Week 6: A Place for Anne/Victory
Dear Loved Ones,
First, some housekeeping details: My email day next week will be Tuesday rather than Monday. Also, my email domain is changing from ldsmail.net to missionary.org. Emails sent to my old account will be forwarded. I've also heard that lds.org will be replaced.
People focus on not used the word Mormon, but we aren't supposed to use LDS either. A woman speaking at church recently gave a talk about using the real name of the church, and then she used LDS at the end of it. Change is coming and it will be permanent. We'd all better get used to it.
This Monday after emailing, my companion, two other missionaries, and I went downtown. I'm in the suburbs and hadn't been able to explore urban Boise before then. After I got my call to Boise, I looked up things to do in the area to find ways to entertain myself on preparation days. The thing that intrigued me the most was the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial. It's the only human rights memorial in the United States. We have civil rights memorials, but those are classified differently. Civil rights are things like the right to vote, human rights are the right to not be murdered. We only have one, and it's in Boise, of all places. Anne Frank has no ties to Boise, or anywhere in America.
When I was in eighth grade, the traveling Anne Frank exhibit came to Salt Lake City. We saw it for a Young Women's activity and Anne became one of my favorite historical figures. I have kept a daily journal since age twelve, and after I read her diary, which begins every entry with Dear Kitty, I began mine with Dear Anne. I discontinued that after a few journals, but eight years later, I still sign every entry with my name written in a cipher Anne used. Back in eighth grade, I wrote entire entries in it. That eighth grade diary is slow reading for me now, but I can pick through it.
The memorial consists of walls and rocks and benches with quotes from human rights activists. The centerpiece is a statue of Anne standing on a chair, diary behind her back, peering out between two walls as if looking out a window. I stared up at her, remembered how much I connected with her when I was her age, and I wished I were younger, or that I had at least read her diary more recently. And I thought about why Anne is the centerpiece of this memorial, instead of some Idaho activist, or some old activist who changed laws and gave speeches. Anne Frank wasn't an activist. She wasn't a hero. She was killed for her religion, yes, but I wouldn't say she was a martyr because she didn't choose to die rather than deny her faith. She never had that option. She's just someone who lived and died and left a testament.
But there are a lot of other Holocaust writers who did the same thing. So why her?
I think it must be her youth. That's what drew me to her first, after all.
When I was a freshman at BYU, the art museum hosted a Norman Rockwell painting of Ruby Bridges as a schoolgirl. Ruby Bridges herself, an old woman now, came to the opening. I shook her hand, and when I told her I ran a youth activism blog and how much I admired her, she gave me a hug. In that painting, she was still a first grader, but the woman I hugged was old. Anne will only ever always be fifteen.
I'm a book-person and a writer-person and I respect her for being the only author I can think of, besides S.E. Hinton (who I've never actually read) and Mary Shelley (I've only read half of Frankenstein) who's famous for writing she did as a teenager. She's a literary figure, and I like that, but mostly, I love that she's an ordinary young person who left a record and gets remembered for it.
I have different historical figures who capture my fascination now, but looking at her statue, I realized I'll always have a place in my heart for Anne. Her youth reminds me of mine, and I love that the memorial was paid for by funds raised by Idaho schoolchildren. Youth helping out youth.
On Thursday, we visited this family who never answer their door, just to kill time, and they weren't home. We went across the cul de sac and talked to their neighbors for a while. When we came out of the neighbors', we saw them coming home and I told Sis Holland that I wanted to try them again. The mom let us in, chatted about her faith, took a Come Follow Me, and when we were about to make our exit, she said, "Come again."
Miracle of the week!
I followed this woman on Twitter, Gianna Jessen, who survived an abortion as a baby and has cerebral palsy from it. Despite all that, she tweets the word "Victory" everyday at 11:11 AM and PM. The mom of this miracle family told me that Christ is our victory. We don't have to wait on victory because we've already won. Those words struck a chord with me. First I thought of Gianna's tweets. Then I thought of all the things I had to survive to finally get on a mission almost three years to the date after I started trying.
I'm here. I'll be a missionary for eighteen months.
Victory.
I would love to hear from any of you. Please, write me.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
Weekly tip to avoid mission-centricness:
Don't present missions as a fertility treatment.
A few months ago, a speaker in my YSA stake talked about a friend or relative who struggled with infertility. He bemoaned the fact that this couple couldn't conceived when "He had done everything right. He served a faithful mission in Korea and his wife served a faithful mission in Japan."
Recent medical evidence suggests that fertility is, in fact, dependent on the health of your reproductive system rather than whether or how you served a mission.
First, some housekeeping details: My email day next week will be Tuesday rather than Monday. Also, my email domain is changing from ldsmail.net to missionary.org. Emails sent to my old account will be forwarded. I've also heard that lds.org will be replaced.
People focus on not used the word Mormon, but we aren't supposed to use LDS either. A woman speaking at church recently gave a talk about using the real name of the church, and then she used LDS at the end of it. Change is coming and it will be permanent. We'd all better get used to it.
This Monday after emailing, my companion, two other missionaries, and I went downtown. I'm in the suburbs and hadn't been able to explore urban Boise before then. After I got my call to Boise, I looked up things to do in the area to find ways to entertain myself on preparation days. The thing that intrigued me the most was the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial. It's the only human rights memorial in the United States. We have civil rights memorials, but those are classified differently. Civil rights are things like the right to vote, human rights are the right to not be murdered. We only have one, and it's in Boise, of all places. Anne Frank has no ties to Boise, or anywhere in America.
The memorial consists of walls and rocks and benches with quotes from human rights activists. The centerpiece is a statue of Anne standing on a chair, diary behind her back, peering out between two walls as if looking out a window. I stared up at her, remembered how much I connected with her when I was her age, and I wished I were younger, or that I had at least read her diary more recently. And I thought about why Anne is the centerpiece of this memorial, instead of some Idaho activist, or some old activist who changed laws and gave speeches. Anne Frank wasn't an activist. She wasn't a hero. She was killed for her religion, yes, but I wouldn't say she was a martyr because she didn't choose to die rather than deny her faith. She never had that option. She's just someone who lived and died and left a testament.
But there are a lot of other Holocaust writers who did the same thing. So why her?
I think it must be her youth. That's what drew me to her first, after all.
When I was a freshman at BYU, the art museum hosted a Norman Rockwell painting of Ruby Bridges as a schoolgirl. Ruby Bridges herself, an old woman now, came to the opening. I shook her hand, and when I told her I ran a youth activism blog and how much I admired her, she gave me a hug. In that painting, she was still a first grader, but the woman I hugged was old. Anne will only ever always be fifteen.
I'm a book-person and a writer-person and I respect her for being the only author I can think of, besides S.E. Hinton (who I've never actually read) and Mary Shelley (I've only read half of Frankenstein) who's famous for writing she did as a teenager. She's a literary figure, and I like that, but mostly, I love that she's an ordinary young person who left a record and gets remembered for it.
I have different historical figures who capture my fascination now, but looking at her statue, I realized I'll always have a place in my heart for Anne. Her youth reminds me of mine, and I love that the memorial was paid for by funds raised by Idaho schoolchildren. Youth helping out youth.
On Thursday, we visited this family who never answer their door, just to kill time, and they weren't home. We went across the cul de sac and talked to their neighbors for a while. When we came out of the neighbors', we saw them coming home and I told Sis Holland that I wanted to try them again. The mom let us in, chatted about her faith, took a Come Follow Me, and when we were about to make our exit, she said, "Come again."
Miracle of the week!
I followed this woman on Twitter, Gianna Jessen, who survived an abortion as a baby and has cerebral palsy from it. Despite all that, she tweets the word "Victory" everyday at 11:11 AM and PM. The mom of this miracle family told me that Christ is our victory. We don't have to wait on victory because we've already won. Those words struck a chord with me. First I thought of Gianna's tweets. Then I thought of all the things I had to survive to finally get on a mission almost three years to the date after I started trying.
I'm here. I'll be a missionary for eighteen months.
Victory.
I would love to hear from any of you. Please, write me.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
Weekly tip to avoid mission-centricness:
Don't present missions as a fertility treatment.
A few months ago, a speaker in my YSA stake talked about a friend or relative who struggled with infertility. He bemoaned the fact that this couple couldn't conceived when "He had done everything right. He served a faithful mission in Korea and his wife served a faithful mission in Japan."
Recent medical evidence suggests that fertility is, in fact, dependent on the health of your reproductive system rather than whether or how you served a mission.
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