Mutual Night At Temple Square

For mutual night, we took the youth down to Temple Square to see the lights and enjoy the Christmas decorations. It was actually a perfect night to go with it being pretty warm out. The lights were beautiful as always and the whole Square was bustling with visitors. It was great. The boys asked a lot of great questions and it was a great opportunity to talk to them about the Temple and what a special place that it is.

After touring the Square, we went into the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and went to the top floor to look out over the lights from above. It was a spectacular view! We then decided to go to Hire's for milkshakes and fries, so we headed back to the cars and made our way over to the restaurant. This is where the real excitement began...

So we got to Hire's and the bishop seemed a little concerned when we walked in. I asked him what was wrong and he said he had lost his iPhone. Bad news. I pulled out my iPhone and tried to locate his, but he hadn't activated that feature yet. So for the next 15 or 20 minutes straight, I kept trying to call his phone hoping someone would answer. No luck.

We finally sat down and I was sitting across from the Young Men's President, Paul, and next to one of the Young Men, Jeff. (Yeah, there's a lot of Paul's and Jeff's in my life apparently.) Well, Paul had tried the bishop's phone as well, but to no avail. After giving up, Paul's phone rang. He answered the unknown number and Jeff, sitting next to me said: "Hey, Paul!" Paul, thinking it was Jeff on the phone, hung up while calling him an idiot. "Uh, that wasn't me on the phone!" Jeff shot back. Right then, someone answered my call to the bishop's phone...

"Hello...? HELLO?" I asked. No response, just heavy breathing. After a long few seconds: "Is this your phone?" a husky voice asked. "No, but I'm with the guy right now" I replied. Then nothing again. In the meantime, Paul had called the number back and was now talking to whoever had the bishop's phone too! I passed my phone to the bishop as Paul talked to one of the guys, the bishop trying to get the other guy to respond to him. Finally, the bishop got a response and said he'd come down to meet the guy to get his phone back and headed out the door after telling Paul: not to hang up. Well, Paul must have thought the bishop said DO hang up because he did. Click. Haha. So the bishop is now gone with my phone -- by himself -- to meet up with what sounded like two homeless guys to try to recover his lost iPhone. "Great," I thought. "The bishop's gonna die..."

So here's how it went down: Bishop asked the guy where he was and he said: "Salt Lake City." Duh. He eventually got out of the guy that he was near a hotel on South Temple and tried to keep the guy on the line, but he told the bishop to call when he got there and hung up. Bishop pulls up to the meeting point and the guy comes out. (Turns out it was just ONE guy, which explains why he would go on long silent pauses with one of us while talking to the other.) The guy was in his 20's, all tatted up, and looked pretty rough. The bishop told him thanks for his honesty and gave him all the cash in his wallet as a thank you, which was $10. When the guy seemed hesitant, Bishop grabbed the iPhone and hopped into the car and took off.

He made it back to Hire's safe and didn't get mugged and we all got our iPhones back after all. As he walked in, Jeff started clapping, so I started clapping, and then the whole group was clapping... then the ENTIRE restaurant, including employees, was clapping and cheering too! Bishop just kind of stood there in shock, took a bow, and then sat down. It was hilarious! Nobody else even knew why they were clapping. Hahaha. Amazing night.