With one month left on my mission, the mission president assigned me a brand new missionary to train. The logistics of that is a post for another day.
Anyhow, at my companion?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s first district training meeting, we sang a hymn and knelt for opening prayer. The elder asked to say the prayer said something along the lines of the following:
Dear Heavenly Father,
Prayer #9.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
We all stood up to do our missionary recitations (Standard of truth, D&C 4, etc), and my companion stayed kneeling on the floor completely dumbstruck. After the rest of us stopped laughing, we knelt again and offered a more thorough prayer.
That?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s probably a guaranteed passage-to-hell ticket.
That made me laugh.
Reminds me of one night as we were kneeling for our evening prayer together. The phone rang, and our district leader, who in the middle of praying for the group, paused, waited for two rings, then said, “wait just a second,” and answered the phone.
Kim,
That’s hilarious. It’s exactly what I mentioned over at Splended Sun. Numbering the prayers, as long as we’re sincere…
Bryce, that’s great. On my second week in Guatemala I was on splits with another greenie and we gave a discussion, they gave us cafe (not real coffee), so we started drinking it quickly because we had another appointment to get to. We asked the guy to pray and during the prayer I could hear my companion, and then looked up to see him drinking his cafe in the middle of the guy’s prayer.
A man who was the sole survivor of a shipwreck found himself stranded on a remote, uncharted island. After several days of wandering in search of food and water, he was picked up and brought to a small village of huts. A group of men previously marooned had lived there for years without being rescued. They helped him make a small shelter, showed him how to get water and shared their food supply. After he recovered his health and began to fit in to the daily rhythms of the group, he finally gathered the courage to ask about the strange ritual they carried on each afternoon. The men would gather in a clearing and sit silently. Then one would shout out, “Number 16!” The others would all laugh uproariously. Then another man said, “Number 47!” followed by pleasant giggles. A third man burst out, “Number 8!” This was followed by blushes and embarrassed guffaws. The newcomer couldn’t make sense of it all, so he asked the apparent leader of the group what was going on.
“We’ve lived together for so long that we’ve already heard every joke that every guy here knows. A couple of years ago, we decided if all we could do was tell the same ones over and over again, we might as well save time. So we gave each joke a number, and we just tell it that way.”
The newcomer was amazed. Timidly, he asked if he might try to join in. “Sure,” said the leader, “give it a go.”
“Number 22!” the man shouted. There was no laughter, only bored silence.
“What’s wrong?” asked the newcomer, “isn’t there a number 22? Isn’t it funny?”
“Sure, 22 is a great joke,” said the leader.
“Then why didn’t anyone laugh?”
“Some guys just don’t know how to tell a joke.”
By the way, I’m glad the “related posts” feature was added. I really get a kick out of resurrecting these very old posts.
I can tell.
Kim, does that mean I’m making you happy or sad?
Yes.
Well, I just want to know if this behavior is vexing you whether it’s pleasing you. If you prefer that I leave the old threads alone, I may be willing to rein in my behavior somewhat (unless I start feeling really perverse). I assumed that you added the “related posts” feature in part because you wanted people to wander around, read, and comment on the older stuff.
By the way, does anyone like my joke? (Yes, that’s shameless fishing for praise.)
I think it’s good to bring up old posts and I am pretty sure Kim feels that way too. He tries to do it himself, occasionally.
Yes, your joke was funny. :)
My dad told me that one. It’s one of my favorites. When I read this post, I immediately thought of it.