Favorite mission memories

[beefytee]

Oh, and the time my companion threw a rock at a rat in a Viennese alley, killing it, then skinning it, tanning the hide, and using it as book cover for his missionary handbook, with the tail as a handy bookmark.

I killed a rat on my mission when it ran out the rain gutter spout and underneath my foot where I was stepping. I left it as is.

[NorthwestUteFan]

Fun times:
-'P-Day Eve' celebrations, followed by outrageous basketball tournaments the next morning. We had several D-1 basketball players in my zone for ~3 month stint and the b-ball was amazing. Once night we watched all 3 Star Wars movies in succession...

Passive-aggressive moments, FTW:
-On said 'P-Day Eve', in one apartment with 4 missionaries, we would have a huge Uno tournament to determine who would perform which chores the next morning. For about 4 weeks straight my companion, and another elder (who went to the same high school as my comp), conspired to knock me out of the game first and as such forcing me to perform the least desirable task (cleaning the bathroom).
Once I realized their conspiracy I began scrubbing the toilet (inside and outside) with my comp's toothbrush, rinsing it well, and placing it back in the holder. The bathroom never looked better and our landlord was very happy. I repeated this same 'treatment' for about 6 weeks straight, then decided I had enough and left a single 'curly spider' woven through the bristles of his toothbrush. I never cleaned the bathroom again. (For the record, I never left my toothbrush lying out in the open either).

-Disconnecting the speedometer cable to "stay under" the alotted 2500 miles/month.

Bad times:
-Like doctorcoug, I was first on scene for a murder. We were eating dinner at a member's apartment, heard a gunshot, ran outside, and the crowd of 40 had disappeared like cockroaches into the walls. A single 18 year-old kid was lying in a pool of his own blood on the street. 40 people witnessed the event, and according to the police officers, "nobody knew nothin".

The next day somebody spray painted something to the effect of, "Stay out of our 'hood" over the kid's painted outline in the street. The blood stains remained on that street for a number of days afterward, like an oil leak from a car or maybe a can of paint had turned over, and not an actual person's actual life.


Icky:
-Learning that the zone leader whom I respected in the zone next to mine "had adult relations" with a sister missionary during a PPI. I assume she passed. Looking back I knew of quite a bit of this problem.
-In one ward I was the first missionary there in ~3 years after the previous missionary knocked up a 16 year-old Laurel (Of course I didn't know this until about 4 months after arriving - that would likely explain the evil eye, and why nobody would feed the missionaries).

Awesome:
-note- I have not played the name-dropping game for well over a 15 years, so permit me a bit of indulgence.

-Having Lita Ford cook us spaghetti, and innocent Me inviting her to church every time I saw her (She would joke, "I'm just not THAT kind of girl"...). Note - If you need to google her, the music is too loud (this was two years after the duet with Ozzy was released). She lived next door to our WML. Very cool lady. She is my favorite 'cougar' of all time, is smart and talented, and was unbelievably beautiful. And she was single at the time. A few years later she married a guy she first met only two weeks before. Oh well...

-Meeting David Lee Roth a few times. Very, very nice guy. Talked to him about Jason Becker* and I could tell he was completely devastated about the guy. (*Jason Becker is/was a phenominal guitar player, and was 22 yrs old when he played on DLR's 'A Little Ain't Enough' album, and was then diagnosed with Lou Gherig's Disease - ALS - and quickly became completely paralyzed). Jason may very well have been the best player of all time if he wasn't knocked down by ALS. (FTR he is still alive 20 yrs later).

-Met Patrick Swayze, also an outstanding gentleman. Never got to ride his horses though.

-A member in one ward was a high school teacher at Pasadena High and was very close with Eddie and Alex Van Halen (and also DLR, but the Roths and the Van Halens weren't on speaking terms, and they were never seen together...), so they would drop by from time to time. I have a pic of me next to Eddie's Lamborghini somwhere.

-Watching Tom Selleck play baseball in a celebrity tournament. Dude was a very good 2nd base (played at USC on scholarship, IIRC).

-My companion and I "tracting" our way into Bret Michaels wedding reception (yes we knew what we were doing...)

-Mission Pres taking the entire mission to watch UCLA vs. byu game, the caveat being that we had to wear missionary clothing. Yuck. Had a great time in the tailgate lot however. People would say something snide about the cougars, so I would start singing 'Sons of Westwood' for them . "We are Sons of Westwood, And we hail the Blue and Gold..." By the time I got to "U-C-L-A! Fight! Fight! Fight!" they were treating me like their best buddy (but I didn't drink the offered drinks of course). I couldn't get anybody to take a BOM though...
Bruins 27 - Cougs 23 (it actually was a very exciting game, despite being mistaken repeatedly for a cougar fan due to my name tag).

-Me laughing hysterically in the dejected-looking faces of Cougar fans after the game who said, "At least we will beat Utah this year...". (FTR they did, 48-17, big deal the Utes sucked)

Spiritual:
-Yeah, yeah, there are some spurtchal stories in there somewhere. I need to cogitate a few days to dig them up and will return to share.

[Moliere]

Great posts in this thread so far. Here are some of my favorite memories:

Random
- Being called a "cult" by the guy stamping my passport as I moved through customs. Great way to enter a foreign country!
- Getting lost in St. Cloud while trying to find the American School. I was with another new missionary (soccer player from England) and neither of understood a lick of French and I find the irony of the whole situation laughable now.
- Waking up at 5:30am on Paris P-days just so we could maximize our time in Paris. Even dead companions were usually the first to wake up on Paris P-days.
- Taking a companion to the train station on transfer day only to see him sit next to an inactive we were trying to activate (and did, kind of). I guess they kind of fell for each other and I always wondered what happened on that train. The mission president had some choice words for me after that incident but luckily I was far away and he could only yell at my by phone. After the mission, I was watching Letterman and this companion helped with one of the Top Ten Lists.
- Sitting in my apartment listening to the French go crazy as they won the world cup. That was a very fun night.
- Throwing a 30 yard bomb to the mission president during the Turkey Bowl. He laid out and caught the pass for a TD, then he retired to the sideline and never made it back in the game. Way to sacrifice for the team prez!
- Two months before going home I got a companion that was a freak athlete. The kid played soccer in college but was faster than I'd ever seen. We would wake up 30 minutes early and go running around the Eiffel Tower or Les Invalides or down the Seine River bank.
- Getting calls from an elder in a neighboring city (we shared a car with them) while his companion was in the shower. This elder's companion was crazy weird so often times we'd invite them to drive over and split up with us. We both had bleus (new missionaries) so this elder and I would team up and we'd send the bleus off to do contacting. Ah, good times.

Spiritual
- Seeing an investigator get baptized right before I went home. She had been seeing the missionaries on and off for over 20 years and I had spent some time at her home with her son and live-in boyfriend. Eight months after I left that city a missionary (the same one I got lost with in St. Cloud) finally got her to commit and get baptized. The mission president allowed me to take the train out to the city to see the baptism. Very cool.
- For the first time that I can remember I felt the spirit in a way that changed me from a typical Utah Mormon believer to someone who really believed in the supernatural elements such as the Holy Ghost. I remember the moment very well and grateful for Frere Kola, the inactive member that we were visiting, for helping me feel that.

[PaloAltoCougar]

From whence did that Elder come? Did he make animal sounds atop a bus stop?

Elder Badger (!) hailed from the fine metropolis of Rupert, Idaho. His folks would send him copies of the Minidoka County News which we both enjoyed immensely. Badger published a book of poetry in the States while we were together, and yet was a grizzled sheepherder. During our companionship, he told me he was convinced he was going to die young in a violent accident of some sort. I spoke with him on the phone ten years ago, some 25 years after the last time I had seen him. I told him I was surprised but relieved he was still alive, reminding him of his expectation of an early and violent death. "My life has been filled with disappointed," he acknowledged sadly.

[LA Ute]

I had a pilonidal cyst lanced by the mission doctor, who was a very practical sort and used the branch sacrament table as the operating table. He was assisted by two sister health missionaries who were both nurses. That's about all you're getting out of me on that one. It was definitely the strangest experience of my mission. And yes, the procedure was successful.

[shoganai]

A few random ones that came to mind...

-We walked out of our apartment for a morning appointment to find our whole complex surrounded by the Japanese SWAT - shields, helmets, the whole gig. Naturally, they didn't carry any weapons.

They were concentrated around an apartment on the second floor that we all knew was a yakuza residence. The yakuza were actually pretty nice folks to us, and they were always easy to spot. We walked straight to our bikes without incident and took off. When we came back three hours later everybody was gone and the place was normal. I don't recall seeing the yakuza anymore after that.

-My white companion and I (also white) were talking to a Japanese guy on the street one night when some elderly Japanese woman walked up, completely ignored the guy we were talking to, and in formal Japanese asked the the two of us for directions to some place. The other Japan missionaries here will understand how completely bizarre that was.

-My Mongolian companion said he had been in with street gangs before his baptism. No less than twice he spontaneously challenged a typical dweeby looking college-age guy to fight him after they said they weren't interested in talking to us. And he wasn't joking...

-The 1,000-yen tabehodais. That's a $10 all-you-can-eat buffet where you can cook your own meat slices on a grill at your table. There was one of these in another mission that had formally banned the Mormon missionaries. Awesome stuff.

-Whenever we'd transfer we'd send our luggage/bike separately via a delivery service while we rode the train. One January transfer, I was in an area with a foot or two of snow on the ground. The delivery guy came and picked up my stuff. I went a grabbed my travel bag, and my companion and I walked out to go to the train station. We saw the delivery truck still sitting outside our apartment. The guy was stuck in the snow. With a rather embarrassed look he sheepishly asked if we would help push him out - he probably wasn't even sure we'd understand him. Without hesitation we took our place behind the truck and spent the next 10 minutes getting him unstuck.

My luggage made the long transfer in record time and was promptly waiting for me when I arrived at my new area the next evening.

[happyone]

A few random ones that came to mind...

-We walked out of our apartment for a morning appointment to find our whole complex surrounded by the Japanese SWAT - shields, helmets, the whole gig. Naturally, they didn't carry any weapons.

They were concentrated around an apartment on the second floor that we all knew was a yakuza residence. The yakuza were actually pretty nice folks to us, and they were always easy to spot. We walked straight to our bikes without incident and took off. When we came back three hours later everybody was gone and the place was normal. I don't recall seeing the yakuza anymore after that.
...
-The 1,000-yen tabehodais. That's a $10 all-you-can-eat buffet where you can cook your own meat slices on a grill at your table. There was one of these in another mission that had formally banned the Mormon missionaries. Awesome stuff.

This thread brings back a whole lot of memories that I hadn't thought of in a long time.

Our mission home was a couple of streets over from the local Yakuza don's home. I got to Japan about three weeks after a major shoot out. The police had both ends of the street blocked off and were providing protection for him ( or so we were told )

The local Osho's Gyoza places would give you 10 servings ( 60 pieces ) free if you could eat them in 30 minutes. They would also put your name on the wall. At the time 3/4s of the names on the wall were missionaries. One P day all of the elders in the zone, 16 of us, hit one of them. 8 of us met the challenge. The apartment stank of gyoza for a week. There were 3 of the places in the zone and we had our names up in all three.

Meeting the advanced man setting up a Utah State football game in a hotel resturant where they had an all you can eat breakfast buffet. This was in the winter before the game that fall - I had already come home when the game was played

Getting to translate for the BYU football team when they came over to play some local Japanese college football teams and conduct some clinics. I got to meet LaVelle, Gifford Nielson, and Marc Wilson among others.

My last Thanksgiving in Japan, three zones got together and amoung other things we were playing basketball and football - IIRC we ended up with 3 spained ankles, a tornup knee- one of mission assistants, a seperated shoulder and assorted bumps and bruises to numerous to count. The Mission Pres was not happy, in the next round of Zone Conferences he banned almost all atheletic activities.

We figured out how to break the water heater in our apartment, to get permission to go to the public baths, the water heater had to be out in the apartment. This allowed us to follow the letter of the law - We would do this about every six weeks or so and go to the local public baths.

[Clark Addison]

So many to choose from . . .

When I had been out about 2 months, I was teamed with a guy who had been out 4 months, and had spent most of the preceding two months sitting in his apartment. So neither of us spoke too much Chinese, we had no investigators, and not a lot of ways to get new ones. There was only one place in our area where we could street contact, so we spent a lot of time there. Unfortunately, there was also a group of teenagers who hung out in the area. They weren't real bad news, but they were obnoxious. Anytime they saw us, they would come over and taunt us and generally make our lives miserable.

So one day, we head out there, and start working. We are standing at the bottom of a small hill. At the top of the hill, I see five of these guys, with two bicycles. They see us, start pointing at us, and then three of them hop on one bike and two on the other, and they start riding down the hill toward us, yelling at us the whole way down. They were about 10 yards away from us when the bike with three riders starts losing control. They crash into the other bike, and suddenly we have all 5 of these kids lying on the ground 10 feet away from us moaning in various degrees of pain. My companion and I walk over to them, and I point at them and say, as best I can, "That's what happens when you mock the servants of God". And then we walk away.

That story made up the entirety of my letter to the MP that week. I later heard from my ZLs that the APs thought it was hillarious. The MP less so.

A couple of weeks later I had a similar miracle that involved the weather, but that is for another time.

[Goatnapper'96]

So many to choose from . . .

When I had been out about 2 months, I was teamed with a guy who had been out 4 months, and had spent most of the preceding two months sitting in his apartment. So neither of us spoke too much Chinese, we had no investigators, and not a lot of ways to get new ones. There was only one place in our area where we could street contact, so we spent a lot of time there. Unfortunately, there was also a group of teenagers who hung out in the area. They weren't real bad news, but they were obnoxious. Anytime they saw us, they would come over and taunt us and generally make our lives miserable.

So one day, we head out there, and start working. We are standing at the bottom of a small hill. At the top of the hill, I see five of these guys, with two bicycles. They see us, start pointing at us, and then three of them hop on one bike and two on the other, and they start riding down the hill toward us, yelling at us the whole way down. They were about 10 yards away from us when the bike with three riders starts losing control. They crash into the other bike, and suddenly we have all 5 of these kids lying on the ground 10 feet away from us moaning in various degrees of pain. My companion and I walk over to them, and I point at them and say, as best I can, "That's what happens when you mock the servants of God". And then we walk away.

That story made up the entirety of my letter to the MP that week. I later heard from my ZLs that the APs thought it was hillarious. The MP less so.

A couple of weeks later I had a similar miracle that involved the weather, but that is for another time.

I had one comp for a while who was a state champ wrestler from Utah. I quickly learned on my mission that everyone serves with a kid named "Jenson" and a state champ wrestler from Utah. I didn't know at the time how many levels of competition existed in the lovely deseret, but since have learned that in Utah even chicks are state champ wrestlers. Regardless, this one was the real deal. One day we had enough of some punkass limey kids harassing us as we street contacted in Stourbridge, UK. He took one, this was late November in the British Midlands, and began dunking him in a fountain screaming for the kid to say "uncle." It was beyond funny and we never were harassed by those kids again.

In the nasty town of Corby, England I met up with a gentleman who was a recovering witch. He lived in the Hazel Lees district, which I have been told had the highest percentage of addicts of any area in the UK. Nasty town of nothing but council housing (British equivalent of government subisidized housing aka the projects) that had been quickly built in the 1950's and 60's and filled with Scotts who worked some huge mine out that way. Before we began teaching Willy, we routinely had rocks and bottles thrown at us as we peddled through town (this was my last area and I had matured and humbled over the previous 20 months to the point that I did not seek to beat the shit out of people who treated me so poorly), but after we became "Willy's Boys" we had rock star status. Willy was a total celebrity and community organizer. He ran the community fair and anti-drug education campaigns and organized all the youth programs. He even gave the druggies free needles if they brought the used ones back to him. His efforts seriously reduced AIDS contractions - trully he was the most Christlike witch I ever did meet. Once when we were teaching Willy our bikes were stolen. Willy went postal and made some phone calls to people who know people. The following day full blown junkies stumbled up to us in the town center to let us know they would find the fellow who stole our bikes and he would never steal a thing again in his life. They were returned, by taxi, to us that afternoon at Willy's house and I have never seen nor received such a profuse apology as I did that afternoon. Willy joined the Church and the witches convent to which he belonged put out a hit on him and the missionaries, but that was a couple of weeks after I returned home. I hope it all turned out well!

[Goatnapper'96]

For Jarid:

My favorite Elder Monsonisms:

1.) He was a district leader in my zone and one of the missionaries was a stereotypical BYU coed whose daddy was a MP in DC South, I believe he took the place of the GA who took the place of Art's horizontal bopping MP, and so she was allowed to go on her mission early. She was batshit crazy and only wanted to get married. However, she was sporting a lil more in the pooper than most fellas want in 21 year ol' something. I mean a lil cushion for the pushin' might appeal in your forties but when they spank that thang in the early 20's they want to see a quarter bounce waist high...I digress. Elder Monson was an uncouth 100% Eastern Utah redneck who had been rode hard with Jarid's clique. He had no time for molly mormons or LDS aristocracy. Especially fat ones who cried alot. One day he had enough of this dear sweet sister and informs her "get the hell away from me ya cow!" To which she responds "since I am not a British girl, I will pretend I don't know what you just said!" To which Monson responds: "Leave me alone, bitch!"

2.) Elder Monson was what one might call a Lion of the Lord. The type of dude who could believe God called those he did not like to cotton growing missions in Moapa. He baptized a gentleman and after the 4th week of the dude not getting the AP, he went entirely bloodshot eyed postal on the Bishop right in the chapel foyer. Members of the ward could not believe the language the Elder used in public. It was one of many visits I made with him to soothe ecclesiastical leadership/missionary relations. How he would chafe when he had to apologize. He later informed me the apologies were insincere, shocking I tell you, and that the only two sincere apologies he gave were to his mother and to some Sister such and such because he and Jarid killed her goat, in a drunken stupor I assume, with a two liter bottle of pepsi, some dry ice and a box of nails.

3.) Later in his mission an AP ordered him to baptize the 10 year old son of a ward mission leader. Monson did not think the lad ready and respectfully declined. The AP announces that and he and his comp will then teach the kid and baptize him. Now the AP was the anti-matter to an Eastern Utah redneck. He had nice suits, soft hands, was born and raised on the Eastern SLC bench and was on a tennis scholarship to the BYU. Elder Monson paused, and then offered this prophecy "if you and your comp do that I will attend the baptism and two of us will go down in the font but only of us will come out. You wanna guess who the two who go down are and who the one that will come out will be?" The AP starts crying and asks if "he had offended Elder Monson in the pre-existence?" To which Curt replies "Dammit you know I can't remember that shit, it this life where you keep pissing me off!"

Save me the comments about handling this message to Jarid via boardmail.

[clackamascoug]

Gotta tell my buffet story.

I was a brand new missionary, less than 30 days in, and we had some sort of half the mission conference, which ended at 5 p.m., and we were instructed to be home by 9. There was no formal announcement, but the word spread like wild fire - meet at the Kings Table for some dinner. About 75 missionaries descended upon the place with no previous warning, but they set us up in a side room, and said have at it. With all other vices off limits, these 75 missionaries engorged themselves with the passion that only 19-24 year old kids, who rode bicycles for a living, can do. Must have been more than a million calories consumed. Anyway, after 2 hours the waters calmed, and as we were leaving, I heard two employees talking to each other saying, "I've worked here 5 years, and we've never ran out of food before."

At the end of my mission I was in Tahlequah, OK, and witnessed something you don't ever see in a Fast & Testimony meeting - A confession of Murder. A year before my arrival a family of 17 joined the church, good strong mountain people. While I was in Tahlequah a son in law to the family was killed being stabbed 69 times. Yeah 69 times. There were no leads to the murder, and after a month, there was nothing conclusive. On the first Sunday of June 1980, during F&T meeting, the BIL of the murder victim confessed to the murder at the pulpit, bore his testimony, and concluded by saying "In the name of..... Amen." The branch President went to his office and called the Police, and they came and handcuffed him and took him away. By August I went home, and I've never heard the end of the story. I've alway wondered though... why stabbed 69 times.

[thesaint258]

I'm not going to bother classifying them, but here are a few that come to mind:

-Eating at Herb's (best restaurant in Vienna with schnitzel bigger than the plate)
-Having some old lady yell at me and spit on me
-Thanksgiving with the Walters
-Baptizing a family
-Pretty much everything about Graz
-Being assaulted
-Learning to drive a manual transmission
-Getting ice cream every day at Temmel's every day and the old lady who got mad at the younger women for giving us extra ice cream
-The Milka challenge
-Giving out an entire box of BOMs in a week, and actually getting a good investigator out of it
-Getting transferred right before Christmas--twice
-Having my comp tell me, "You're hindering the work. I'm trying to do God's work and you're hindering me."
-Talking with the ward mission leader one night on splits about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and having the language click for me
-Barenschutzklamm--coolest hike ever
-Knocking every single door in St. Martin
-Having the cops called on us...twice
-Sister Knapp's tiramisu
-Standing at a street display with long underwear and sweats beneath my suit because it was so cold

While I really enjoyed my mission, it was hard, and I really don't want to do it again any time soon (there's a reason they make you wait until you're old to go again). I still have nightmares that I get called to go again. ::shudder::

[thesaint258]

To which Curt replies "Dammit you know I can't remember that shit, it this life where you keep pissing me off!"

[Jeff Lebowski]

1.) He was a district leader in my zone and one of the missionaries was a stereotypical BYU coed whose daddy was a MP in DC South, I believe he took the place of the GA who took the place of Art's horizontal bopping MP, and so she was allowed to go on her mission early. She was batshit crazy and only wanted to get married. However, she was sporting a lil more in the pooper than most fellas want in 21 year ol' something. I mean a lil cushion for the pushin' might appeal in your forties but when they spank that thang in the early 20's they want to see a quarter bounce waist high...I digress. Elder Monson was an uncouth 100% Eastern Utah redneck who had been rode hard with Jarid's clique. He had no time for molly mormons or LDS aristocracy. Especially fat ones who cried alot. One day he had enough of this dear sweet sister and informs her "get the hell away from me ya cow!" To which she responds "since I am not a British girl, I will pretend I don't know what you just said!" To which Monson responds: "Leave me alone, bitch!"

[Goatnapper'96]

Art's MP did not finish his term. When he was released for adultery, they sent in a GA to head the mission for about a year, I think the GA was named Sontac.