About How Dave and I Almost Died in Separate Incidents

This morning I was dreaming about teaching Hebrew (while taking the class horseback riding?  Someone explain that one to me), when I woke up suddenly hearing the short, staccato coughs of someone choking/gagging.  David usually wakes up before me to exercise and get ready for work, so when I heard the noise, I sat bolt upright in bed and yelled his name (quite fearfully), thinking he was dying in the other room.  Thankfully, Dave was still sleeping peacefully next to me and wasn't actually turning blue somewhere, but when he heard his name, he, too, sat up and listened.  We both heard the sound several more times and he bolted out of bed to check the other rooms of the house.  We kept our windows open last night, but they were all intact. He found nothing, and the sound had stopped after he got up.  So, our 6:45 am wake-up call this morning will ever remain a mystery.  Perhaps it was a dying bird or cat outside our window, or maybe it was the blinds hitting against each other in a certain way.  Not quite sure...

Speaking of dying, though, I thought I would recount the time a Tempe church leader honestly and literally thought that I had died.  David was attending one congregation when he was living in an apartment near campus.  When I returned to Arizona, we found another apartment complex that we liked much better, and signed a contract.  We thought at the time that the complex was in the boundaries of the same congregation, but when we attended David's normal ward on Sunday and told them our new location, they sadly reported that our building fell just outside the boundaries.  The Bishop took us into his office and circled for us every apartment complex within their ward and assured us (very enthusiastically) that if we decided to cancel our lease, we could live in one of the circled areas.  We didn't decide to cancel our lease, obviously, and happily prepared to move into our new apartment despite the congregation change.  We had three weeks left, though, before we were moving out of Dave's bachelor apartment, so the Bishop asked us to speak together in church on our last Sunday.  On the second to last Sunday, we were supposed to be in Utah enjoying a Pioneer Day celebration with Dave's family. Instead, I was in the University of Utah hospital, as I continued to be the Sunday after, when I was supposed to be speaking.  Dave informed the Bishop of my illness and they found a replacement for me.  But I was also the subject of every prayer said in the ward meetings that day.

I recovered, flew home to Tempe and moved into our new apartment, never returning to David's previous ward.  We filled out the new member information sheet given us in our new congregation, and our records were transferred correctly.  A few weeks after moving into the ward, we came on a Wednesday night to have a "meet the Bishop" interview.  They began the interview by telling us goodbye.  Dave and I were very confused.  Apparently, the Bishopric saw our new member sheet and mistook the previous address as our current address, putting us back in David's old ward.  They had sent our records back to our previous Bishops (mine going back to Cambridge).  We explained the mistake, the interview Bishopric did a dance of joy (they have small wards here...) and everything was sorted.  We thought.

In the meantime, Dave's previous Bishop was in all sorts of confusions.  David's records had gone, and then come back.  Without mine.  Last he'd heard, I'd been very sick in a hospital in Utah.  Since the Bishop could conceive no other reason why David's records would have returned to his ward, he assumed that Dave had canceled his new lease after all and moved into back into his old apartment - alone, without me, since my records hadn't come.  Since he was fairly sure we hadn't gotten divorced suddenly, he could only assume that I had died of my illness.  He called David last week to offer his sincere condolences.




Funny how even humorous misunderstandings can make one extra grateful to be alive...        

Comments

Dave said…
The really strange thing about the above story was that evidently I was sleeping more soundly than Amy this morning...
Jamie said…
HAHAHAHA---holy cow you two have the strangest adventures! That must have been a really awkward phone call with the Bishop! I am VERY grateful to hear that both of you are, in fact, alive and well. :)
Oh my goodness, what a crazy set of circumstances!
Margaret Curley said…
This is a wonderful explanation, as to why I seem
unable to remove your name from my lists!!!!
I began to believe that I was either refusing to accept your departure, or you were coming back.

So glad, you a both alive and "kicking", sad that you are not on your way back for another year.

Love Margaret

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