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THE FIELD — The number of stories of young missionaries doing boneheaded things, which I have either personally experienced or been told about, is exhaustive.
While serving as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, my companion, roommates and I bought about nine watermelons and made jack-o-lanterns out of them because we didn't have pumpkins. We didn't want to waste the watermelon innards, so we saved them — like a lot of them. We put them in an extra fridge we had for some reason, and that's where they sat because we forgot about them.
About four months later we found out our mission president and his wife were coming by in about four hours to see how we were doing, and our mission president's wife liked to make sure our apartments were clean.
We cleaned like the wind. Then, as they were headed up the elevator, we remembered the spare fridge and the pounds of rotten watermelon that must be fermenting inside. We quickly threw it all into several garbage bags, and two of us ran down the stairs as the president and his wife came up the elevator.
Dumb, I know. But we were 19. What did you expect?
I also have a friend who found a bike jump and did what any 20-year-old on a bike would do: he took a large jump.
He recounts the story like this: "I was headed for the jump, and I was really getting my speed up because I had to beat my companion's distance record. So, I stepped on the gas and I hit the launch point. I was flying with the birds, John. It was magic. I then woke up two weeks later in the hospital, and then went home with serious brain trauma."
So, unfortunately, there are some things done out there in the mission field that are not all that far off from the absurdity in this video from a couple of fake missionaries.
Honestly, nothing but respect for these missionaries pic.twitter.com/i2RvdKC6Nj
— Actually Persephone 💀🌸 (@murffyslurtz) November 28, 2020
The parody Tik Tok channel @extrememmormons posted this video, and it made me both laugh and cringe — laugh because it was funny and closer to reality than I'd like to admit, and cringe because ... it's closer to reality than I'd like to admit.
Just watch it play out; and if any of you have served missions, seen missionaries, or just been an 18- to 21-year-old, you'll relate with it more than you may want to.
Have You Seen This?
