Patience

Sometimes we have days where we have opportunities to try our patience.  Yesterday (specifically last night) was one of those days.

I’m in charge of setting up the video equipment at church for large meetings, like the Priesthood session of General Conference last night.  I arrived at the building an hour before the meeting was scheduled to start, which would give me plenty of time to setup the two projectors and four televisions.  We’ve done it countless times in the past in about a half hour, so an hour should be plenty, right?  Not quite so fast.  Nearly everything I attempted to do had some sort of obstacle placed in front of it.

• Normally when I’m setting things up there are at least two other people there to help.  I was the only one there for a half hour after I arrived.
• The classroom with the A/V closet was locked (it has never been locked before).  My keys are supposed to open nearly every room in the building, but unfortunately they don’t open those particular doors.  Who knows why the Children’s Meeting Room needs different keys than the rest of the building, but I was locked out. 
• We setup a television in the Multipurpose Room for our Spanish-speaking members.  I plugged everything in, only to discover that the outlets in the room had no power.  And the circuit breaker was, you guessed it, in the only other room in the building I don’t have a key for.
• As I went to talk go the regional PFR Director (who happens to be in my Stake) to find out how I could get into those rooms, I ran my hand across the back of a pew and got a huge splinter in my hand.  Of course it hurt, but it also bled for the rest of the evening.
• When I hooked up the projector in the Cultural Hall, I got absolutely no picture from the satellite receiver.  After running back and forth between the projector and the A/V closet to troubleshoot, it became apparent that the video cable between the two locations had somehow been damaged or broken.

Fortunately two others showed up to help, and I was able to solve all of the challenges placed in front of me.  I was able to find people who had keys to the two rooms I couldn’t get into (and I was promised I would be getting the required keys later), my hand eventually stopped bleeding, and I was able to run the video over the video cable put in place for a video camera.  So it all worked out okay, but it certainly seemed like every possible obstacle was placed in my way.

Some days.