Thursday, September 25, 2008

My $10 Testimony

I had been on my mission well over a year. My companion at the time was a scrawny little shit who really thought he was the shit. He was one of those "I can't think for myself because I have to obey every single rule to the absolute letter" missionaries. He was the senior companion and would bark orders. "I said now, and I mean now!" and "I'm the senior companion and what I say, goes!" In all truth, he had an extreme self-esteem problem.

One time, in the middle of the night, I woke up to a faint banging sound. Upon further investigation, I found that Elder Stupid had gotten up to relieve himself and had somehow locked himself in the bathroom! How he did that, I'll never know. If I hadn't woken up, he would have spent all night in the bathroom. Damn it! I should have left him in there.

We were out knocking on doors one day and an older lady refused to hear our message but gave us a donation of $10. Doofus wanted to give it to the church. I wanted to use it to go buy some lunch. We argued over $10 trying to decide what to do with it. As far as I could see, missionaries accepted meals from people all the time, so what was the harm in using it to eat? You know, I don't even remember what we did with it. Doofus probably gave it to the church. But the part that urks me was a comment he made: "You have a $10 testimony".

That's just the wrong thing to say to a missionary who totally believes. It's like calling a black person "nigger". It totally pissed me off. Only because I exercised an extreme amount of self control did I not break his nose with my fist.

Later, with the same companion, we were coming home from his personal errand which entailed leaving our area boundaries. It began snowing fiercely! Within a half hour, everything was blanketed in snow. The roads were extremely slick. I was driving and at one point, the car began to slide completely out of control. We did a 180 and stopped facing the opposite direction on the other side of the road, but not before the back end scraped against a telephone pole, leaving a foot long dent in the rear-passengers side of the car.

To say the least, that scared the shit out of both of us. Doofus wanted to drive, but he was a terrible driver. He couldn't even take a bend in the road without doing a jerking motion every 10 feet or so. So I wasn't about to let him drive. So we proceeded on our way home, being extremely cautious.

A few minutes later, we were going down a slight hill that curved. Mix that with a frictionless road and that spells disaster. Sure enough, as we were going down the hill, the car once again glided completely out of control. A semi with a trailor was going up the hill. We slammed into the truck right on his gas tank. Our small Ford Escort didn't even dent the truck but we went bouncing off and across the street where we slammed head long into another damn telephone pole. The second impact caused the airbags to deploy.

If you survive a car crash due to the airbags, the fumes from those things are enough to suffocate someone! My door was jammed shut but I forced it open to get out of the car. We were both completely unharmed except for a broken middle finger of Doofus. The details are fuzzy now, but I remember trying to give a statement to the police and Doofus pulled me away because the ambulance was leaving. This little pussy took an ambulance, and me with him, to the hospital because his finger hurt.

Because I didn't even have time to show my drivers license to the police, I got cited for driving without a license and speeding (which I absolutely was not). I did not report the crash to my family until my homecoming because I knew my mother would freak out.

By the way, our car was completely totaled.

That month, there were two car wrecks in the mission, and I was involved in both of them!

Not too much later, Doofus was transferred and I got a new companion. This guy was the total opposite of Doofus... he would sleep in every day, listen to all sorts of music, constantly calling people, and abused the absolute hell out of the mission car.

Well, we were on our way home when it started snowing fiercely again. Although we were just a few miles from home, we ended up stuck in traffic for about 8 hours, with traffic at a complete standstill. While we waited, a truck behind us just up and rear ended us, even though it had been sitting behind us for hours. We got the guys information but it turned out he gave us a bunch of bogus info.

That night we slept (or attempted to sleep) in a firestation with about 100 other stranded people. We had no access to a phone and so could not call to tell the DL where we were. We didn't get home until about noon the next day. We both hit the sack and slept until the next morning.

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