Oats and Hay

Hermana Storhow once told me about the story of the oats and the hay. She said that horses really want oats to eat. It's the best tasting to them, and they love it. However, it's expensive, so lots of time the farmers will give them hay. They don't like it at first but then they start to get used to it, and then they start to see it as the only food source possible. She said that you shouldn't sell yourself short, ALWAYS REMEMBER THE OATS.

So as part of my "count down" to Ecuador series, I will share with you some of my "oat" stories from Ecuador. Things that you did (or didn't do) because for so long all you saw was "hay" in your life. And I would ask all of you to please share your stories with me as well. They don't have to be mission stories. They can be life stories.

The first moment I have is when I made someone else realize they were eating hay. See, in Ecuador, the mail system works like this: You have a letter ready to be mailed, you take it to the Post Office. They stamp it for you, and then they put a whole bunch of rubber ink stamps on it and send it off for you. When I had been in the country about 3 weeks, we went to the Post Office and did our little routine. But then I asked to buy like 10 extra stamps.

The mail worker looked at me like I was crazy. Hermana Rose looked at me like I was crazy. And then she asked me why I did that. I said. "You know, so I can write my letters and mail them off and not have to take them to the window every time." Rose said, "I never thought of that. Ha! I never would've thought of doing that."

I was thinking to myself. "What? Why wouldn't you think of buying stamps and then affixing them to your letters and then dropping them in the mailbox? THAT'S HOW YOU MAIL A LETTER!!" See, she had forgotten the oats. She was so used to doing it that way she forgot about how you really should mail letters. Later she told me that she thought that we had to take them to the window so they could rubber stamp them. Like the paper stamps weren't valid without the rubber ink stamped on them too. She told me this AFTER I had sent about 5 letters to friends and family. THANKS!!! (I acutlaly think that the letters got there anyway)

However, I think that my favorite "oats and hay" moment came with Hermana Godfrey. OR was it Judd? I'm pretty sure it was Godfrey. But any of my past missionary companions that read my blog feel free to correct me if wrong. This is how the conversation went down:

Missionary 1: Oh, when we go home for lunch, remind me to call our afternoon appointments to make sure they will be there.
Missionary 2: YOU CAN CALL PEOPLE?!?!

I'm pretty sure I was Missionary 2. In my first, third and last areas almost no one had phones. You had to go to their house at the appointment times and hope that they remembered and were there. And if you had to walk, take a bus and then walk again for a total travel time of 4 hours round trip and they weren't there? Well, that was all part of being a missionary. In my second area, many of our people we taught had phones and we could call ahead.

However, I think that most of the time we didn't. It was just habit. We were enjoying the hay, forgetting all about the oats.

Other hay/oat items:
* Washing your clothes and dishes in cold water and not realizing you can wash them in warm water.
* Realizing that you don't have to be electrocuted during a shower.
* Flushing toilet paper
* Putting up with those nasty horse blankets that have been in those houses since primordial man first crawled out of the ocean.

I realize this post is very Ecuador specific. But please feel free to comment on any experiences in your life when you realized you were munching on hay when there was a big bowl of oats right next to you and you smacked your head realizing that you too had forgotten about the oats.

phone calls