Hit me, baby, one more time

And now for the thrilling conclusion. And yes, this really happened. If this were made up, we could probably come up with a more dramatic ending (it's still really good, though, don't stop reading). But that's the best part about this--it's a first-person account. Most of the time when you hear really good stories, it's been filtered through several retellings and you have no idea if it's true or not. But this one's legit.

So without further ado, here's the rest of Joni's story:

"I left her, and I hated leaving her, but then at the same time, like, there was nothing I could have done in that situation. I left her there, and the member, this is sort of funny, the member said like, “Sister, I never understood you in Portuguese until that one time when you were trying to obey the rules.” When I was trying to tell her that she couldn’t stay alone. So that was sort of a funny thing.

"So I go the member’s house, and I’m just sitting there, like not proselyting, not doing anything, and the husband comes home of the member. And the husband’s like “where’s your companion?” and I’m like “at the hospital” and he was like “let me call” and I’m like “don’t call, she’ll get so mad, she’s so mad at me.” And he was like well let me see so he called the hospital and the hospital told him that she was in the maternity ward and he got off the phone and he talked to me and he was like “Sister, she’s going to be so mad when she finds out that she’s in the maternity ward because the hospital thinks she’s pregnant and she’s not.” And I’m like “I know, why does everybody think she’s pregnant and she’s not” and so we sat down to dinner.

"At dinner I remember one of the members asking me “so, how long has your companion been out?” and I was like “7 months” and I could see him counting on his hand and everybody thinks she’s pregnant! Anyway, he called again, she was still in the maternity ward and he said we have to go to the hospital but I was like “yeah, but I don’t want to go, let’s pick up a different Sister that speaks Portuguese better and take her to the hospital.”

"So we picked up the other Sister and I stayed at the house with her companion. To make a long story short, the sister came back, she was like, “she’s really sick, I’ve got to go back to the hospital and stay with her.” So I thought my companion was really deathly sick or whatever.

"The next day I worked with that other sister the whole day long, I thought nothing of this, like my companion’s just sick and we even went to the hospital but we didn’t go inside, and the other sister was like “let’s go inside, let’s go inside” but we didn’t because I was like “no, she’s sick, just let her be” and I sort of wish we would’ve because I would’ve liked to actually be there but we went tracting and proselyting for a little longer and the other sister came and found us with a member, the sister that was staying with the pregnant sister, and said that the mission president was coming tonight.

"I thought that was sort of strange because we were in one of the farthest cities, like the very border of our mission, and I was like “Whoa! He’s coming tonight? She must be really sick.” I didn’t get it.

"Anyway, to make a long story short, we came home from proselyting that night and the mission president was there. So I was like, if she’s really pregnant or if something’s going on that I should know about he’s going to ask me because I was with her the whole time. And he was an American mission president and his wife was with him too. I thought, wow, this is strange that they both came.

"The first thing he said was like, “why aren’t there any lights on out here? You need to get more lights, you need to fix this, people are going to break in, it’s not very safe.” So I was like, oh, if he’s just concerned about our safety, then probably nothing is going on with the other sister who’s really sick. And he was like, I need you to pack her bags up, because she’s going to be coming home with us. Like, she’s really sick, she needs to go home. And so I still thought nothing of it, I sort of went to see her to say goodbye.

"Anyway, the mission president left. That night we were fixing dinner, it was the three sisters. One of the sisters was making dinner, I was setting the table and the other sister was just in there. One of the sisters, that wasn’t with the pregnant girl said “so, I heard this sister was pregnant” and she was like “no, everybody thinks that but she’s not” and I was like “why does everybody think she’s pregnant, because even the doctors thought that, the doctor even told me in English that she was going to have a baby boy? Why would the doctor do that?”

"The sister that had been with her was like “How did you find out?” And I was like “I was at the hospital.” She was like “yeah, she did have a baby” and I was like no, stop lying to me, you’re lying too. Everybody lies! And she’s like no, she really had a baby, she had a baby boy. And I’m like oh my goodness, this is too weird, I knew she was going to have a baby boy, but I didn’t really process it, it was very weird.

"And so, I come to find out she had the baby, when she had the baby she wasn’t very happy about it, she said some things she probably shouldn’t have, and it took a while for her to acknowledge that she’d had the baby, so she left the next day with the mission president to the mission home.

"She sort of had to stay hidden so none of the members would know why she left. We couldn’t tell anybody why she left, like even the APs didn’t know why she left. She had to stay in the mission home for ten days because the baby couldn’t fly. She had to stay hidden, nobody knew she was there. And then she went home…and that’s the end of my story."

Happy Pioneer Day everybody!