August 17, 2002

The blessings of attending the temple keep pouring in. Let me try and explain. Last night when we stopped to pick up James from the Pearson's, we sat down and talked for a little bit. We got to talking about our apartment situation and I mentioned how our landlord decided to charge us an extra month of a security deposit even after we has signed a lease and already paid a 3 month deposit. Our landlord was real concerned about this and scheduled a meeting with us today to tell us we needed to give him an extra month of deposit on top of the 3 we already paid. Bishop Pearson, himself a property owner, last night told us that it was illegal for our landlord to charge us more than a 2 month deposit and said we should ask for the 3rd month deposit back. 

Armed with this knowledge, we were ready for the meeting today with our landlord. When the meeting began, our landlord asked us a bunch of questions about how much money we had in the back, where our money was coming from, and so on. When he got done he told us that he decided to not charge us for a 4th month of deposit. "Well," I said, "we did our homework and discovered that the LA County Rent Commission doesn't allow landlords to charge more than a double security deposit." To which he responds, "Oh I know that, but I don't do that." Can you believe that? I told him we wanted the 3rd month deposit back since he collected it illegally. He refused. We settled on using the 3rd month deposit for our 7th months rent and he let us have a month-to-month lease instead of a year lease. We like having an easy out if we want to move and we'll be here at least 7 months with the school year. 

Even better, Diana Pearson called us today and said she may have an apartment manager job opening up soon that maybe it would work out for us to become apartment managers. 

The lesson of the day was pride. Our landlord gave us an easy out on our lease which would put him out all the rest of the money we would pay him over the course of us living here just because he wanted to operate above the law. Before we left the office, he said to us, "Don't disappoint me" which I translated into "don't leave and take your money with you." Those words are now burned into my brain. "Don't disappoint me." The ironic thing is that he is the one who was so quick to give us the way out that will disappoint him. O landlord, the pride of thine heart hath deceived thee. And I thank you.