I must admit I always worried about dinner appointments, because I'm a real picky eater. I'll never forget the time we went to one sister's home. It was pretty messy and she had alot of rodents living there (rabbits, guinnia pigs, etc.) I was real nervous when we got up to the table which had the dishes from the previous meal.

She had made quite the dinner. The only item I remember are the vegetables. I felt safe with that because I love my veggies, so I put a big pile on my plate only to realize that they were still frozen. Not only that, but they were freezer burnt. Yuk! However, like any good missionary, I cleaned my plate. --Sister (Hamilton) Sullivan

This was a bad enough experience for me but keep in mind that it was elder Thayne's first 24 hours in the field. He had to spend some time at the mission office until our zone leader leader Zaharis, could bring him to me in Hamilton. While there a couple missionaries were sent home early and he witnessed them leaving the office. Not very uplifting. When he got to our apartment Elder Halladay, who hadn't left yet, started telling him about all mice in our apartment and the devil worshippers I nearly had to deal with when I first got to Hamilton and the murder in the Spanish Sister's apartment a few months before and so on. Just trying to spook him.

The next day, his first official day in the field some born-agains chased us down in the street and started verbally bashing us. after a couple of hours of no result work a couple of other guys verbally acosted us. We were feeling pretty bad. but things started getting better until we went home. As we walked down a street that connected to the one we lived on, we saw a large crowd of people standing in the intersection. I jokingly said "drug bust." When we got to the crowd I looked toward our home and was SWAT team all over the neighborhood. I asked a guy what was going on and it was a domestic hostage situation about 3 houses from ours! Then as we sat and waited a bit to see what would happen a couple of drunk headbangers, who were walking right into the whole mess, saw us and started yelling to the crowd, "hey everyone look at the two fags wearing ties!" At that point we decided to leave.

The worst transfer I endured.......was finding a marjuana plant in the skylight of my new companions apartment. Needless to say it went out before I got moved in. --Elder Gene Brown