One particular Friday, early in my mission, I got a phone call from the mission office. Well, the caller claimed he was in the mission office, but I was pretty sure it was another elder in the district who had covered the phone's mouthpiece with some tissue to disguise his voice. The caller said I was in for "subline transfer," whatever that meant. I asked my companion, who had been with me for a couple of weeks, what a subline transfer was and he said it was a special transfer. So why not just call it a special transfer?
In any case, the caller said they were going to pick me up at 9:00 p.m. on Monday and they would take me to Seaside apartment, wherever that was -- and why so late? I was pretty sure that this was a joke, but the term "subline" made it sound official. If it wasn't real I would end up packing for nothing, but if it was real, and I didn't pack. . . . A real Catch 22.
On Sunday evening, when my companion and I got back from our ward meetings, one of the other elders in the apartment said that the mission president had called. Now it was the both of us, according to him, who were now being transferred. I thought I could trust this elder because we had been in the same apartment for the past two and a half months, were from the same hometown, and because we got along well together. That clinched it for me and I started packing.
About an hour later, the other two elders in the district stopped by our apartment. When they heard that I was packing they started laughing. They said that it was all a joke, and that they had made up the term "subline transfer." I had been had.
After unpacking I sat on the edge of my bed and sulked. I could hear the other elders laughing out in the living room. That's when it hit me that I had been taking things too seriously, not just the joke, but a lot of the comments made by other elders. It occurred to me that I had a choice; I could sit there and feel sorry for myself, or I could lighten up. I went out to the living room, admitted that they had gotten me, and then I laughed with them. As I laughed I felt as if a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
When you get a bunch of 19-20 year old kids together -- let's face it, that's what we were -- you can expect some practical jokes and other hijinks. One pair of elders were wrestling in their apartment one day and broke their couch. In another apartment, in another area, my flat mates decided to have a water fighter one evening -- inside the apartment! While I chose not to participate, I still had to have a sense of humor about it.
One of the most important pieces of survival equipment for a mission, and life in general, is a sense of humor. If you can laugh at things that otherwise might worry you or cause you stress, then life becomes more enjoyable. With that said, however, there are some comments and some jokes that can cross the line -- like ruining someone's lunch with a ton of cayenne pepper or licking a co-worker's mouse (yes, I have heard of such a thing happening), whereas putting some tape over the optical eye of the mouse is hillarious.
About two and a half weeks after the subline transfer joke, there was a real special transfer. The elder who was from the same hometown, was transferred to the office and a new elder was transferred in. With the change we asked permission to make other changes, switching the companionships around with the result that the new elder coming in was now my companion. This switch ended up being one of the best things to happen to me on my mission.
Three weeks later I was transferred to a new area. The ward I was assigned to was called the Carmel Ward even though it was actually in a town called Seaside, which was sandwiched between Monterey and Fort Ord, a military base long since closed. While most of the ward was in Seaside, there was a rural area called Carmel Valley that was also part of the ward, and that is how it got its name. Carmel by the Sea was actually part of the Pacific Grove Ward. So, ironically, I ended up in Seaside apartment anyway.
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