I risked my life for that?

Last weekend I went on a Youth Conference trip to Salt Lake City. We had a great time mostly walking around on Temple Square going on tours, etc. I think the highlight of the trip for me was the room in the Church History Center dedicated to Native Americans.

We had a few adventures while we were up there so I though I would share one.

After we finished everything that we had planned we stopped to eat dinner on the way home and then it was off to Cedar City. It was just about rush hour and there was some construction near the point of the mountain so it took us about 10 or 15 minutes just to get onto the freeway. After we finally got on the freeway we came to a complete stop. After we had been there for a few minutes I happened to look over to my right and noticed that there was a big construction hammer sitting on the side of the freeway. For some reason I said out loud, "hey look, there's a hammer on the side of the road."

I was riding shotgun with our Bishop. He got pretty excited and wanted to see it. I pointed it out and he promptly said, "go get it!" I hesitated for a second but then I thought that since traffic was totally stopped I might as well. He repeated his desire for me to "get it" several times during these few moments. I went to open the door but it was locked. By the time I got it unlocked traffic had started moving again. Our vehicle was not in the far right lane but in the lane next to it. As I looked back I saw that cars in the lane that I would have to cross was moving more quickly than ours was. It would have been too dangerous to even try. With more urgency the Bishop exclaimed, "GET OUT AND GET IT!".

Since he wasn't going to budge the car until I got that hammer our lane was still stopped while the others were moving slowly. I looked back and noticed that the car in the lane next to us was halfway in our lane and was blocking traffic so I couldn't get run over. I jumped out of the car and ran across the lane to the concrete barrier where the hammer was. I picked it up and turned around to go back to the car but to my surprise it was not there! The Bishop, for some reason, decided to get a head start on me since he was blocking traffic.

I took off running (not very fast since I had twisted my ankle a few days earlier). I thought that he would come to a stop when I caught up to him but traffic was now moving with or without me! He slowed down just enough for me to open the door and dive in as I was running along. Of course just a few seconds after that traffic had stopped again!

Assuming that my Bishop really wanted that hammer and just couldn't get it himself I said, "here is your hammer". His response was something like, "I don't want it, it's your hammer. You were the one that got out to get it.". Since the car in front of us was part of the group they were all very curious about why they looked out the window and saw Brother Fox running down the freeway chasing Bishop's car!