Week 61 - Grumpy Post Office Worker | Mission Life in Milan

Lake Como

Besides from getting into a little car accident, it's been a pretty peachy week for me. The "car accident" was a a major mood-killer, but everything ended up working out okay in the end. Anziano Scoggin and I had made our way to the city center to do some proselyting and there were NO parking spots. When I saw a space that I thought I could make into a parking lot, I decided to act. Unfortunately, I misjudged the girth of my car and ended up tearing off some paint from the car next to me. Lucky for me, there was no noticeable damage to our car and we ended up getting the number of a really cool contact later that night when we finally did get around to proselyting. :D I left our contact information on the person's windshield and now the insurance is taking care of all the messy work. I have to say though, when I went into President's office the next day to tell him the news, it felt just like I was going to confess something to dad...

"President, I did something not-so good yesterday."

"Anziano Anderson, I don't believe that for a second! You never give me reason to be disappointed in you."

"I got in a car accident."

"Ohh... that isn't good."

Do you remember the old, grouchy, report filer on Monster's Inc? The one that always screams, "MIKE SVAGOWKSY!" Well, I know the real life version of her! Story time: I need to make frequent trips to the post office to pay an assortment of bills and to send off packages, so I get the pleasure of working with a grump-pot postal woman. Over the past couple weeks, she's been getting progressively shorter with me. On Monday, I went in to pay €94.96 worth of bills and to send off a package to Elder Holland (the fact that I was sending a package to Elder Holland isn't important, I just wanted to name drop him ;)). I gave the woman two €50's to pay for the bills and she gave me 4 centesimi in change, telling me that she would give me the €5 when I came behind the counter to mail the packages. To my surprise, after I had gone behind the counter to mail my package, she said that she had already given me all of my change. I told her she had not and she accuses ME of trying to short HER. I politely asked her if she could do a cash count on her money till so we could get to the bottom of the situation and she told me that she couldn't because there were other clients waiting. I wasn't 100% sure she was purposely being deceitful or not, but I decided I would take the €5 loss and not cause a scene.

When I got back to the mission office, I suggested to Sister Allen that she should make some cookies for us to take over to this woman. Later that day, Sister Allen brought over a plate of cookies and sat it on my desk. Considering that's kind of a normal thing being an office elder, I didn't realize the cookies were for my grump-pot friend and ate them all! Fast forward a few days to Friday and I needed to make another trip to the post office. At the post office, my grumpy friend tells me she's not going to work with me anymore because of she couldn't read the numbers on the check I had wrote (they were VERY neatly written). I couldn't contain myself and started laughing at her ridiculousness. She then proceeded to mumble under her breathe, "Dang you, DANG you", except she isn't saying dang! I was SHOCKED. So, when I got back to the office, I asked Sorella Allen to make cookies for this woman. After we worked out the fact that she had already done so and I had eaten them, she whipped up a new batch for me to take over. When I took over the cookies, the woman didn't seem the least but grateful for them... But, I'm hoping that we can have some better interactions in the future!

On a more spiritual note, I had a really special moment on Sunday when a member pulled me over to the side for a minute and told me how much the blessing I had given him last week meant to him. Remember a few weeks ago when I told you that I didn't understand why I had given someone a faulty blessing- in the sense that the words I said weren't the events that came to fruition? Well, I had prayed, fasted, studied my scriptures, and watched General Conference with that question in mind and didn't feel like I was getting an answer. I still don't know the answer! But, it's not important to me anymore. On Sunday, this brother was bawling as he told me about the power that my blessing had had... It was a moment of complete peace of mind knowing that as faulty as I may be, I do have access to a real and divine power.