Week 15: Toto, I'm Not in the MTC Anymore
Dear Loved Ones,
After all my hype about being called to Missouri, they stuck me in Kansas.
I'm not disappointed about not being in Missouri yet because I know I'll get there. In Doctrine and Covenants Section 52:10, God told Joseph Smith to organize missionaries to go to a conference in Missouri and to have them preach en route. "Let them go two by two, and thus let them preach by the way in every congregation." Kansas is just en route to Missouri. Also, Hyrum Smith was called to go to Missouri by way of Michigan and he was in Ohio at the time, so poor him. That's not geographically logical at all.
I thought Kansas would be flat and gray, but there are low hills, pretty green grass, blossom trees, and lovely little ponds in our apartment complex and by the park, so I have things to look at. I crossed paths with a drug dealer yesterday, and a lot of people have hard pasts, but other than that, everything is great. People here are awesome. This eleven year old girl is getting baptized, hopefully next week, and yesterday, a twelve year old called us up on her own volition, offering to come to lessons with us and to organize a party to get to know the eleven year old better.
My mission president and his wife met us at the airport. In Boise, they just took us to the mission office and launched into an orientation. But here, our first stop was Liberty Jail. This was my second time seeing it. The night I got barred from serving a mission, I ran to the nearest building and went up to the seventh floor, where I knew I'd be alone. I did a lot of things up there. I cried, I screamed, I prayed, and then I took out my phone and filled out an application for the Nauvoo Summer Study program. It's a BYU travel study program that goes through all the church history sites, including Liberty Jail. The prophet Joseph Smith was imprisoned there for four and a half months on trumped up charges. He got thrown in jail a lot, but this is one of only two jails that the church operates as a museum now. The other one is Carthage, which is where he was assassinated.
Joseph managed to run the Church from jail by letter pretty well and received many revelations from God there. The one people quote the most came when Joseph was crying out to God about his trials. God, in turn, told him that his afflictions would be "but a small moment." That's one of the stock quotes members trot out when they're trying, full-heartedly or lamely, to comfort someone through a trial.
When I came to Liberty in early August of 2016, I had been held back from serving a mission for about a week shy of six months. I had initially hoped to be allowed to go on a mission that fall, but at that point I realized I was going to be stuck for at least another semester. After six months of people quoting Liberty Jail at me with no end in sight, I was thoroughly sick of it. I was not excited to go see Liberty Jail back then. Liberty Jail was terrible, yes, but I wouldn't say it was the worst jail he ever got sent to (considering he died in one), and he got out after four and a half months. A lot of things last longer than four and a half months.
People talk about Liberty Jail like it's the worst trial Joseph ever went through, but this man lost four of his first five children. Those children weren't just lost for four and a half months. The leg he had operated on without anesthesia when he was seven years old and the tooth that chipped when the tar-and-feather mob tried to cram acid down his throat didn't fix themselves after four and a half months either. He had a lot of trials that were not "small moments" in the scheme of his life (though I guess everything's small moments in the scheme of eternity). I wish people wouldn't trot out that verse so much when they're talking to people with long or permanent trials like addictions, chronic pain, or death of a loved one.
Tracting here is so much more productive than Idaho. In Idaho, everyone knows full well what we are. I keep running into Hispanic people at the door, and I'm managing to speak to them well enough. I actually haven't taken a Spanish class in about a year now because I figured whatever I learned, I'd forget while I'm on a mission if I wasn't given a mission assignment to a Spanish speaking country, and then I'd be retaking a harder class instead of an easier one. I studied Spanish from time to time in Idaho but never had cause to use it.
Then the day I show up in Kansas, everyone I meet speaks Spanish. Like fifteen people in one day. My companion speaks zero Spanish, so I became the de facto conversation leader even though she's supposed to be the one showing me what to do. So, I'm useful.
I'm grateful to have a good companion, a car, and an area where there's a lot of work to be done. Any I'm so, so grateful to finally be on my real mission.
Weekly tip: After I was barred from a mission the second time around, I scrambled to find housing and moved into a rundown apartment with five strangers a few days before school started. I was a visiting teaching supervisor and the only people who supervised were those roommates. Two of them, who I'll code-name Molly and Crystal, were paired together for visiting teaching. They never did their visiting teaching. Ever. I asked Crystal why and she said she and Molly didn't get along, so she wasn't willing to go visiting teaching with her. I got permission to redo assignments so Molly was paired with me instead. I also switched beds with Crystal so she and Molly didn't have to share a room anymore. Even after the changes I'd made for them, Crystal never once did her visiting teaching and Molly only went once when I dragged her along.
Crystal had served a mission. She bragged to me that she'd learned so much about getting along with people from having companions because they had to live and work together no matter the circumstances.
Yeah right, Crystal.
I told Crystal I'd had 33 roommates at that point and thought I'd learned quite a bit more about "dealing with people," but she insisted that missionary companionships were the way to go.
Crystal was mission-centric and only saw fit to make effort to work and live with people while she was a missionary, not afterward. She never did notice the discrepancy there.
Your tip to avoid mission-centricness this week is to not fetishize the "people skills" that supposedly come from a mission. Missions are an isolated stage of life, and most people I've known don't apply any virtues they might have learned there afterward.
After all my hype about being called to Missouri, they stuck me in Kansas.
I'm not disappointed about not being in Missouri yet because I know I'll get there. In Doctrine and Covenants Section 52:10, God told Joseph Smith to organize missionaries to go to a conference in Missouri and to have them preach en route. "Let them go two by two, and thus let them preach by the way in every congregation." Kansas is just en route to Missouri. Also, Hyrum Smith was called to go to Missouri by way of Michigan and he was in Ohio at the time, so poor him. That's not geographically logical at all.
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| Arial View of Kansas |
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| Community of Christ's Shell Temple |
Joseph managed to run the Church from jail by letter pretty well and received many revelations from God there. The one people quote the most came when Joseph was crying out to God about his trials. God, in turn, told him that his afflictions would be "but a small moment." That's one of the stock quotes members trot out when they're trying, full-heartedly or lamely, to comfort someone through a trial.
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| Liberty Jail |
People talk about Liberty Jail like it's the worst trial Joseph ever went through, but this man lost four of his first five children. Those children weren't just lost for four and a half months. The leg he had operated on without anesthesia when he was seven years old and the tooth that chipped when the tar-and-feather mob tried to cram acid down his throat didn't fix themselves after four and a half months either. He had a lot of trials that were not "small moments" in the scheme of his life (though I guess everything's small moments in the scheme of eternity). I wish people wouldn't trot out that verse so much when they're talking to people with long or permanent trials like addictions, chronic pain, or death of a loved one.
Tracting here is so much more productive than Idaho. In Idaho, everyone knows full well what we are. I keep running into Hispanic people at the door, and I'm managing to speak to them well enough. I actually haven't taken a Spanish class in about a year now because I figured whatever I learned, I'd forget while I'm on a mission if I wasn't given a mission assignment to a Spanish speaking country, and then I'd be retaking a harder class instead of an easier one. I studied Spanish from time to time in Idaho but never had cause to use it.
Then the day I show up in Kansas, everyone I meet speaks Spanish. Like fifteen people in one day. My companion speaks zero Spanish, so I became the de facto conversation leader even though she's supposed to be the one showing me what to do. So, I'm useful.
I'm grateful to have a good companion, a car, and an area where there's a lot of work to be done. Any I'm so, so grateful to finally be on my real mission.
Weekly tip: After I was barred from a mission the second time around, I scrambled to find housing and moved into a rundown apartment with five strangers a few days before school started. I was a visiting teaching supervisor and the only people who supervised were those roommates. Two of them, who I'll code-name Molly and Crystal, were paired together for visiting teaching. They never did their visiting teaching. Ever. I asked Crystal why and she said she and Molly didn't get along, so she wasn't willing to go visiting teaching with her. I got permission to redo assignments so Molly was paired with me instead. I also switched beds with Crystal so she and Molly didn't have to share a room anymore. Even after the changes I'd made for them, Crystal never once did her visiting teaching and Molly only went once when I dragged her along.
Crystal had served a mission. She bragged to me that she'd learned so much about getting along with people from having companions because they had to live and work together no matter the circumstances.
Yeah right, Crystal.
I told Crystal I'd had 33 roommates at that point and thought I'd learned quite a bit more about "dealing with people," but she insisted that missionary companionships were the way to go.
Crystal was mission-centric and only saw fit to make effort to work and live with people while she was a missionary, not afterward. She never did notice the discrepancy there.
Your tip to avoid mission-centricness this week is to not fetishize the "people skills" that supposedly come from a mission. Missions are an isolated stage of life, and most people I've known don't apply any virtues they might have learned there afterward.
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