The Crotchety Old Man

I recently had an eye opening experience that made my testimony grow.  It's a story that I have titled "The Crotchety Old Man."  Here it goes.

So my companion and I are about to visit someone in these apartments.  We just have about 20 minutes, so it's going to be a shorter visit than usual.  We pull into the parking lot for the apartments and start to walk up to her place.  We hear a voice from the distance that says, "You can't park there!  It's residence parking only.  Can't you read the sign?"  After looking around and seeing how empty the parking lot is, we respond with, "We'll just be in there for a couple of minutes."  He's not having it.  He says, "No, you have to go park in the street."  Not wanting to cause any trouble, we move our car to the street.

While we're moving the car, I keep thinking to myself, "That's one crotchety old man."  There's no other word to describe him except crotchety.  After we park the car on the street, we try again to go up to her apartment.  Right as we're walking up to her place, she's just getting back from the store.  She invites us in and we are able to have a good visit.

Later in the day, I realized that the crotchety old man was really a blessing in disguise.  If that crotchety old man wasn't there, we would've gone up to her apartment, knocked on her door, and left before she got back from the store.  But since he delayed us those couple of minutes, we showed up just in time.  Ever since that realization, I've been able to turn things that I thought were an inconvenience, into a blessing.  I am able to see the hand of the Lord in my life more and more. 

The Lord knows all things, though he does work in mysterious ways.  2 Nephi 2:24 states, "But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things."  There are "crotchety old men," so to speak, in our lives everyday and everywhere.  I challenge you all to look for the reason that crotchety old man is there, because there is always something to be learned from it.