The Best of Times, The Weirdest of Times: Part I

Ah deputation… Only a little over a year, and more stories and sermon illustrations than I know what to do with. There have been incredibly wonderful experiences like seeing God provide in crazy ways, seeing people come to Christ (again just yesterday!), and just getting to do neat things as a family like see Elena’s face light up when uncle Chris took her to Disneyland to see Mickey, or visiting the Grand Canyon.

And then there have been some… less wonderful times? I usually don’t write about negative experiences, because no one likes a whiner. But sometimes we all just need a laugh at someone else’s expense, don’t we? I’m already famous for providing that at my home church. Any time someone needs an easy laugh from the pulpit they tell a Scott joke: usually about how I can’t tell jokes (untrue), or maybe about the time I took a nose-dive from the platform after giving announcements (true), or how for the first six months of playing guitar in the service my mic was turned off because I was that bad (also true).

So in the spirit of lightening your day with my misery, here are a few of the WORST moments of deputation:

1. The Cat Burglar

We had just started deputation, and were on our first “big trip”; Maryland, PA, and NY. We had been gone nearly two weeks, and were sitting at a pastor’s table eating dinner when my cell phone rang. Being a polite guest, I ignored it, but then it kept ringing. I checked the caller ID, and it was my next door neighbor. I’ve found that if a neighbor rings you repeatedly, you’d better find out what’s going on, so I called back.

She then proceeded to ask if I had left enough food for our cat, because it was making a huge ruckus. This was problematic for several reasons:

• I had left NO food.

• We weren’t coming home for another week.

• My neighbor didn’t have a key, and calling the picky landlord to explain didn’t sound fun.

• And most importantly: I DON’T HAVE A CAT!!!
  

We could only assume that a stray had wandered in from the cold while we were packing the van. I tried not to go into full bore panic mode, imagining the havoc a starving cat would wreak on my furniture. While the other dinner guests chuckled annoyingly at my distress, beads of cold sweat started appearing on my forehead as I imagined my bed being turned into a litter box.

With no other choice left to me,  I called the landlord, who then ignored my frantic messages for 5 days before finally opening the door and letting the now emaciated cat out of the apartment. Two days later, we arrived home. It’s hard to describe the sense of doom I felt as I unlocked the door of what had to be by now a scene of biblical devastation.

Doom turned int0 disbelief, then to relief as we found that in it’s two week captivity, the cat had only damaged a small corner of the window blinds, and even more miraculously, held its bladder! No presents on the bedspread, no strange smell from under furniture, nothing. Take that Daniel: God can shut the mouth of a lion, but He can also shut… well, you get the idea.

Stay tuned for part II and III of the weirdest moments of deputation…