Walking on Thin Ice

I was a brand new missionary serving in my first area with my first companion. It was -62 degrees with wind and snow. In our small town, preparation days were pretty slow and it was hard to find things to do. So, one p-day, my companion decided he’d like to go for a little hike in a forest (we called it a forest but really was just a park that had like 100 trees). I wasn't thrilled about our hike, since we spent all day everyday out in the negative degree frozen tundra anyway. Hopping onto low hanging branches and snapping photos was a regular occurrence on these types of adventures. We hiked until we came to small river that was about 50 feet wide. The river was about 4 feet deep at its deepest, so it was clearly frozen over. My companion was determined to press on, but that would involve crossing the frozen river. I told him that I had seen this in a movie and that the outcome was almost never positive. Before I finished my sentence, he was already walking carefully across the river. Sure enough, we started hearing creaks and groans under his feet. Just like the movie, he turned and looked at me with a horrified look on his face right as he broke through the ice. Since the river was shallow and barely moving, he simply dropped about his armpits and stood there. He struggled to climb to the muddy bank. He then yelled over to me to go get the car and bring it to him, since there was a road that passed nearby on his side of the river. I reminded him that he had the keys. He checked his pockets and I could see by the look on his face he didn't have them. I suggested that maybe he had dropped them on one of his vanity photo shoots. I went back through the trees a little way off and said a little prayer something like "Heavenly Father, I know this wasn’t the brightest idea, but he's pretty cold, so please help me find the keys" as soon as I finished, a single leaf fluttered across the snow uncovering the a hole in the snow made by the dropping keys. I scooped them up, said a prayer of thanks and went and got my companion to get him warm. As we drove home, he said "Elder Webster, never tell anyone about this!!". You got it buddy;)

Elder Webster
Iowa Des Moines Mission