I know if all you RM’s dig deep down in your journals, you can come up with some good ones. I’ll share two.
Elder B. was my second greenie. Our area was North Las Vegas. At transfers we would meet at the chapel located on East Viking Road and await our new missionaries. President had all us trainers in a short meeting, going over what he expected of us with the new missionaries. He asked that we work them straight until bed time.
Elder B. was all smiles and had way too much luggage, but we loaded it into the car and off we went to our apartment. We quickly dropped his stuff off and proceeded to go tracting for the rest of the day (about 6 hours of tracting with an hour for dinner).
I asked him if he had ever role played tracting at the MTC and he said he had. I asked if he felt comfortable doing a door approach on his own and he said not yet. I said that I would continue to do them until he was comfortable. We prayed, picked a location and went to work. I think I must have done about 30 doors before he felt comfortable trying one. He was really nervous. I assured him that I would be there to help him out if he needed it. He was ready to try the next door.
Elder B. knocked at the door. What happened next was not what he expected in a million years. The most gigantic, African American (think green mile dude) came to the door, holding a gun in his hand. To put this in perspective, I was a skinny white kid, 5′ 9″ and barely 130 lbs. Elder B was about 5′ 4″, and just as white as me, and probably 115 lbs. We were both pretty shocked and Elder B. had no idea what to say. I jumped in and did a standard door approach, trying not to look at the gleaming weapon in this guy’s hand.
Turns out he was just cleaning the gun when we approached. Who knows, perhaps he was a cop or something, but a really nice fellow and totally non-threatening. He politely declined our invitation to learn more and we said our goodbye’s. I think Elder B. might have needed to change his shorts, but we kept going and the remainder of our time was uneventful. Welcome to Las Vegas Elder B.
The second happened to a companionship in my district. We were at a district meeting, going over our area boards when this elder shares an experience he had while on splits. He was at a second discussion with a Stake Missionary. The SM was African American and the family they were giving the discussions to was also African American. This elder was Caucasian.
During the discussion, the elder asked the SM to share an experience related to the principle being taught. The SM proceeded to say to the father of the family:
“It is important to know that in the Celestial Kingdom you will be white and have seven wives.”
Both the elder and the family being taught were stunned. The father responded with “I don’t want to be white and I don’t want seven wives!”
The SM and the father proceeded to argue this point of “Doctrine” for the next few minutes until the elder and SM were asked to leave.
So, anyone else out there have a good story to two to tell? Share ’em if you got ’em.
Two of my favorite mission stories happened within a few days of each other. Elder B (no relation to JM’s companion, I assume) and I were in Almada, Portugal (across the river from Lisbon). We some time to kill between appointments so we decided to do some street contacting. To spice things up I suggested that we try a little game my older sister told me she used to do on her mission. One companion comes up with a word and the other has to work it into the contact somehow. I gave Elder B the word “sugar”. After thinking about it for a few seconds he turned around and abruptly stopped a man who was about 2 feet away from him. His name was Nelson and he was from Brazil. I have never seen a more “golden” contact. We taught him most of the 1st discussion right there on the street and made an appointment to teach him in his home that night. He was baptized about 3 weeks later. We never used the word game again for fear of ruining our perfect record.
Because of Nelson’s work schedule we had to teach him at night and we would typically return to our apartment around 10:00 PM (which was the official mission time to be home). On night on our way home from teaching him, some kid around 18-20 years old came up to me, grabbed my arm, and asked for money. I pulled away from him and said, “Go away, I’m not giving you any money.” So he goes over to Elder B and demands money from him, saying he needed it to buy drugs. Elder B refused to give him money and some heated words followed on both sides, with tempers escalating.
Elder B finally said something that enraged the kid and he pulled a knife on us. He held the knife out at Elder B and said, “Oh yeah, well how would you like this stuck in you?” Elder B, who was about 6′ and 190 lbs., cocked his fist back and got right up in the kid’s face and said, “Well how would you like my fist stuck in your face? I guarantee you it would hurt worse.” The kid, who was about 5’10” and 160, started shaking and backing down, but still holding the knife out. At this point I could see that Elder B was actually going to beat the snot out of the kid, so I had to pull him away as the kid was backing off. This has become my favorite story to tell, the time someone pulled a knife on us and my companion nearly beat him up.
I was driving the car (in England) when three bikers (with girls on the back of the motorcycles) started harrasing us. My companion opened the glove box and took the cardboard (the candy sits on) from a candy bar and rolled it into a barrel.
We had stopped at a red light and my companion said to take off fast when the light changes which I did. I beat 2 of the 3 bikers out of the intersection when the light changed. My companion who was about 6’5″ came out of his seat and leaned into the back window at which point he aimed the candy wrapper at the remaining 2 bikers.
When the bikers saw the black rolled barrell sticking out of his hand at them, they both dropped their motorcycles to the ground. I expect the bikes got pretty scratched up when they did this.
We then arrived at the round about and the first biker had made the circle, he saw his friends on the ground and my companion was out the window pointing his candy bar wrapper at the biker.
We had two tough guys on the ground and the other one going as fast as his motorcycle would take him to get away from 2 Americans and a candy bar wrapper.
I guess they thought we were gun toting Americans in England or the IRA.
How can we top these two great experiences.
My companion and I were waling down Mesquite Boulevard (the main drag in Mesquite, Nevada), when a man going the opposite direction walked by us. My companion noticed he was carrying a blue copy of the Book of Mormon. By the time the shock of it wore off, he was long gone.
Later that day, we were eating dinner at a local cafe and the same man sat down at the counter. He started reading his Book of Mormon. Needless to say we went over there to talk to him.
It turned out he was dating a returned missionary. we taught him the discussions and he was baptised shortly after.