Honesty

Brace yourself....this is going to be a little more of a "serious" post from me. I've actually been meaning to post this story and picture for a long time now but had forgotten about it. This past Sunday the lesson we taught our primary class was on "telling the truth" and I shared this story with my little 8-year olds and it reminded myself to share this story on here because it's a good one! So the story goes like this.......about 2 years ago I got an e-mail from a guy named Brandon that had found me through my mission website. He saw that I was now married and that my last name was Baadsgaard so he e-mailed me and asked me if I happened to know a Jed Baadsgaard.....I of course e-mailed him back and said "Yes, I know him.....quite well in fact(wink, wink)....he's my husband!" so he writes back and said "can I please have your mailing address, I have something that belongs to him that I'd like to send it." So about a week later we get this trophy in the mail along with a letter. The letter was an apology letter to Jed from Brandon. He asked Jed if he remembered him and that they had been in the same 6th grade class....(Jed did remember him.) They had a reading contest that year and Brandon was ahead the entire time.....until the last day of the contest when Jed reported to the teacher that he had read several books over the weekend which now put Jed in the lead! When Brandon heard this he went to the teacher and told the teacher he had also read several books over the weekend-----actually more than Jed which put him in the lead and he won the contest! The only problem was that Brandon had lied....he hadn't read the books---but he couldn't handle loosing the contest. In the letter he apologized to Jed and asked for Jed's forgiveness. Can you believe he held onto this trophy ...and the guilt for over 20 years. I was so impressed that he would go to such measures to find Jed and send the trophy and letter. It's amazing to me how every single day we have the opportunity to be honest. Honesty has always been a big issue to me. I have to say that I think one of the absolute worst thing a person could say about me is that I'm dishonest ----that would upset me more than just about anything. There's nothing that bugs me more than a person who is dishonest.....not just flat out lying but even the little half-truths that people tell. I have to take a second and brag about a few of my co-workers. This week a guest in the hotel I work at had left her wedding ring in her room. She called and asked the front desk clerk if she could please go look for it. So Rachel went and looked for the ring and found it----and she about died because the ring had a center stone of 3 carrots and side stones that were about a carrot each. She called the guest back and let her know she found the ring.......when the guest came in to pick up the ring she gave Rachel a $100 bill for being honest and returning the ring to her (p.s. she happened to mention that the ring was worth $45,000). One more story and then I'll stop rambling. A couple of years ago while working in the hotel we had another guest who had left SEVERAL thousand dollars in cash in the drawer in the hotel room. The housekeeper who cleaned his room had found it and had turned it into her supervisor before the guest even realized it was missing! Once he discovered the cash was left behind he called the hotel will no hope of the cash still being there. He was so grateful and amazed he rewarded the housekeeper with several hundred dollars. So see.....honesty does pay!!!