It seems that one of the duties of a Mormon is you become a specialist in moving other people’s items. During my years of living in a very transient ward, I have participated in many, many move ins and move outs for ward members. Some have been pleasant, while others have been pure hell. I thought it might be fun to share some of these moving stories as well as solicit some stories from the rest of you.

The first move was a single female who was moving out of the ward. She had a bunch of cats and her apartment was disgusting – there was cat feces all over the floor and so much junk everywhere, it was hard to tell what was good and what was garbage. At this time, our ward was very small so there was a core of 5-6 of us who did all of the moves. We became fairly efficient at it, particularly, since most of the people did not seem to be capable of packing anything when we got there. We would bring a bunch of black garbage bags and just throw everything in them. In this case, there was so much junk we did not know what was good or not so we just bagged it all up and threw it on the truck. We figured the ward members on the other end could sort it out. It is likely in our effort to hurry (the place smelled terrible – cat poop mixed with filth) we bagged cat feces and maybe even a cat or two. I could not wait to shower when I got home from that one.

A second move was a family moving into our ward. The wife apparently decided that she could treat us as hired help. She did not help at all, but ordered everyone around like we were hired help (despite the fact that there were other women helping move her stuff). She would tell us to put boxes into the correct rooms, etc. It was obnoxious, particularly, since she did not lift a finger to help. For some reason, few people showed up to help when they later moved out.

The third move was actually a blessing for my wife and I. We were so tired of helping people move – it seemed like every other Saturday we were moving someone in or out of the ward. We were ready to retire. There was a couple moving into our ward one Saturday – we debated blowing it off and going out for pizza instead. We decided to help. As we pulled into the parking space, our old car died – the clutch cable broke. Luckily the guy who we were helping had experience in car repair and helped me fix it so that was a blessing. In addition, he and his wife have become two of our dearest friends. If we had not helped them move, we would have missed out on some great friends.