January 4, 2008

I could remember things about all sorts of January 4s, but I'm going to focus on one particularly unusual and sad one.

January 4, 2008, started out as a fairly typical day. We probably visited one Denise Beltran in the morning, and then a little later in the day we went home for lunch.

We lived with the Welshes, an elderly couple who are some of the funniest people ever. Elder Chun and I were up in the kitchen having lunch. Brother Welsh was gone somewhere, but Sister Welsh was home. The phone rang, and Elder Chun went downstairs. I was still in the kitchen while Sister Welsh answered the phone in the secondary sitting room. I remember her saying that her husband wasn't home, but that we missionaries were. Then she came out of that room calling, "Missionaries!" She seemed frantic and said to me that her son was on the phone, and she said, "I have the feeling something terrible's happened."

So we went and sat down on the couch. She held my hand. Her son said something, and she said, almost angrily, "What!?" Then she started squeezing my hand and crying. I heard her say that she didn't want any of hers going before she did. Then Elder Chun came up into the room. Sister Welsh told her son that the other missionary had just walked in and was wondering why we were holding hands and why she was crying. I think she then started telling her son about us, that I was from Utah and that the other was from California.

What had happened was that her youngest son had been killed in an accident while working on the newly renovated Utah capitol. Apparently he was underneath the building in a crawl space, and there were some electrical cords hanging down.

We were sitting at the kitchen table when Brother Welsh came home. She took him into their bedroom to break the news to him. When they were out of the room, Elder Chun said, "Awkward!" It seemed a little insensitive to me.

The Welshes' oldest son, Harold, had been in prison, and his bedroom was directly next to ours. Yes, that was kind of odd. At one point we heard him calling legal authorities--the parole office?--saying that it was an emergency. His brother had died in Utah, so he needed to leave the state.

We went tracting that night. At the first house we knocked on, the woman said, "JWs," as she shook our hands. I didn't know that stood for "Jehovah's Witness," so I thought she was saying her name. She talked about walking with God. At one point in the conversation, Elder Chun said, "As a Jehovah's Witness, do you..." He thought that when she said "JWs," she was saying she was a JW, but it was later evidenced that she thought we were the JWs. There was another house that was dark, but there were dogs barking. Eventually someone answered and said we were persistent but stupid for staying on the doorstep so long. (I probably had not wanted to knock on the door, since it was dark.) We tracted into some members, who invited us in. I think we didn't know them but we did figure out that they were members. One house had the phone ring right as the woman came to the door, so she conveniently used that as an excuse to say she couldn't talk and closed the door.

We went home that evening and some of the Priesthood from the ward were giving the Welshes blessings. We missed Sister Welsh's, but we went up for Harold's and Brother Welsh's. For some reason the people thought it was an occasion to use consecrated oil. I knew that it wasn't, but I didn't think it was the proper situation to say so. The Lawtons from across the street were there; Sister Lawton was an active Mormon but her husband was a Catholic. I don't think I knew that, and I wondered why he wasn't helping with blessings.

What surprised me about this experience was that of all the people this could have happened to, it happened to the son of the random couple I was living with in Mead, WA, right at the time I was there. After that, Sister Welsh seemed to have a sort of soft spot for me--she once said about me, "He was my friend when I needed a friend." I feel really bad for them.

Here is an article from the Deseret News about what happened.

This is my journal entry for the day:

"Today we taught a less-active lesson in the afternoon and a recent convert lesson in the morning. Our investigator cancelled, so we checked up on less-actives and part-member families this evening.

"We went tracting as well. The first house was a lady who thought we were Jehovah's Witnesses. We were able to convince her otherwise, but her attitude was definitely 'We have got a Bible." Another person lived in a dark house with barking dogs. He answered the door and said we were persistent but stupid. We knocked on a member's door, and then we went to a house where the lady told us she couldn't talk. Conveniently for her, the phone rang just as we got there which was why she couldn't talk.

"Today's various events, however, were overshadowed with sorrow. This afternoon, Elder Chun and I were up in the kitchen making lunch and talking with Sister Welsh. The phone rang so Sister Welsh answered it and Elder Chun went downstairs. Soon Sister Welsh came out of the room calling for us. She got me and told me she had a feeling something terrible happened and she wanted me with her. She grabbed my hand and brought me onto the couch, and squeezed my hand and cried as she heard the news that her youngest son had died in a construction accident. Needless to say the rest of the day was a downer. The tragic irony is that he was working on the Utah Capitol Building, and today is Utah's birthday.

"We gave Harold and Brother Welsh blessings with other men from the ward. We missed giving one to Sister Welsh because we had just come home and came upstairs after they had started. They're all headed off to Salt Lake tomorrow."