The Tale of Rocketman

This is another tracting story from my first area. I'd been out a couple of months. We had been tracting a street when there looked like there was a path leading up the hill from the street. We almost missed it but decided we might as well follow it and see where we ended up. Lo and behold it lead to a house. The doors and windows were all wide open. It did look like someone lived there so we knocked to see what type of hermit lived atop this hill hidden from plain view. We stood around for a bit and knocked again just for good measure. We were about to leave when suddenly a guy comes racing to the door, flings it open, looks at us, and says "Oh good!" He didn't do this but I could see him rubbing his hands together. He just had a look in his eye.

He never invited us in, but he did talk to us for quite a while on his porch. He immediately started telling us all about how everyone in town knows him as Rocketman. He even had a little button that he wore that said "Rocketman, 50,000 sold!" He told us all about how he had taken breakfast cereal and had made them into little bars and sold them around town for $1 a piece. He rode his bike all over the place. I recognized him because we had indeed seen him on his bike in town quite often. He had an old white bike with the handlebars that curved down. He was bald and always had a beret on.

He then pointed inside his house to a sign on the wall (of which there were several) and asked me what does that say? I read: Pray Always. He said "No no the one next to it!" "Comfort Kills?" "Yes! That one! What do you think that means?" I had no idea so all I could think of was "You get comfortable and you die?" "YES!" He went on to say "If I push you off this porch and down the hill you'd probably die. You are comfortable see? But if I TELL you I'm going to push you down you'll brace yourself and resist me. You aren't comfortable so you won't die. Isn't that genius? I made it up myself!" My companion and I just looked at each other. Eventually we told him we needed to get going. Walking down the hill he hollered after us "Remember comfort kills!" He was always friendly. after we saw him and he'd always remind us "Comfort Kills!"

The Legend of Brian (The Second)

Yet another tracting story. We met another Brian in my fourth area. This one was a kid maybe 16 or 17ish. We knocked on his door and started talking to him. He let us in and halfway through the first lesson he said he'd be right back. So we waited...and waited...and waited. It sounded to us like he had gone to his room and was playing video games or something. We didn't know what else to do so we just chilled on his couch. after 20 minutes or so we started a companion study session right there on the couch. We were going through scriptures and cross referencing things. We were getting into it pretty good when his mom walked through the front door. She asked who we were. We told her who we were and that Brian had let us in, and part way through talking to him he said he'd be right back and still wasn't back yet. She just said "Oh..." and walked past us into the kitchen.

We looked at each other shrugged and went on with our studies. It was starting to get dark so we sat in the semi darkness reading. Eventually the kitchen light went on behind us. There was a partial wall between us and the kitchen. We heard Brain sneak into the kitchen and heard whispering back and forth between him and his mom. Occasionally you'd see the shadow of a head pop around the corner and disappear again. We didn't know what else to do other than milk it so we kept reading and talking to each other.

Finally after about 45 minutes of sitting on their couch the mom came out and said "....well I need to go back to work so I'm going to have to ask you to leave." We asked if there was a time we could come back and she said probably not. It looked like poor Brian who had achieved his life long dream of working at the Jiffy Lube didn't have the cajones to tell us to get lost himself. We thanked her and vacated the couch.

Ten years later as I write this it wouldn't surprise me to find out that a now 26 or 27ish year old Brain still lives at home playing video games and working at Jiffy Lube.

The Legend of Brian (The First)

This is another fun tracting story. In my third area my companion and I ran into a guy that was also knocking on doors looking for work. He was asking for any odd job and getting rejected just as heavily as we were. It didn't take long to figure the street was pretty much a bust that day since we were following a guy that people were already wanting off their doorstep. We decided to bag it and head back to our apartment. In the process this guy decided to follow us all over the place and tell us all about his crazy life. We found his name was Brian. He talked to us for a good hour to an hour and a half or so walking all the way. He asked if we had any work for him. We said no because we were missionaries and didn't have much that needed taking care of. He then talked about how he had talked to his minister in the spirit about how his wife was a sick spirit. Somewhere in the middle of it all apparently his minister asked him what he wanted his wife to look like. He said he wished she looked like Trinity from The Matrix. He then said he looked at her and she did look like Trinity from The Matrix. There was a lot more crazy talk of that caliber until he ask if our parents had any work for him. I told him I doubt it and that my parents were in Utah anyway. He said that wouldn't be any problem he could hitchhike there. His little catch phrase that he used about every sentence was "Word up." He was an interesting guy. We finally went our separate ways.

Later that night we talked to our district leader and told him all about Brian. About a week later our district leader called us and asked "Guess who we ran into?" I guessed "Brian!". They had indeed run into Brian 50 or so miles away from the town we were in. They told us he was pretty nutty for them too. We all got a kick out of our adventures with Brian.