LDS Missionary: France Paris Mission

The Prank Battle Begins

When first entering the MTC most missionaries receive their black nametag for the first time. For some reason, the MTC president or someone decided to put an orange sticker on the nametag to show off the new missionaries. This happened every Wednesday night.

Elder Olsen, Elder Aarif, and the group that came in with them left on Monday. It was like a ghost town in the French Zone. There were only three districts left, but one of them only had three people in it.

Wednesday finally arrived and there were only two French-speaking missionaries who arrived wearing their orange dots. Elder Lamb and another Elder Barker. Our Elder Barker was pretty happy about that and immediately took him under his wing.

They both looked about as shocked as I remember being on the first day of the MTC. Outside of the new missionaries, the day went about as normal as expected. Lots of learning, if you could call it that. It was more like struggling to learn anything about French.

Finally, it had come to my favorite part of the day, gym. It was the last thing we did on Wednesdays and by far the best part of the day because I could just go do whatever I wanted. Elder Coleman, Elder Pieper, Elder Bell, Elder Barker, Elder Shumway and I had started to play basketball games with whoever else though, so I really started to enjoy gym.

This time though, Elder Lamb had decided to join us. He was not much taller than me and probably skinnier. He looked athletic, and I knew it was going to be my challenge to guard him.

We shot for teams and as if it were preplanned, Elder Lamb and I ended up on opposite teams. Elder Pieper seemed to always be on my team and he generally guarded Elder Shumway. Elders Barker and Bell usually matched up well also. I generally got stuck guarding Elder Coleman which was usually a good matchup. He was a runner, so he was quicker, but he didn’t get by that often.

This time, Elder Pieper took on Elder Coleman and I took Elder Lamb. Immediately, Elder Lamb started playing fast and scored. I was just getting used to his style of play, so I wasn’t too worried.

“So where are you from?” I asked as we followed each other around the court.

“Cedar City, Utah,” Elder Lamb said. “You?”

“Really? That’s cool. Which school did you go to? I’m from St. George and went to Pine View.”

“Cool. I went to Canyon View.”

“Nice.”

It turned out that Elder Lamb and I were more evenly matched than Elder Coleman and I. Neither of us could score on each other. If one of us did score, the other seemed to answer quickly.

“Guys, I have an idea,” Elder Garland said when we got back to the dorm rooms after gym. “I’m going to scare the other room tonight.”

“How do you plan on doing that?” Elder Coleman asked.

“I’m going to get under the bed when no one is in there and wait until bedtime,” Elder Garland said.

“Seems foolproof,” I said simply and sarcastically.

“Yeah, not even Garland could mess that up,” Elder Pieper joked.

When Elders Barker, Bell, Livingston, and Shumway all happened to leave their room for a moment Elder Garland took his chance and slid quickly under Elder Shumway’s bed. He wasn’t able to be seen from any point in the room, so the rest of us thought the plan might actually work.

“Hey, where’s Garland?” Elder Livingston asked as we were told to turn off all lights.

“He--He’s with the Branch President,” Elder Coleman lied with only the one stutter. “He should be back soon.”

“Oh ok. I just hadn’t seen him much tonight,” Elder Livingston said.

“I can’t believe Garland is going to get away with this,” Elder Pieper said after we shut the door and went to bed.

“I know,” I said. “Do you think we’ll be able to hear them?”

There was no response as we all sat listening intently to any noise coming from the next room. Silence.

We sat quiet because there was no more to say until Elder Garland came back.

“WHAT THE --? GARLAND!” A voice shouted. Don’t worry there wasn’t a swear word. Then there was just laughter.

The loud noises and laughter continued until Elder Garland was banging down our door, yelling to let him in.

We opened the door to join in the laughing.

“What happened?” Elder Coleman asked after everyone went back to bed.

“I sat under there for ages. I almost gave up, but I stayed there. When it was finally time for bed, Shumway and Livingston were just talking. I kept trying to grab Shumway’s foot, but kept missing. I was so sick of sitting under there, so I went for Shumway’s face. I reached up and touched him right as he moved and Shumway said, ‘That was weird. I just scratched my armpit and someone joined in with me.’ That’s when I jumped out and screamed. It was more funny than it was scary,” Elder Garland explained.

After calming down a bit, we went to sleep to be ready for the next day.

“Dude, Shumway, what did you think of Garland’s attack last night?” I asked when I got a chance.

“It was so weird when he scratched my armpit with me. I really thought someone had joined in,” Elder Shumway said. “It wasn’t scary though.”

“Yeah, we didn’t think it was, but I bet that was weird,” I replied.

“Hey, we gotta get Garland back. Help us think of something,” Elder Barker said as Elder Garland was out of earshot. “It’s gotta be more scary than his though.”

“We’ll think of something.”