I am thankful for . . .

Our sharing time this month in Primary has been to teach the children how to give thanks through service, how to serve and how to show gratitude for service rendered.

Today I am thankful for a mother in Guatemala. Let me explain and bear testimony at the same time.

On Thursday night I packed up to leave the office, grabbed my purse, my phone, my banana and whatever else I needed to take home with me. I went down the hall, maybe 20 feet to the locked woman's restroom (my wife/boss and I are the only women on our floor and you have to have a key to use the restroom), locking my office door on the way. Then I went down to my truck (mine is the first parking space on the left in our parking lot, maybe another 30 feet from the front door) and went maybe 10 blocks downtown to attend a business reception at a law firm by the capital. When I got out of the parking space downtown I went to grab my purse and my phone, only NO PHONE! With a bunch of smelly construction workers standing around and being a little late to the reception I figured I would just look for it when I came out.

After the reception and fishing under both my seats and dumping my purse on the passanger seat . . . still no phone.

Keep in mind that EVERYONE I know and need/want to talk to is in that phone, along with some pretty funky ringtones and tons of pics of my grandbabies! So this phone is "worth" A LOT to me.

So, now I go back to the office, and call my cell from my office phone (it is on fibe but if it is close you can her it "buzz"). Nothing. I go down to the bathroom ... clean and empty. Nothing. I say my little Primary prayer asking Heavenly Father to help me find my phone and walk back out to my truck (slower, even though it is dark and my phone is maroon and still nothing.

I go home and park under the the light of my carport and take EVERYTHING out of the inside of my truck, both front seat and back seat! Then I go next door and ask Miss Virginia to call me from her phone. Nothing. Sweat neighbor that she is she asks me if I want to use her cell phone for the night (she is 78 this year).

The next morning when I get to work I check online (it is now Friday and I am driving up to Greenwood --- 1 1/2 hours each way --- on Saturday and I am in charge of the Priesthood Preview that night and my Primary President LOVES to text me ...) and call the 1-800 to see what kind of deal I can get on my not insured phone from Verizon. This nice call center dude (from SLC no less) gets permission to give me a deal I shouldn't get until next month when my phone is actually a year old. So I tell him I am going to go up to the local store (thinking it will be faster and they will match his deal ... I won't have to wait for his phone to ship on Saturday a.m. for $20 extra). Wasted an hour at the local store only to be told we can't do the deal the phone guy has and we can't break your new phone ($179) down over 3 months and there are no rebates cause I am not getting the deal I would get next month ...

Thankfully the Verizon dude calls me back, gets me the same phone for $79, plus a $50 Visa card (Go Nathan!) and guarantees delivery by noon on Saturday.

I send out a slew of emails about my retarded self/senior moment and then wait till 1:00 (we close early on Fridays here ... it is a Southern thing!). Only my husband/boss decides I need to drive him and our ex-con client down to their hearing on Main Street (just up from where I had parked the night before) so he doesn't have to fight for parking. So I take them downtown and of course he wants me to pick them up (sometime between 2 - 3 p.m. --- long after I want to be out of there) so I go back to the office and my wife/boss has left me a check for $200 for my new phone!

Pretty sweet huh!!! Then I putz around on facebook and clean up my outlook and wait for my bossman to call. All the time my door is locked and I am "closed". Finally go pick up the "boys" around 2:30 and come back to the office and get ready to shut my system down for the weekend when there is a knock at the door. In walks one of my neighbors from across the hall with my phone.

Cartarino, my Guatemalan janitor who tries to teach me Spanish, found it in the bathroom Thursday night and gave it to the neighbors who were still at work. Of course, he and the neighbors were gone by the time I came back after the reception so I missed them Thursay night. I also missed them on Friday morning when they first came in cause I was off to the Verizon store not getting a deal, and again when I was taking the "boys" to their hearing.

SO I am thankful for Cartarino's mother who raised an honorable son, for wonderful hall-mates, for my sweat neighbor for offering her phone, for my wife/boss for giving me money for a new phone (which I got and am keeping the "found" one as a spare in case this EVER happens again) and my husband boss for making me leave late on Friday!

Heavenly Father is AWESOME cause He answered my little Primary prayer!
:-D