Stories: Buscando otra pensión
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| In February 1995, I was transferred to Rama Entre Cerros in Temuco. We didn't actually live in our own sector, but in a pensión in downtown Temuco with a pair of zone leaders and a couple of other boarders. The night I got there, my companion Elder Rose took me aside and explained that Mamita had just told him we had to move out by the end of the month. Apparently she wanted to rent to some students or tourists who would pay more.
So we began to look for another place to live. Sometimes it seemed we spent as much time searching for a pensión as for people to teach. We hoped to find a place in our sector itself, since it was expensive and inconvenient to take the micro there and back twice a day. But the sector was poor, and our requirements were high: a phone, hot running water, no young women. An older couple in the branch offered their place, but it was just a few meters from the railroad track. Not wanting our beds shaking all night long, we agreed to consider it as a last restort.
The hermanas in our district occupied a sector adjacent to ours, so we asked them to look for a place for us too. They enthusiastically threw themselves into the project. Every few days they would have a lead or two for us, but there was always a problem; none of the places met mission standards. But it seemed the hermanas found people to teach at every place they found, people they wouldn't have even met ordinarily. In our search for a place, we also kept running into people who lived in the hermanas' area; we gave plenty of actual referrals in exchange for the potential pensiones. By the end of the month, we had achieved our baptism goal, and the hermanas must have had six or seven baptisms just from the pensión search. But we still hadn't found a new home.
The last Sunday night of the month, Elder Rose and I approached Mamita to ask if we might have more time. We really didn't want to live by the railroad track. As we explained the situation, a puzzled look spread across her face. Suddenly she interrupted to say she didn't know what we were talking about! She denied ever having told Elder Rose we had to leave. We could stay as long as we liked.
I don't know whether Mamita had a change of heart, or if the whole thing was simply a misunderstanding. I do believe the Lord planned our pensión search in order to find a number of people He had prepared, people we wouldn't have discovered otherwise. |
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