Lessons from the Vacuum Salesman

We ran into an unexpected missionary opportunity last night with the Kirby vacuum salesman. I'm such a sucker for free stuff and getting the chocolate milk stains out of Lauren's carpet for "free" was too good to pass up. But long story short, the salesman ended up being stuck here for over three hours because the boss was being slow to come and give the final price and what not.

We were ready to eat dinner and he was all done with the presentation thingy so we invited him to eat with us. Chase asked if it was okay if we said a prayer and he asked if we were religious. We talked a little about the church and then he was amazed with the bottled pears I'd brought up from the storage room. So we told him about emergency preparedness.

He asked questions about how long we'd been married, school and such. He made a comment that made me think he was sad that he didn't have anything to "show" for his life up to that point... especially since he was only two years younger than we are and selling vacuums. (Not that it isn't an honorable profession...but yeah.)

I commented later to Chase that he had seemed intimidated by all we'd done with our lives as far as school, house, and family. Chase responded, "Well, that's what the Gospel does for us. It gives us a purpose and a direction so we don't have to wander and wonder what to do with our lives."

So true, I guess I'd never thought about that in terms of the decisions I made to go to school, get married and have a family; it was just second nature to choose those things because I'd been taught the Gospel my whole life.  I felt sad for this guy; we could tell he was floating in life, trying to figure out what he was supposed to do and not having any answer.

How blessed we are that the way to happiness is lined out so clearly and living the Gospel makes it possible to make the decisions to get there.

So in the end, we learned a lesson, and I got to vacuum our whole house with a fancy vacuum for free! :) (And for the record, Bissel vacuums don't hold a candle to Kirby's.)