My son, Derek, is currently serving as a missionary in Lima, Peru. He left the comforts of home, family and friends to serve for two years among the people of Peru. Elder Olson has a little more than a year left on his mission and has grown a lot spiritually, but...
The phone rang at our house around 11:15 pm and my heart jumped. Typically, a phone call this late at night is not a welcomed event because it usually involves something that is either bad news, inconvenient news, or the guard house saying that my garage door is open (our community has an unnerving fetish about open garage doors, which is ironically interesting since, if I am living in a gated community with a security patrol, should not my garage be safe?)
I answer the phone with a timid, "Hello?""Is this Brother Olson?" came the voice of a young man on the other end of the line.
The "brother" part of his question is the obvious giveaway that it is a church member calling, but I am curious, because most Mormons are asleep by 10 pm on a weeknight. (BYU students would be the exception here)
"Yes..." I responded. The line is clear of any static so I am thinking it is one of our local missionaries calling me about something. I am thinking, he is up way too late...
"This is Elder Brandenburg from the Peru Lima North Mission..." he says. My heart starts to pound and it feels like I can't breathe.
"Brother Olson, are you sitting down?"
Now I am in the throes of a full on panic attack as I tell the Elder on the phone to "hold on" while I turn off the din of ESPN spewing out, what is now, totally insignificant scores. I yell to my wife, Margo, to come downstairs.
I take a deep breath and pick up the receiver again, still standing, but leaning on the counter in the full anticipation of the horrible news that awaits my ears.
"Okay, I am here, what..."
Elder Brandenburg interrupts me in mid sentence, "I have bad news..."
Time begins to slow as I interpolate the rest of his sentence and my heart begins to explode in the anticipated and overwhelming grief that comes to any parent who has ever lost a child...
"Elder Olson has..."
Tears are welling in my eyes and I am now mentally resigned to the "what happened" and wondering the "how's"...
"broken..."
Huh?
"his..."
He is alive...this is good...
"camera...and the bad news is that it will cost about $300 for the new one that he really wants!"
There is giggling in the background. I hear a faint, "I love you papa!"
Elder Brandenburg, along with Elder Derek Jay Olson, work in the mission office and were waiting for a group of missionaries to arrive very late (or very early in the morning) from the U.S. and, with the 2 hour time difference, made it around 1:30 am in Peru when they decided to pass some time with a prank call.
Giddy from an apparent lack of sleep, and (I am being extremely lenient here) their judgement impaired by fatigue, and (the old fall back) Elders will be Elders...they decided that it is not against the rules for an elder to call (and play a joke upon) another elder's father...just twisted, and worthy of Extreme Repentance...(yes, I am talking to you too, Brandenburg!)
Sitting on our shelf, at the top of the steps of our home, is a portrait of Elder Derek Jay Olson and beside it is a "Missionary Countdown Clock", indicating that he has 410 days left on his mission.
410 days.
Then, I am gonna kill him myself...
