Mormon Monday: Jalapeño Hands

Everyone already knows this, but let's just explicitly state that I'm a Mormon. It says so in my side panel thing - if you click on it, it takes you to a page where I talk about my experiences and what I believe as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Anyway, I did that a while ago and while that's good or whatever, I've been feeling like it isn't enough.

In the Church, we've been counselled to be more open about our lives in social media. Those outside of our religion think we're super weird... which is totally true. There are drive-through coffee shops, entire valleys devoted to wine, more R-rated movies in the listings than not, and we're all over here in this little corner of reality passing around the jell-o and watching The Simpson's when the parents are on their date night. So, yeah, I'm different than most people on this Earth because I try to be a faithful LDS.

Here's a story I shared in church today:

On Saturday, we were helping out my boss  with making food for this farewell party for someone that works for them. The menu called for Cafe Rio's pork and house dressing. Beautiful choice. I was hard at work with the dressing when it came time for the jalapeño to be added to the ingredients in the blender. I was unsure of how good the blender would perform so I decided to break each piece in half again just to be sure. I felt a little spritz each time I broke one in half. The first time it happened, I thought that it probably wasn't a great idea to be getting that stuff all over my hands. I waited a little to see if my hands would start burning and they didn't; I continued. When I tasted the dressing from the blender cap afterwards it was so spicy! Glen tried it and didn't get much spice so I thought mine must have been a fluke.
A little while later, we were leaving because the regular help came and my hands started burning were on FIRE! We planned to head to the beach, but I needed help. We thought about going anyway because there's probably nothing we could really do about it, but decided to consult Google (neither of us have smart phones; read: homeward bound). We stopped at Foodland for milk and eggs -- staples in our diet -- and by the time we were leaving, I couldn't even feel the milk in my hands.
Google said a lot of things that did not work, worked. I was consigning myself to amputation at this point. Alcohol was one of those things, but Glen decided soaking would probably be best. We were pretty low on our Isopropyl, so we turned to vanilla extract.
One thing you must understand is that I am an avid throw away-er. Things that have no purpose, not enough sentiment, anything that I deem throw away-able -- goners. We received this vanilla bottle from some friends leaving the island. We used it once and decided we didn't like the flavor, so it went in the cupboard I least look in. If it had been put in any other place, it would have been trash a year ago. Let me tell you, that stupid, huge bottle of vanilla saved me from a life of handless-ness. I hated that vanilla... it smelled like bubbles too (What the weird?), but it saved me in the end.
Lesson learned: you may feel like that bottle of vanilla sometimes; forgotten, useless, maybe smelly too. You may feel that your life has been spent sitting on the shelf with no worth and that you should just be thrown away. I testify that you, just like that bottle of little worth ended up saving my hands, can save yourself and others by serving. Be the hands that care, the words that uplift, the steps that otherwise could or would not be tread. There is no greater joy than to answer the call of a loving Heavenly Father to help one of His children in need. Whether that be to bear and raise a child, grab the blender on a too-high shelf, or be a friend, service will keep your life worth living.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I might even keep the rest of the bottle (it's that huge) because it was so nice to me. We'll see.

What being LDS does and doesn't mean is really tough to answer because there will always be more questions that spring from the words I put here than answers given. What will be here every Monday is a portion of my testimony that I feel should be shared. It may not be for you (it may not even be for me sometimes), but I know that I want my posterity to have the opportunity to know my testimony. And that's enough.

Anyway, this is me letting even more of my weirdness shine for all eight of you to see. Joyous, joyous.

Aloha