Due to Gregory's new atheistic beliefs and desires to become inactive in the church, I found myself without a home teaching companion. I home teach the Bishop so he told me to go ahead and start bringing Christopher, who is a Deacon (normally Teachers - ages 14-16 and Priests 17+ home teach with their dads). Christopher has gone with me a few times now and he's starting to understand what home teaching is all about. Gregory was OK with home teaching at first but he soon got tired of the repetition of sharing the same message with all 3 families (we always do it all in one night which is good). I've been trying to vary the message with Christopher so it isn't as boring but that just puts more burden on me, but that's OK. Gregory was always pushing me to leave after the first 5 minutes. So, I'm expecting similar from Christopher, I just don't know when it will get to that.
So we're at the Bishop's last Sunday and Christopher kicks my foot and tells me we need to leave now (this is after about 25 minutes so he was pretty much on target). That was perfect because the Bishop got the cue and cut us loose. The message was given and we were just rambling at that point.
At our next appointment, I gave a short message (different than the one at the Bishop's) and then we did the small talk thing. Christopher kicked my foot again and I looked at him, he said, "were getting off topic". I'm cracking up looking at him because this is exactly what his mother would be saying to me if she were my companion. I said that we were finished with the message and just doing small talk now. He said, "oh".
We left soon thereafter and arrived at our final visit, the Hazelgrens. Christopher goes to school with the younger boy Ryan (who is also a Deacon) and Ryan always tries to make Christopher laugh (successfully). Usually during the prayer or the entire message, Christopher and Ryan are cracking up. The rest of the Hazelgrens are very patient and understanding. Now I understand why we typically wait for these young priesthood holders to become Teacher's age before they go home teaching. Christopher likes to go to the Hazelgren's, he thinks brother Hazelgren is a crack up.
As we were departing, brother Hazelgren walks us out to the porch and stops and says, "over the past few days we've had a wood pecker pecking on our glass storm door." He said, "I'd go to answer the front door and just as I'd open the door the wood pecker would fly off". Then he would return and do the same thing again and again. Brother Hazelgren thought maybe some pranksters had trained the bird to do that. Their door handle is one of those horizontal lever handles and so the bird just perches there and knocks. He then pointed down at about 6-7 bird poops and said, not only did they train him to ding dong (knock) ditch, they also trained him to poop all over our porch. Of course brother Hazelgren said this with a complete serious look on his face and we beheld the piles of bird poop confirming his story and Christopher burst into laughter and ran to the car because he couldn't contain his laughter. It was pretty funny!
The moral of this story, cats do have a purpose in life, sometimes! Where's my FMZ9?
