Oct 12

October 12, 2006

The mission message for today is God not only hears and answers prayers, He answers the same prayer multiple times and in multiple ways. This faith-promoting experience, aka the new furniture saga, began last week when we called the mission home and politely explained that the furniture in our living room (ha…like trailers have living rooms) is all of the following: a. torn b. broken c. stinky. That instituted a search for something more appropriate by a dear couple who oversee all the housing for missionaries in the area. First they located used, not torn, but still stinky furniture. Sister Clouse is much too determined to accept that. The next phone call assured us they now had sweet-smelling but torn furniture. So far they had not located anything broken. She was diligently perusing more used furniture when the mission pres’ wife called and said they had decided there’s money available to actually buy us new, but cheap, furniture. We had at this point conquered torn, broken and stinky and advanced to ugly.

Finally the miracle happened. Yesterday Sis. Clouse called yet again and said in her search for the cheap, ugly but new furniture, she had called a furniture store that had been cooperative in the past. Lo and behold this place had furniture that had been sold, the customer found a small worn spot, returned the furniture, and the store was planning to sell it as used furniture. But, because he has a true testimony, he felt inspired to just give it to the mission.

So today we took our first trip to Globe. Globe is south of us and the drive there is through the Salt River Canyon on a road consisting of several horseshoe turns and steep inclines, after which we ended up 2000 feet lower in Globe than we are in Cibicue. This was a challenging drive going down, even more challenging with a sofa and large chair tied onto the back of the Avalanche coming home.

The furniture is great. It’s probably not real leather, but looks like it and smells wonderful. We were so excited until we got home, unloaded both sofa and chair by ourselves, managed to get them on the porch, and realized that neither one would fit through our door. Now lesser people like myself start saying things like oh, well, we’ll just take them back and get S. Clouse (sort of like S. Claus, isn’t it?) to find us something new. That’s what the little minds of the world do. The truly great minds never give up, never, no never, no never. That great mind said, “If it won’t go through the door, what about the window?” Oh great mind then proceeded to take the entire window out of the wall. And I do mean entire. He removed the whole window frame. Kitty sat on the porch watching this whole procedure with the funniest look on his face. He looked at us like, “Hey, they’re nuts. But they feed me regularly.” Once Robert removed the (did I say entire?) window, we simply slid both sofa and chair through the window and into our front room. Remember these are huge pieces and there’s only us working on this project, so simply slid was accompanied by many grunts and groans, but it worked. Then Superman proceeded to replace the window. At least I feel safe tonight. No self-respecting thief would go to that much work just to rob a place!

So our prayer to get decent furniture was answered. Our prayer to get it home safe and sound and undamaged was answered. Our prayer to get it in the trailer was answered. And now I think God is sick and tired of us for a while.

And finally, we discovered mecca. We had wanted to go to Globe for a long time. When Sister Clouse called she said there was a big Fry’s in Globe. We need a new cord for our printer, so we were very excited to go to Fry’s, the electronics store. And where there’s a Fry’s wouldn’t one expect perhaps Cracker Barrel, or Applebee’s or even an Olive Garden? Wrong! Fry’s in Globe is a grocery store and the hot spot is yet another Wal-Mart. Can’t lie…we also saw a Safeway. The truth is Globe is a dive. But the drive there is absolutely breath-taking.

Last thought: Beckie, your hair is darling!