White collared shirt, dark suit, boring colored tie, and a black plaque with my last name. This was going to be the best experience of my life. I was headed to Paris France on my LDS mission.
Missionaries seem odd to people that are not members of...
Sleepy, groggy, ornery, pick a word within those limits and you would have perfectly described me every morning I had to get up at 6:30. It was way too early for me. I was not used to it, and the four of us talked way too late for me to be getting up that early.
"Elder Livingston, what are you doing?" I whispered after the usual morning routine of studying and breakfast. It was now getting to the point where I felt like talking. Brother Quinn was teaching and Elder Livingston had started tallying something during the lesson.
"Shh. Don't worry about it," Elder Livingston replied. "I'll tell you when he lets us have a break."
Brother Quinn generally taught for a couple hours and would give us a break depending on how long he felt we could last without falling asleep or stop paying attention.
"K. There are a lot of verbs that you will use, k, that don't follow these rules that we just learned, k," Brother Quinn finally said after what seemed like forever. He had been harping about the conjugation of present tense verbs for the past hour. "K. You can go get a drink, k or go to the bathroom, k. Then when you come back, k, we will talk about the conjugation of irregular verbs, k?"
"I'm counting how many times he says 'K,'" Elder Livingston confided in us once we were out of earshot of Brother Quinn heading toward the drinking fountain.
"Does he say it a lot?" Elder Garland asked in his English accent.
"Yeah, man, have you not been listening? He says it all the time," I said quickly. "I noticed it the very first day, but thought maybe it was just because it was his first day and he was nervous. It's not."
"Yeah. He said it on average seven-and-a-half times per minute while I've been counting today," Elder Livingston said. "I've counted six times for a minute each."
"Wow!" Three of us said at once. Then I added, "That's a lot of times. I'm going to have to start counting."
"No, we can't all count or he will start to wonder what we are doing," Elder Livingston said.
"Seven-and-a-half times per minute! That's so many times. That means he says it 900 times in the two hours we are with him today. That's so crazy!" I said, basically ignoring what Elder Livingston had to say while I figured out how much that was. Math always came fairly easy to me, so a simple multiplication wasn't much. You just multiply 7.5 by 2 and then 15 by 60.
We all headed back to class and listened to what Brother Quinn had to teach us. The "k" still stuck out to me everytime he said it throughout the rest of the day. He lectured about the irregular verbs for the next hour and it all pretty much went over my head. I had no idea what he was talking about.
After Brother Quinn left, we had lunch and then did more studying. Elder Pieper and I had pretty much given up on companion study. It usually just turned into the eight elders talking about life before the mission and the four sisters would leave the room.
In extra personal study, I started over in the Book of Mormon. I had finished it with my family before, but never really read it all the way through on my own. I figured now was the best time possible with all the quiet time I had.
The Book of Mormon begins with a young man named Nephi who lives with his brothers and parents in Jerusalem around 600 B.C. which turns out to be around the time Jeremiah in the Bible is put in prison. Nephi's father, Lehi, is a prophet and is commanded to speak unto the people of Jerusalem and tell them to repent. When they don't, he is told by God to leave Jerusalem. Nephi and his family after leaving Jerusalem to live in the wilderness return a few times to get things that would be needed in the trip. Then they travel across the oceans to what are now the Americas.
After reading that for a bit, we went to a large group meeting, which was just a giant group of missionaries and we had a guy come and teach us a little bit about "Preach My Gospel."
After that meeting and dinner, we were all swept off to a zone conference to be introduced to our zone leaders. We were gathered all together as a French zone and we watched a talk by an apostle of the Church. Like in the time of the Bible, there is a prophet and twelve apostles in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This apostle is one of my favorite speakers, his name is Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. He is actually from St. George, which was pretty cool. This particular talk was given at the MTC in 2000. He gave a really good talk about finishing your mission and not ever wanting to go home or doing anything that would get you sent home. It was amazing.
After the zone conference, we were sent to our dorms to prepare for bed. After talking and hanging out with the other elders, we all climbed into our bunk beds at 10:30, but like in the previous nights we started talking about random things.
Elder Garland kept turning his flashlight on which was annoying everyone. It was an eerie, bluish light that erupted in the room every few seconds for no reason whatsoever. After a few times, Elder Pieper started making creepy faces at Elder Garland which scared him a bit but didn't stop him from continuing. Elder Garland then turned the light on again and Elder Pieper wasn't in his bed.
Somehow, without noise or any indication of movement at all, Elder Pieper had crossed the room in a span of a few seconds and stood staring at Elder Garland at the foot of his bed. Elder Garland screamed and for some reason flipped off his flashlight. He fumbled with it in the dark before hitting the on button and finding Elder Pieper laying in his own bed as if he hadn't moved.
Elder Garland flipped the light off and then on and somehow again with the room as quiet as possible, Elder Pieper and moved through the room without a sound. When Elder Garland's already creepy light came back on, Elder Pieper was a foot away from Elder Garland's face. Elder Garland screamed again and Elder Coleman and I just laughed hysterically. Elder Pieper ran off to his bed and we spent the remainder of the night with Elder Garland's blue flashlight on, which was terrible for me because I don't sleep well with lights on.
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