Mission Stories - Phones

In the Sweden Stockholm Mission all missionary companionships have phones. The phone stays in the area, and is the responsibility of both missionaries. Usually we take turns, so that one missionary has the phone one day and the other has the keys, and you switch to take turns (this is a safety measure in case you get lost from each other in a sticky situation: one has the ability to call for help, and the other has the ability to go home or to church).

A lot in missionary work depends on the phone. When the phone is lost, it's a little mini-disaster, because it's how you keep in touch with everyone. It's a great tool, but it also comes with some great temptations to misuse. As a missionary you have a lot of rules, and one such rule is that you can't call people for reasons other than missionary work, and it's especially bad to have phone conversations with people of the opposite sex, or people who aren't in your area. So any phonecalls or texts that go against these rules is called "OP" (off the programme). It happens somewhat, but mostly within bounds and not getting-out-of-hand-inappropriate.

I did have one experience where I learnt the value of the phone rules the hard way: one night a guy we had talked to earlier (and were really excited about meeting again) called and I was dumb: I picked up. My companion was asleep, and I had this middle-of-the-night, awkward phone conversation with a man I hardly knew. And he may have been drunk, though he did remember it the next day >.< So inappropriateness all around, and as a result he cancelled meeting with us because he was embarrassed about calling and the things he had said.

One absolutely key part of phone-presence in the life of a sister missionary is the Evening Call from the District Leader. On my mission this happened at any interval between daily to maybe three times a transfer, depending on the elder serving as District Leader. Sometimes the call was handled by the District Leader's companion :P The content of the call also varied, sometimes it was a basic "hey you guys okay, great, well keep it up" and other times I learnt amazing valuable lessons, had deep profound conversations and learnt to love these guys like brothers. So it can make an impact, and did many times on my mission.

My first call like that from other missionaries that I can remember was in the mission home when I had just arrived, my first zone leaders called that evening. And obviously I didn't know them at all, and it was just a basic "welcome to Sweden" -thing. And I remember the elder saying "Norrland is the best zone!" and I replied "so it's all down hill from here?" and he laughed so hard I had to hold the phone away from my ear :3 (Later I learnt that elder K. was the most epic laugher in the world :3)

So in this my first zone in Norrland there was a most wonderful phone tradition: every week on Sunday evening the whole zone (five missionary companionships) would have a Family Home Evening conference call. It was a cool little time to connect and share. There were assignments dished out every week (sharing something about success or from the scriptures, small Swedish lesson etc), the most important such task being the last one: Grab Bag.

This Grab Bag could be anything, absolutely anything. For example ones I recall include: someone playing the guitar, someone teaching us about Norse mythology, someone asking everyone what their favourite scripture was (I followed along and marked everyone's favourite in my book :P) and a recurring favourite: Tropic trivia, aka trivial questions about the town of Tropic, Utah. The few times I got to do Grab Bag I did: a five-minute long Marcel Marceau quote/John Cage song (had everyone just be quiet and listen to each other), a silly visualisation thingie ("Imagine you are walking in a forest..."), and the last one was Strenghtening the Companionship, of which more below:

I had found this paper titled Strenghtening the Companionship that has a numbered list of questions (stuff like "what is the best present you've ever received?") so I made everyone on their turn pick a number and answer the question. And the best one was elder D. who got the question "what is the happiest memory you have?" and he told a story of when he went to the car wash with his dad. There was a lady in front of them. She drove in the car wash, but she had forgotten to push the button to start the wash. So she realised about the same time as elder D.'s dad that that was the problem, and he went to push the button for her at the same time as she got out of her car to go push it. So elder D. watched this lady get squished against her car by a giant sponge, and that is his happiest memory. :D

Before I had ever got the chance to do a Grab Bag, I started to worry that I would never get to do one before getting transferred away from the zone. So one time my companion called the zone leaders and talked to elder K. and when they were done, I asked to talk to his companion elder B. And I told him that if I don't ever get to do Grab Bag, I will send him a dead rabbit as revenge. I got Grab Bag. :) But the dead rabbit thing (a reference to Harpo Speaks! by the way) became a running joke between us. I will some day send him a dead rabbit. :3

The FHE was on the programme. As were the strangest District Meetings I ever had, which were in my second area Norrköping. As the elders were not physically available (being out at sea on the Rock, the island of Gotland) we didn't have physical District Meetings, we had District Meetings on the phone. It was really strange, but the District Leader made it work pretty well. One time we got a text from him before the meeting. We were in Stockhom at the time for a sisters' training meeting, so he texted in the evening, knowing that we'd be pretty busy:
          "Hi sisters, hope you had a great day in the big city :-) Let us know if you need anything. Also I have some favours to ask for D.M. So let us know when you have a minute to chat. Have it good <(^_^)> " So we called and talked, he was all mysterious about D.M. and said he'd send us a shopping list. During the conversation I also told him that in this sister meeting thing it had come up that he was a very well-liked elder among the sisters, and we had praised him through the roof saying that we have the best D.L. (which was true). Then he sent the list, which was: "Here's the list of things needed for DM: 1 swedish whisk 1 pair of scissors 1 screwdriver 1 jar of peanut butter 1 butter knife 1 fork 1 teaspoon 1 jar of jelly and some bread. Hehe good night sleep tight" and then the follow up text "and stop talking about me, unless it's good :-)"

With this district-on-the-phone we also played phone chess in text messages (for district unity). Many fond memories of that, especially since elder C. was very very passionate about the game. It was a lot of fun, that district-on-the-phone thing. I felt like it was the tightest district I'd ever been in, and so did my companion. It's probably my favourite district actually. They were very good at the evening phone call, and me and elder C. bonded over not only chess but also David Bowie. It was wonderful when we discovered that: he said that he is named after David Bowie and asked us if we knew who that was. My companion mentioned the Labyrinth, and he rejoiced greatly, and told me to learn who David Bowie is. After I recovered from my stunned stupor, I informed him that I had seen David Bowie live in concert twice... :P Then he rushed to get his guitar and played us a Bowie-song arrangement on the phone.

The best and longest phone story is to do with Pokemon. It started with a conference call District Meeting, when our Zone Leaders joined the phone call. During the meeting we were talking a lot about unity-building, and as a unity-exercise we told things about each other. And elder B. the zone leader shared about his companion elder C.'s amazing research on the Pokedex. And I asked him if it was to do with MissingNo, and there was this realisation that Pokemon is loved by all around. :) So we bonded over Pokemon a bit there.

Then towards the end of that transfer I called them with a strange request. I wanted them to send me the transfer times spreadsheet that zone leaders get (it has funny comments and everyone's travel, so it's epic to read :D) They said they'd email it to me, and then told me that they had a strange request in turn. I said okay, and they said "if we call later today, don't pick up." I promised, felt really puzzled (and a little insulted), but they never called.

The next transfer I was in a different zone, with elder B. there, so one time I asked him what that was all about. He laughed and explained that they had tried to find the Team Rocket schpiel in Finnish on YouTube. Had they found it, they would have called me and left it as a voicemail. Alas, it never happened, because they couldn't find it. Too bad, it would have been epic. For the rest of that transfer I dreamed of teaching elder B. how to do it in Finnish, then calling elder C. and leaving him a live action Team Rocket schpiel in Finnish - but elder B. got transferred mid-transfer.

Then elder C. went home from his mission, and elder B was coming to the end of his last transfer too. I had hoped that I would be in his last district (I had a last district meeting funeral -arranging reputation, and he wanted a funeral) but I wasn't. So on the day of his last district meeting, I had a plan. I asked elder M. from my District to call elder B. and keep talking until I got in voicemail. So he obliged, and I got into elder B's voicemail. And left a voicemail message of the Team Rocket blib in Finnish. :P

Then elder M. got off the phone to elder B. and elder B. called me back since he saw I had called. I asked if he had checked his voice mail, and he hadn't. So I simply adviced him to do that. Then a little later he sent a text message saying "no way! no way!" and I replied with "Happy last district meeting." And the reply to that was "Haha you're the best."

And then even later before that transfer was all the way over, he asked if I could do it again, because he had intended to video the phone playing the voice message, but the message had disappeared. So one more time, I did a Team Rocket voice mail message in Finnish, and he filmed it with his camera in order to always have it :P

I learnt to appreciate voice mail on my mission:
-I heard of an elder who would finish all his voice messages with "and now, another installments of 'what am I shaking?'" and then shake some object. :D
-I became a very famous terribly-awkward-voice-mail-leaver. :3
-Once our district leader sang to the tune of Små Grodorna (a Swedish children's song) to our voice mail (I won't repeat the words he made up to it, because it's a little bit rude against another church ^^; )
-Once we called our district leader and their voice mail message was "...what do I press? *beep*" :D We had called them exactly when they were in the process of changing it.

There is a standard blib that you're supposed to say into the missionary answering machine that mentions your names - and whenever I called a companionship that had the old companionship's answering machine left, especially if it was a missionary who had left the mission, I would tell them in the voice message to exorcise the ghost of elder/sister X. from their phone. And the best answering machine was president Anderson's. It was so misleading. He just said "president Anderson...*pause*... of the Sweden Stockholm Mission." I fell for it so many times: "president Anderson" -"hi president it's si-" -"of the Sweden Stockholm Mission." :P

Note on the following: I don't actually have an amazing memory for text messages, I write them down sometimes. It started before my mission with my old phone not having space for very many messages, so I wrote down the ones I didn't have space to keep but wanted to keep or remember. I also started to write messages down as a record of my world. Because those are some epic fleeting pieces of culture floating through air that will become irreplaceably lost with time, and I want to preserve them. And I realised that this practice would be good on a mission too, because a lot of the good memories happened in text messages. So I went through and found the messages I wrote down. And here's some keepers:

(my zone leader elder K. upon enquiry after someone who was from Africa - the exact details elude me):
-At General Conference he and I sang 'I Know That My Redeemer Lives' at the top of our lungs together. It was an uplifting experience to be able to wail praises to Christ with a black man.

(the same Zone Leader):
-Varför?
-Big Elephants Can't Always Understand Small Elephants
-What is that supposed to mean?
-It's a mnemonic device for learning how to spell the word "because"
-Haha, that's awesome!
-(my companion): And that's why sister Porkka is never allowed to use the phone ever again.

(the same with his companion after we asked them about some bus times)
-We couldn't tell you the bus schedule for all the investigators in Brazil.
(This confused me so bad until I realised the modified expression :P)

(and his natural excitement once leaked into a text before he checked himself :P):
-Awesome! That's bomb-diddili...

(And the thank-you text after his last District Meeting Funeral):
-Tack all för en underbar begråvning/distriktsmöte idag! Äldste H tack för lektionen, syster H tack för tårtan, äldste B och syster P tack för att få mig skratta. Nu får jag dö i frid.
(Thank you all for a wonderful funeral/district meeting today! Elder H thanks for the lesson, sister H thanks for the cake, elder B and sister P thanks for making me laugh. Now I can die in peace.)

(another zone leader companionship, after we texted them our "success"):
-We thought the whole zone should enjoy reading this from Sundsvall - "we do not have a new investigator, but! I (sister Porkka) ate my first kbob today."

(a young man from Eritrea we wanted to meet):
-Hi sis? I dont know but ill send u a massage

(our faithful district leader):
-Om jag dör nu får jag upphöjelse utan någon pinsam sökande efter en hustru.
(If I die now, I'll get exaltation without any awkward wife-hunt)

(another District Leader, after we left them on the bus stop):
-Our bus is either late or never coming Haha :,-(
-These are tears of joy because it just came!

(and another time, in the morning):
-Hej sorry I didn't call last night. The phone fell into a bowl of water and it stopped working, but it's dry now and up and running.

(right before transfers, before everyone had been called, elder D. replied to a message I sent him before he went home):
-Oh it's no big deal. Yes, good bye forever sister Porkka, when are you heading down?
-Oops
(XD I already knew by this time that I was getting transferred)

(the secretaries as a reply to a text):
-Thanks for the reminder. And thanks for the reminder about that one time with that guy and the thing. It truly was extremely awesome, I'll always remember it.

(We were going to Katrineholm for a visit and asked if the elders there wanted any help, wanted us to go teach anyone):
-Is there anyone we can visit?
-Like desperate guys?
-I was thinking more like lonely old ladies...
-No way they love us! Why do you think they let us in?
-I guessed it was because of elder A...
-I call him elder Heart Attack from the way he makes those old single ladies hearts stop.

(The elders in our district on February 14th):
-I know girls don't hold the priesthood but you hold all the keys to my heart. Happy valentine's day!"
- <3

(I had told elder W. that eating cheese before going to bed gives you strange dreams):
-I've been doing an eat-cheese-at-night-get-weird-dreams experiment and I declare that it works! GOD FORTSÄTTNING!

(The last text message conversation with elder C., my favourite. I asked him):
-Do you happen to remember what that game was called you played on Gotland where you had to slap a ball over the net or something?
-Oh yeah, pärk. Why do you wanna know bout that dumb game? Are you going home?
-I'm... wait, what? How would me going home be the reason for wanting to know about a dumb game? Well, it is actually. I want to mention it in my talk.
-Why do you want to talk about pärk?
-Because my testimony is that in my religion God makes sense, and we do stuff. And there's so much stuff to do in the world. We can't even understand how human beings are constantly doing things that we haven't even heard of. Like pärk. (I've actually been impressed by the diversity of human activity since I saw the new Star Trek movie. The vulcan planet is destroyed but their culture is preserved by the surviving people. That couldn't happen with humans because you'd need to save like an entire orchestra and all different kinds of craftsmen and a team of every sport that exists etc.
-Dude you're funny sister Porkka but you're right, I was thinking I couldn't fall in love with an alien because they couldn't have a similar taste in music with me.