After my first year of college, I was called to serve an LDS mission in New Zealand.
I almost didn’t go. I didn’t want to.
As I said in my first post, I had 5 good friends in highschool. Despite being from a small rural town, all 6 of us went to college. Well, all 6 of us would have if the football team captain hadn’t died the summer after graduation. The other 5 did go, 2 to U of U, 2 to Dixie and the Seminary Class President to BYU (of course).
When I came home from school at the end of that first year for Mother’s day I experienced something that in hindsight I believe to be the ministering of angels.
I knew I was expected to go on a mission. I knew as the oldest of 4 boys, I was supposed to set an example by going. But I also knew what “The Church” was like. How the members (at least in my estimation) mistreated my non-member and less active friends, acting superior, when any objective measurement proved they were anything but. To me everyone in my tiny town, and every neighboring town were such hypocrites. I wanted nothing to do with them, or the organization they claimed gave them such superiority over all “others.”
I had only attended church while at school once or twice a month, out of duty more than anything else. And 3 of my 4 remaining friends would never let me hear the end of it if I went on a mission. So here I was, planning to tell my folks that I wasn’t going on a mission when the week before my debate partner decided HE was going on a mission (I think mainly because his girlfriend was too). We’d just returned from the national debate tournament, where we’d gotten the bronze. We planned to take gold the following year. Before coming to Utah my debate partner had been a bit of a hellion where he’d grown up in Texas and his parents had sent him to school in Utah to be by his grandfather, who was going to try to straighten him out. So if I didn’t go on a mission too, I’d have to find a new partner, and there were no good prospects. I’d get to keep my scholarship, but without my partner, I had no prospect of taking gold with some unknown new partner.
So I went home for Mother’s day weekend, with all of this on my mind and I ended up in the cemetery, in front of my grandparents headstone on Saturday night. I was praying, but basically I was making an argument for why I shouldn’t have to go on a mission.
I’ve read others that think that receiving revelation is something that you may not fully comprehend at the point in time that you actually have the experience, but that it distills upon you after, to bring to your mind more of what actually happened. (ala justification for multiple accounts of Joseph Smith’s “First Vision.”) Perhaps that’s true. Or perhaps we just “remember” things differently as we get older, and our present thoughts, experiences and world views shape those memories. I’d like to believe in the former, though I expect that the weight of the evidence is with the latter.
Anyway, my current recollection of the event is that as I was basically arguing against serving a mission in prayer, I felt the presence of my grandmother, and was distinctly told that it didn’t matter what anyone else did, or didn’t do. I knew God lived, I believed in Christ and his atonement, and I needed to go on a mission to teach people those things.
So I repented, saw my “family ward” bishop on Mother’s Day before returning to school, and “put in my papers” right then.
My call came on the day I was moving home from school for the summer. The engine in my car had thrown a rod, and I had just coasted into the parking lot of a truck stop when the car gave up the ghost. I had called home for my folks to come and get me. My dad had to go to town, rent a u-haul tow dolly, and then load everyone up in the family van and drive 2 hours to get me.
I’d fallen asleep waiting, and woke to my mom excitedly banging on the window, with my “mission call” in her other hand. (They hadn’t mentioned it had come when I called for help 4-5 hours earlier)
I’d never had a desire to learn another language, and when I put in my papers and I’d been asked by my bishop where I wanted to go if I could choose, I said, Australia (where my grandpa had gone).
When I opened the letter I was still kind of half-asleep, but when it said I was called to the New Zealand, Christchurch mission, it might as well have said Mars. I had some vague recollection of seeing a church calendar growing up with a big wooden windmill, and thought it was in New Zealand (I’m pretty sure it was actually the Netherlands). That was all I knew. But I was happy because I got to leave the US, and I didn’t have to learn a language.
I spent that summer working two jobs to save for my mission. Open to mid-day at the fast food place, followed immediately by mid-day to close at the retail place. I had just enough “free” time to get my wisdom teeth out, get my biggest moles removed, and get my shots and passport/visa applications in. I didn’t spend much time learning about where I was headed.
When I finally got to the MTC in mid-August, I finally learned something about New Zealand. The country is made up of the north and south islands. The top 2/3 of the north island is where most of the Maori’s live, and where the other Pacific Islanders typically live (they are still the minority in most places there though). The bottom 1/3 of the north Island is where Wellington, the capitol is, and that area plus the whole south island are predominantly white settlers (Pakehas). At the time I served in New Zealand there were 2 missions, Auckland, which had the top 2/3 of the north Island, and Christchurch, which had the rest of the north island, and all of the south island.
While I was in the MTC I again experienced something that in hindsight I believe was the ministering of angels. I ran into an elderly couple that recognized my surname from my name tag, and claimed to have known my grandparents. A couple days later I ran into the sister again (alone, which was very odd), who gave me a greeting card. It was the blank type that just has a picture on the front, and you can write whatever you want on the inside. She had written a little note about my grandparents, and then quoted a list of what she said were her favorite scriptures. It was basically all of the Ask . . Seek . . . Knock . . . verses in the D&C. It would be the very end of my mission before I began to understand the significance of that card. (When I later tried to look the couple up, no one new anything about them.)
A couple weeks later, I was on a plane to New Zealand. I’m not sure what I expected, but I remember being rather surprised that it wasn’t that different from the US, terrain wise at least. Sure, there were more ferns, and it was much greener than the west, but still, not that different.
My 3rd area, an area that was purported to have been closed after Matthew Cowley dusted his feet there, some 50 years before, and was re-opened with my companionship and another companionship comprised of the outgoing Assistant to the President, and the guy who would be the next Assistant to the President. They were the Zone Leaders (or “the Feds” as I called them), and we were just a lowly “co-equal” companionship. It was miserable.
I don’t hate anyone. Really, I don’t. But I came as close to hating this guy as anyone I’ve ever met.
He was the kind of guy that if he couldn’t go to BYU he’d just rather not go to college, but he wasn’t bright enough to get in, so he had to go to Ricks College (since re-named BYU-Idaho). He was my opposite in every way. And to make matters worse, the mission president got the idea to use a phony survey as a door approach, and we were the pilot area to test this out. I quickly realized that we weren’t conducting any legitimate research, just trying to deceive people into talking to us in hopes that we could get in to teach them a discussion. I refused to participate, citing scripture to prove that we couldn’t be dishonest and expect to be able to have the spirit with us. This just enraged my companion.
When I voiced my concerns to the mission president, his response was to make a list of 5-6 standard questions, and to require us to actually record the responses, so that is was “a real survey.” He then took the first weeks responses and wrote a PR piece for the local paper saying “Survey Shows Families Important.”
I continued to refuse to participate, and would attempt regular door approaches. But my “brown nosing” companion would interrupt with his phony survey, until he finally just started taking every door, as I just stood behind him and probably looking disgusted.
Despite having ZERO success with this “surveying” the mission president then decided to institute the program mission wide.
I was given a new companion, then transferred to another area, and then another. I explained my position on “surveying” to each of my companions, and declined to participate in the sham. Some were OK with it, others couldn’t fathom that I would even dare question this “inspired” program, and couldn’t critically analyze an argument to save their lives.
I continued to adamantly fight against what I saw as an uninspired, reprehensible program, based on deceit, even arguing with the mission president in “PPI’s” at zone conferences about it. I’m sure most of my companions complained about me in their weekly written reports to the mission president too. Finally things came to a head, and the mission president sent me a letter saying I had 3 choices: 1) get with the program; 2) go home; or 3) transfer to the Auckland Mission. I thought about it. I fasted about it. I prayed about it. And I received a revelation to go to the Auckland Mission. Of course, that wasn’t my original call (And since when can a missionary, or a mission president for that matter, issue a mission call. Aren’t these things supposed to be done by the inspiration of at least an apostle?), so about 3 months after I got to Auckland, I got a “new” mission call that simply said “because of circumstances, you mission call has been changed to the Auckland, New Zealand Mission.” and signed presumably by Ezra Benson’s shaky auto-pen.
The Auckland mission president was night and day different from his south island counterpart. He was a big lanky former BYU basketball playing, Geneva steel mill working, blue collar guy who knew the scriptures as well as anyone I’ve ever met, and taught his missionaries deep doctrines. He taught us all about seeking the face of the lord, of the Abrahamic covenant, and how it applied to both us, and those we were teaching, and a multitude of other things, that I may touch on in future posts.
I think I was kind of shell shocked from the trauma of what I’d been through in the other mission, and it took a few months to fully get back into things, but eventually I did, and by the end of my mission I was doing great. (I also learned that the area presidency had issued a memo prohibiting the use of “surveying” in any mission in the pacific area a few months after I’d switched missions.)
I baptized 3-4 times more people in the last two months of my mission, than I had in the entire other 22 months combined. More importantly, I was able to teach people with the spirit. My mission president wanted me to extend, even just a couple more weeks, and go home alone, rather than with the group of returning elders. I declined, as I needed to get back to register for classes and start school. I’m actually glad I did.
This was when missionaries were NOT allowed to attend the temple while on their missions, except for a single session, the day before they returned home, provided there was a temple in their mission (or a neighboring one, as the Christchurch elders also got to do the same I think). When I went to the temple who should I find there, but my 1st grade teacher and her husband, my elementary school bus driver. They had just finished a mission in Australia, and were touring New Zealand before going home. But that wasn’t the really significant thing to occur. As we sat in a room waiting to enter the chapel, discussion our missionary experiences, I had the experience that has kept me in the church. I’ve never discussed it with anyone, and have no intention of doing so now. But I saw and learned things which I am certain most (if not all) general authorities (or corporate board members) have never experienced. I later found many prophets that had similar experiences, and with their world views and education from their day, must have truly been amazed. Not that I wasn’t too. And not that I claim to be a prophet. I’m no more a prophet, than the next guy. What I do know is that this experience wasn’t based on my “worthiness,” nor on my “righteousness” as I had, and still have a long way to go before I’m ever mistaken for either being worthy or righteous. But I am certain that it was, at least in part, the result of my being tested.
For decades, I believed that because this experience happened in an LDS temple, that was “proof” of not only of the “truth” of the Mormon religion, but specifically of the Utah (Corporate) LDS version of that religion.
I’m not so sure anymore.
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After word
About 5 years ago I had another experience. I was 1st counselor in the Elders Quorum, and the Stake, (in a transparent effort to “teach leadership”) had essentially ordered the Elders Quorum president to MAKE his counselors “teach a lesson.” The topic was to be “what topic should we teach the quorum about?”
What? A lesson to figure out what another lesson should be?
I refused, telling the president it was a waste of time. He responded by telling me I didn’t understand the assignment, and that it would be fine. The 2nd counselor suddenly decided to leave town for the weekend, and Saturday night I finally confirmed that it was exactly what I thought it was.
I knew better. I should have just taught a lesson that the spirit directed me to. But I caved, and wasted an hour of everyone’s lives. We came up with a handful of topics, none of which we ever had a subsequent lesson on. Instead, the bishop made the president talk to the quorum about masturbation two weeks later, and then we were all released.
What I’ve know all along, but apparently keep forgetting, is that when I know what the right thing to do is, I need to do it; regardless of who disagrees with me.
I did the right thing and went on a mission, despite the opinion of the majority of my friends, and my own personal feelings about the membership of the church.
I did the right thing and refused to conduct a phony survey as a missionary, and though I basically went through hell because of it, I ended up with the most important experience of my life.
But 15 years later, I forgot, (or maybe I just felt too tired to fight) and I did something (no matter that it was fairly minor) because those who thought they had a little power or authority, wanted me to.
I’ve since promised myself, NEVER AGAIN, but like I said, I’m Dence
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