God works in mysterious ways

Because I’m not spending time studying (though if I were a good med student I’d start getting ready for the Board exams) I feel obligated to volunteer my service for things that I’d usually ignore. Saturday was a prime example of this.

A friend of mine was moving across town so I volunteered to help her move. Admittedly I probably would have done such a thing during the school year, but that works against the theme of this post. I wasn’t terribly happy to discover that there were only 2 of us that showed up in the morning, despite the 6 or so hands that were raised in Elder’s Quorum. So as I moved things with one hand I used the other to make calls on my cell phone, waking people up and guilting them into helping us out. Despite my efforts at recruiting, it still took us longer than I had anticipated and I didn’t get home until 2.

This wasn’t a big deal, except I had volunteered to work at a First-Aid booth at a Comfest at noon. I had signed up to work at this booth a couple weeks earlier because another friend of mine was in charge of getting med students to fill these positions. However she hadn’t told me what Comfest was at the time. Turns out that although it is technically a nondescript Community Festival, Comfest is most famous for being a congregation of topless women. It is legal to go topless in Columbus, but most women usually waive this right. Comfest is an exception. In the days leading up to the festival I also heard it described as the gay festival, the hippy festival, and a den of iniquity. The last being from a missionary. So I had a dilemma on my hands. I thought I was being a good person by doing volunteer work and helping out a friend, but it may in fact lead me into certain temptation. In the end the choice was taken from me as I missed my window of opportunity at my other service project.

So I got home at 2, just in time to sleep until my doorbell rang at 3. I did my best attempt at alertness and answered the door, to find the Sister Missionaries. They had asked me the day before if I would mind hosting a discussion in my apartment. Since I had no studying to do, I said that would be fine, and here I was. They didn’t actually have a discussion, we just watched The Testaments with their newest investigator and soon-to-be-convert. I don’t think our HDTV and surround sound are really necessary for feeling the Spirit, but evidently the Sisters have decided that my place is THE place to watch movies. Their investigator had missed the ward activity the night before, so I invited him to the barbeque we were having a few hours later.

Going to a barbeque is hardly a selfless activity, but since I spent a good portion of the time fellowshipping, I’m counting it towards my point. After dropping my new friend off at home I reached my apartment at 12, having spent the vast majority of the day doing service, preparing for service or skipping sinful service I had agreed to do. What was my reward?

I couldn’t sleep.

At all.

I’ve had restless nights before, but this was a pretty unique experience. After about an hour in bed I realized that I was even more awake than I had been when first getting in bed. So I got up and spent the next 6 hours on me-time. I squandered the majority of it by watching 4 episodes of Battlestar Galactica, but hey, I deserved it. I didn’t really get tired until about midnight, so evidently that night of free time was my blessing for helping others. God works in mysterious ways.