by the name Mr. Greencircle who was pretty weird. I don't really now how to describe him other than sharing some of what he told us in all seiousness. He said that aliens from space are all around us and that the government is trying to find a way to allow them to live among us everywhere. The biggest problem they face in accomplishing this, he said, was that aliens usually die after three years of living on Earth. Yeah, that really does sound like a problem, Mr. Greencircle."

Jesus Experts - "We met a couple awesome people tracting today! One of them, Danny, has seen a spacecraft. He also told us that Jesus thought the world was flat. He insisted that if Jesus knew the Earth was round he would've let everyone of his time know. I assured him that it doesn't really matter whether Jesus knew or not (but frankly, if you believe the Jesus is God and that he created the Earth, he probably knew it was round...). We met someone else today that actually knows Jesus. We showed him the picture of Jesus visiting the Nephites. He was familiar with it, and said he had been there this morning. Hahaha, it was grand!"

Christmas Cheer - "Today while tracting a single street we met a man who has taken all the missionary lessons before, a woman who teaches catechism, and a friendly minister. We then met a lady who had a Book of Mormon with her and a testimony of it. She's not LDS or a member of the Community of Christ, but of something called the Restoration Branch Church. Next we approached a man asking if we could share our message with him. He told us to get away, so we asked if we could help him with his car (my companion is a mechanic). He told us again to leave, so we began walking away, and I said "Merry Christmas." He responded with "#@!* you!" and as we walked further away he called us jerks."

If these stories don't convince you that I loved tracting maybe stories of someone trying to break my hand, or a naked couple I stumbled accross, or a plethora of people calling the police on me will convince you that it was awesome. Those will wait for another week though.