Problem or Solution

This is the story of how I tried to help a friend, and almost because a problem masquerading as a solution.  

Last night, Saturday, I received a phone call from the bishop asking if there was any way to broadcast Sacrament meeting. He said that one of my good friends in the ward, Eric, was in a precarious situation and had been admitted in the hospital. The added difficulty was that Eric's son had just returned from his mission and was scheduled to speak the next day in Sacrament Meeting. The bishop wanted to broadcast the sons talk so Eric could see the talk and hear it.

I responded that the state technology guys could set it up and volunteered to call them and get it set up. I called and the technology brother was very nice and agreed to meet me at 8, an hour before the meeting was going to start. Plenty of time, we thought,  to get things set up. 

We started the feed just fine, but Eric wasn't able to get it to work. Eric tried his phone and computer but couldn't get it to work. It was now about 8:30. I decided, since I had it working on my computer, that I would just drive to the hospital and watch the meeting with Eric. I arrived at the hospital right at 9 as the meeting was starting.

In the room, I couldn't get it to work either. We were again frustrated because the meeting had started and we still didn't have the feed working.  I thought maybe the hospital was blocking the streaming video.  I switched a few things and pulled the Internet through my phone. Still didn't work. I tried pulling through Eric's phone. Still didn't work. The URL for the feed had a large number in it, and I double checked it with everyone- even copied and pasted it from one application to another. As a last ditch resort I called my wife and was going to do a hangout worth her to get both audio and video. She was able to help if we couldn't figure it out. 

Then I said a silent prayer asking what I was missing.  The Web feed worked from the chapel,  it should work from the hospital. The impression came to send the whole URL to Diego, the ward clerk manning the broadcast equipment, and have him double check it.  Diego noticed that the numbers were fine, but the domain had a misspelling. Once corrected it worked fine. The Sacrament was just ending. We were able to watch the rest of the meeting, including his son's talk. (The doctor came in right before the son was to start speaking. Eric said, I'm sorry, I'm watching my son's talk. This is more important. You will have to come back later." It seemed like the world was conspiring against letting Eric watch the talk.)

I learned a few things in the process. When I was in the hospital room with Eric, I found a lot of other reasons for failure other than myself. I blamed the hospital's internet, and the church's software that might have some firewall preventing me from accessing the site I needed. It wasn't outright blaming, but I was so confident I was doing things correct that someone else must be to blame. In reality though, it was just my own dumb mistake. I was so focused on the numbers I didn't even look at the domain portion of the url. I even tried to work around my problem, offloading my problem to my wife - though she was willing to help. It was only after I was willing to consider that I might be the problem and ask for help, that the problem was identified. 

The son's talk was wonderful. He talked about prayer and humility. He reflected on his life and compared the decisions he was making 4 years ago with those he was making now - and that he was much happier and had a greater perspective. He said, "If the gospel isn't working for you, you are doing something wrong." That was certainly my experience this morning. Prayer, eventual humility, and and course correction. I think I will be reflecting on this experience again and again.