Lucky You Nasty

Steven, Derek and Sadaar (Lucky in foreground)

Lucky you Nasty:

Whenever our Zone Leaders get bored they like to pop surprise exchanges on us. They claim that they plan everything out weeks in advance but conveniently "forget" to tell anyone until about 4 hours before we exchange. Such was the case on Tuesday. 

This time, they really wanted to mix it up so they did a triple exchange with RT2A. 

We came back to our apartment with Elder Dyer, who spent most of his evening worrying about bugs crawling in his mouth as he slept because he had to sleep on the floor. 

The next morning we had to haul booty to the other side of Fort Worth because a member family needed us to translate while they met with their sons principal. Elder Dyer, as the most experienced French missionary attempted to translate but the principal clearly didn't understand how translation works. She'd say something along the lines of:

"His behavior has gotten out of hand. On his first infraction he got into a fist fight with a boy on the bus damaging school property and injuring the other students cranium. On his second infraction he assaulted another student in the bathroom lashing out and attempting to break the femur of one of the students who he thought was the one who attacked him on the bus. On the 3rd and fourth infractions he continuously threw a basketball at a students head. If his behavior persists I'll have no choice to send him to the OSI where the DDA and the DRA will have to counsel him through a 12-step program. The other option is court, but it's not really court, it's more like peer-court, but it's not really like that either it's more of a collective group of like-minded's judging those who have gone against the rules of society. I do not want him to face expellation from te school but if need be, I will not hesitate to turn him over to the DDA or even the FWPDSC."

Then she would turn to Elder Dyer and say, "translate that." After he struggled to even remember what she had said in English he started but she immediately cut him off and said, "You know what? This is serious. I don't need you to translate. We're calling the professionals."

They called some translator hotline and she went off again. The translator told her she needed to simply her speech and speak in one sentence increments. She didn't, and the meeting took twice as long as it should have. 

Later that night, we went and saw Angelique who, to everyone's surprise, had watched all 4 sessions of conference. She was a little confused about what a Seventy was so I pulled out my tablet to show her the scripture in Luke to show her where it was mentioned but the second I opened up gospel library I was swarmed.

All of Angeliques children (except for her 14 and 18 year olds) that were old enough to walk and most of her nieces and nephews who were also there were rubbing their hands all over my screen. They'd flip it from Luke 10 to Luke 9 and from Luke 9 to Luke 11 and then back to Luke 10. They did this like it was just the greatest thing in the world. 

"Do you have any games? Do you have any games?" They said with hypnotized eyes. 

Before I coukd respond they found the drawing capability on my notes app and then, I knew it was all over. Derek and Steven were both battling it out for who could draw on it while the other children watched, mesmerized which would be normal if they had never seen anything like it before but I knew for a fact there was a PS4 in Angelique's house because her 14 year old son talks about it all the time. 

I looked at Elder Alleman who was equally swarmed and over the deafening roars of the kids I could faintly hear elder Dyer teaching a lesson. Then came Lucky.

Lucky or, if you want to call him by his real name: Good Luck, is about 2 years old and wears at least one or two gold chains all the time. Much like Pavlov's dog, Lucky drools when he gets excited and so he came toddling over to his cousins like he was Homer Simpson around doughnuts. I really didnt want Lucky' s cooties anywhere on my tablet but I was defenseless. Fortunately every time Lucky put a drooly hand on the screen it was swatted off by Steven or Derek. One by one they lost interested until it was only Steven, Derek and Lucky who had somehow gotten a hold of a Pineapple Dante and would put a little in his mouth and spit it all up on my shoe. Not wanting to make lucky feel left out I decided to at least show him the picture Steven had drawn of me (attached) and Lucky gently put his hands on both sides of the tablet, took a deep look at the screen, paused for a second, and then sneezed all over the screen spewing something other than good luck all over the place.

"Lucky you nasty!" Steven said in his innocent 6 year old voice. 

The joys of parenting. Especially when you're not supposed to play too much with kids.

Je vous aime,

--Elder Murdoch

The Crew

Great African Family