Week 13: I Love the MTC!
Dear Loved Ones,
In the summer of 2017, the MTC had an open house. I didn't want to tour it because I'd been barred from serving a mission and having to live down the street from the MTC and look it at everyday was bad enough. But then I had an interview with LDS Family Services, the organization that bars missionaries from serving, and thought it went well and I would be serving soon. So I went on the tour.
I was wearing a ring that day. I usually hate hand jewelry, but I put one on that morning. It's a nail from the blacksmiths' shop in Nauvoo, Illinois, twisted into the shape of a ring.
I went on the tour that day as a show of good faith that I would serve a mission. I wanted to leave something there for myself to find later when I went on a mission. I put a note for myself behind a painting, but I wasn't sure how well it would stay, so then I hooked my ring around a stud in a wall panel.
I am wearing that ring as I type this. It has a few rust spots after more than a year and a half behind a wall panel, but it was still there. I also left a note for myself behind a painting. It says, "You made it, Sister Smith! You can do it!"
I'm passing the time by writing notes to my little brothers and leaving them behind all the paintings. I thought I'd be super bored here. It's like the time I had an internship where I learned stuff over the summer and then a class where I learned the same stuff in the fall. "How would you work with a client in this situation?" "Well, when I actually did work with a client in this situation." "How would you teach this principle?" "Well, when I actually did teach this principle." But it ended up being a party! Most of that is due to the people I'm with. Missionaries are trained in small groups called districts and mine is full of awesome people. We chatter, we laugh, we feel the spirit, and do all other things together.
Basically, my goal is to relax and have fun for two weeks. My only worry here is that I'll be too cocky and not feel the spirit enough. I'm positively brimming with confidence. I'm usually the person who doesn't know the ropes in any new situation, but I'm leagues ahead of anyone here. Sometimes that's disheartening. I was barred from a mission, told I wasn't good enough, and now I'm sitting in classes where teachers give us handouts teaching us how to say a prayer. My first day here, they actually surveyed us to screen for anyone who doesn't know how to read. Illiterate people can waltz into the MTC, but I was barred. I hate the twin attitudes of "it's okay to go home early, everyone has struggles" and "stress is normal, it doesn't mean you have to go home early." No one ever extended that attitude to me. I was told that I couldn't go on a mission because I might have stress and go home early. If that attitude applied to everyone, if a high standard of competence was expected of missionaries, being barred from serving wouldn't have hurt anymore than not getting a scholarship. But the bar is so low. I could easily clear it and wasn't allowed to. The thing that hurts the most is hearing other missionaries talk freely about having mental illnesses without fear of being sent home or devalued for it. FailDS Family Services treat me with such a vile and wretched scrutiny and it completely destroyed my life for three years. I fasted on Sunday to be able to finally leave behind the pain I have been forced to endure and finally, finally have a happy mission.
I'm trying so hard to not to focus on the pain of my past and just live on a little happy high. The MTC is set up a lot like the BYU dorms. They have the same food and door locks and vacuums and the cashiers even wear aprons with BYU bookstore embroidered on the front, so I'm very at home and know how things work. I even ran into a guy from my student ward on Thursday and told him to say hi to a friend for me. And then ran into two girls I knew from freshman year. It's weird that my friends and old roommates are just down the street. I have a writing group that meets on campus every Thursday night so it's kind of sad that I can't be part of that. That's the only thing I miss. Everyone is talking about homesickness, but that's it for me.
Horror story: my companion, Sister Keyes, had the wrong date on her mission call. She thought she didn't have to be here until April 3rd. So I showed up solo and got put in a trio and passed the time wondering whether she'd gotten into a car crash on the way to the airport or opted out of a mission. She got a call Wednesday night, threw her life into a suitcase, and had to wake up at two a.m. Thursday to get here. And then I was off with my tri-panions so she was stuck with some other missionaries and spent the whole day sleep-deprived. But once she got some sleep, she turned out to be really cool. She's a hippie who grew up on an island off the coast of Washington, keeps honeybees, has never heard of dryer sheets, and makes me laugh. I love her! I wish we were going to the same place, but she goes to Hawaii. She gets Paradise and I get Zion.
I love the MTC! I wish I could stay longer than two weeks!
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
Tips to avoid mission-centricness:
For those of you who are new on my emails, I do a tip like this every week.
There is a rumor going around, which seems to be completely unfounded, that boys' missions are being shortened. That boys are getting calls that say the length of their call would be announced at the April General Conference. I watched this rumor attach it to a boy in Idaho named Kedric. We talked to him while he was waiting to receive his call but did not watch him open it. A girl who watched him open his call said only that he was going to Denmark. If there had been anything odd about his call, she would have mentioned it, but she didn't. The next day, someone who had secondhand knowledge of Kedric's call told me Kedric's length was going to be announced in conference. I cornered Kedric himself at church that Sunday and found out that yes, he was going for two years.
While emailing in a room full of missionaries the other day, I watched every new missionary who walked in swear that they had a friend back home who'd gotten a call of undetermined length. Finally, someone texted his mom and asked for a picture of this call and she couldn't come up with one.
Everyone's heard this rumor but no one has proof positive. I expect it to be unfounded next week.
One of my roommates here at the MTC said she has a friend who hopes the length is changed because he only wants to serve for six months. I told her, "He can. It's called quitting." She laughed, like quitting isn't an option at all, but it really is. Church culture is sending such mixed messages in regards to quitting. It's supposed to be okay, and yet people aren't supposed to do it. How can it possibly be both?
I took a class called Folklore of the Latter-Day Saints where we talked about mission folklore. There's an archive in the basement of the BYU library where folk stories about disobedient missionaries are compiled. For example, stories where missionaries go on vacation in the middle of their service. My textbook said that these stories are acts of wish fulfillment for missionaries who are just soooooo bogged down by that mission call that was handed to them with no struggle or process whatsoever as soon as they reached the minimum age and bothered to fill out some paper work that they have to invent stories about disobedient missionaries going on vacation to cope with their sad little lives.
Everyone tells stories about missionaries getting an easier lot in life, but no one wants missionaries to make their own lot in life easier by quitting. The logical discrepancy there is huge.
Your tip to avoid mission-centricness this week is to not spread rumors about missions being easier. If you have actual knowledge of missions getting easier, like how I talked about plainclothes missionaries a few weeks back, that's different. But don't spread this shorter call rumor.
In the summer of 2017, the MTC had an open house. I didn't want to tour it because I'd been barred from serving a mission and having to live down the street from the MTC and look it at everyday was bad enough. But then I had an interview with LDS Family Services, the organization that bars missionaries from serving, and thought it went well and I would be serving soon. So I went on the tour.
I was wearing a ring that day. I usually hate hand jewelry, but I put one on that morning. It's a nail from the blacksmiths' shop in Nauvoo, Illinois, twisted into the shape of a ring.
I went on the tour that day as a show of good faith that I would serve a mission. I wanted to leave something there for myself to find later when I went on a mission. I put a note for myself behind a painting, but I wasn't sure how well it would stay, so then I hooked my ring around a stud in a wall panel.
I am wearing that ring as I type this. It has a few rust spots after more than a year and a half behind a wall panel, but it was still there. I also left a note for myself behind a painting. It says, "You made it, Sister Smith! You can do it!"
I'm passing the time by writing notes to my little brothers and leaving them behind all the paintings. I thought I'd be super bored here. It's like the time I had an internship where I learned stuff over the summer and then a class where I learned the same stuff in the fall. "How would you work with a client in this situation?" "Well, when I actually did work with a client in this situation." "How would you teach this principle?" "Well, when I actually did teach this principle." But it ended up being a party! Most of that is due to the people I'm with. Missionaries are trained in small groups called districts and mine is full of awesome people. We chatter, we laugh, we feel the spirit, and do all other things together.
Basically, my goal is to relax and have fun for two weeks. My only worry here is that I'll be too cocky and not feel the spirit enough. I'm positively brimming with confidence. I'm usually the person who doesn't know the ropes in any new situation, but I'm leagues ahead of anyone here. Sometimes that's disheartening. I was barred from a mission, told I wasn't good enough, and now I'm sitting in classes where teachers give us handouts teaching us how to say a prayer. My first day here, they actually surveyed us to screen for anyone who doesn't know how to read. Illiterate people can waltz into the MTC, but I was barred. I hate the twin attitudes of "it's okay to go home early, everyone has struggles" and "stress is normal, it doesn't mean you have to go home early." No one ever extended that attitude to me. I was told that I couldn't go on a mission because I might have stress and go home early. If that attitude applied to everyone, if a high standard of competence was expected of missionaries, being barred from serving wouldn't have hurt anymore than not getting a scholarship. But the bar is so low. I could easily clear it and wasn't allowed to. The thing that hurts the most is hearing other missionaries talk freely about having mental illnesses without fear of being sent home or devalued for it. FailDS Family Services treat me with such a vile and wretched scrutiny and it completely destroyed my life for three years. I fasted on Sunday to be able to finally leave behind the pain I have been forced to endure and finally, finally have a happy mission.
I'm trying so hard to not to focus on the pain of my past and just live on a little happy high. The MTC is set up a lot like the BYU dorms. They have the same food and door locks and vacuums and the cashiers even wear aprons with BYU bookstore embroidered on the front, so I'm very at home and know how things work. I even ran into a guy from my student ward on Thursday and told him to say hi to a friend for me. And then ran into two girls I knew from freshman year. It's weird that my friends and old roommates are just down the street. I have a writing group that meets on campus every Thursday night so it's kind of sad that I can't be part of that. That's the only thing I miss. Everyone is talking about homesickness, but that's it for me.
Horror story: my companion, Sister Keyes, had the wrong date on her mission call. She thought she didn't have to be here until April 3rd. So I showed up solo and got put in a trio and passed the time wondering whether she'd gotten into a car crash on the way to the airport or opted out of a mission. She got a call Wednesday night, threw her life into a suitcase, and had to wake up at two a.m. Thursday to get here. And then I was off with my tri-panions so she was stuck with some other missionaries and spent the whole day sleep-deprived. But once she got some sleep, she turned out to be really cool. She's a hippie who grew up on an island off the coast of Washington, keeps honeybees, has never heard of dryer sheets, and makes me laugh. I love her! I wish we were going to the same place, but she goes to Hawaii. She gets Paradise and I get Zion.
I love the MTC! I wish I could stay longer than two weeks!
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
Tips to avoid mission-centricness:
For those of you who are new on my emails, I do a tip like this every week.
There is a rumor going around, which seems to be completely unfounded, that boys' missions are being shortened. That boys are getting calls that say the length of their call would be announced at the April General Conference. I watched this rumor attach it to a boy in Idaho named Kedric. We talked to him while he was waiting to receive his call but did not watch him open it. A girl who watched him open his call said only that he was going to Denmark. If there had been anything odd about his call, she would have mentioned it, but she didn't. The next day, someone who had secondhand knowledge of Kedric's call told me Kedric's length was going to be announced in conference. I cornered Kedric himself at church that Sunday and found out that yes, he was going for two years.
While emailing in a room full of missionaries the other day, I watched every new missionary who walked in swear that they had a friend back home who'd gotten a call of undetermined length. Finally, someone texted his mom and asked for a picture of this call and she couldn't come up with one.
Everyone's heard this rumor but no one has proof positive. I expect it to be unfounded next week.
One of my roommates here at the MTC said she has a friend who hopes the length is changed because he only wants to serve for six months. I told her, "He can. It's called quitting." She laughed, like quitting isn't an option at all, but it really is. Church culture is sending such mixed messages in regards to quitting. It's supposed to be okay, and yet people aren't supposed to do it. How can it possibly be both?
I took a class called Folklore of the Latter-Day Saints where we talked about mission folklore. There's an archive in the basement of the BYU library where folk stories about disobedient missionaries are compiled. For example, stories where missionaries go on vacation in the middle of their service. My textbook said that these stories are acts of wish fulfillment for missionaries who are just soooooo bogged down by that mission call that was handed to them with no struggle or process whatsoever as soon as they reached the minimum age and bothered to fill out some paper work that they have to invent stories about disobedient missionaries going on vacation to cope with their sad little lives.
Everyone tells stories about missionaries getting an easier lot in life, but no one wants missionaries to make their own lot in life easier by quitting. The logical discrepancy there is huge.
Your tip to avoid mission-centricness this week is to not spread rumors about missions being easier. If you have actual knowledge of missions getting easier, like how I talked about plainclothes missionaries a few weeks back, that's different. But don't spread this shorter call rumor.
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