When God Closes a Door

     Yesterday marked a week since my arrival in Nome, and it has been a wonderful experience so far. I am learning the ropes of my job duties, meeting lots of nice people, and getting to explore Nome during uncharacteristically beautiful weather for this time of year. If you were to ask me what the hardest part of my first week here has been, you'd get a very strange answer.
     Every weeknight when we leave the Boys and Girls Club where we work, my fellow missionary Alisha and I are in charge of locking the front door behind us. No big deal, right? Unlocking the door is no trouble at all, we both have done that multiple times without any trouble. But every night, we've had a frustrating struggle with locking that door. We've both tried, and the key just doesn't want to turn that way. Someone told us that cold weather affects locks, which at first I thought was just a white lie to make us feel better about our struggle to complete such a simple task. But I Googled it, and there might be some truth to it. Whatever the reason, locking that door has become the most dreaded part of our day.
     Here we are, two grown women who have been sent here as missionaries because we have supposedly proven that we are up to the task, and we can't even lock a door. Sure, there are people we could call for help, and we have come close to doing that, but my stubbornness gets in the way of that plan. I don't want to be the damsel in distress, I want to be the strong, independent woman who doesn't call someone from their warm home across town to lock a door for me.
     I'm not sure if it was the second or third day of us spending over ten minutes trying to lock that dreaded door, but there was one night when we had just about had enough. We had finished our night of working at the Boys and Girls club, which includes helping with homework and just being there to interact with children, as well as preparing USDA approved, cooked from scratch meals which is a job in itself, even though these children are sweet and appreciative and wash their own dishes. We were both getting frustrated, and entering that grey area that can lead to either hysterical laughing or hysterical crying, and I was leaning more towards crying. Alisha stopped wrestling with the key to reach into her purse for another copy of it, and I decided to give in another try just to pass the time. Without much hope, I gave the key a lazy twist.
     What happened next could have been a scene straight out of a comedy movie. With that one half-hearted twist, the key that we had wrestled with for almost twenty minutes without success, clicked into place. After an enthusiastic celebration that was probably very confusing to all of the people driving by, Alisha asked me what I did to make the key work. The problem was that I have no idea what the secret to locking that door is. It just happened because God made it happen, and I didn't really have anything to do with it.
    I knew this door locking scenario would make good writing material, so when I was trying to figure out the moral of this story I came up with two things. The first moral is that we need to find a solution to this problem before winter starts, The second is this; sometimes, when God closes a door, it is a wonderful thing.