Week 23: One Year to Go
Dear Loved Ones,
As of today, I officially have one year left in my mission! I love milestones.
I would like to start off this email by sharing something my folklore professor boss wrote to me in response to my email last week:
Of course you can learn and grow on your mission. I would hope that I have taught you to think of education and intelligence more broadly than what you can read in books and find on google.
If I had not been able to learn and grow from people who couldn’t read and write during my time in Guatemala, I would never have studied folklore when I returned home. Enjoy this time you have to ponder deeply and think for yourself about mighty truths related to the gospel and to people. I hope you can think of learning and growing and gaining knowledge as a big loop between book learning and experience learning. I believe this is why the scriptures speak about learning in your heart and mind.
You know also that there isn’t an fixed age-range for learning and growing; it can, and should, happen all through your life. Please don’t narrow your vision even as you must calibrate your expectations.
My mother sent me a similar email about the importance of things she learned on her mission, and it struck me too, but sometimes you just need a professor to tell you when you're learning. Thank you, Dr. Rudy.
Now, here's how my week went.
Last Sunday, a woman I'll codename Rosie got up in testimony meeting and bore a beautiful testimony about how she loves the church and loves to read the Book of Mormon every day when she gets home from her special needs day program. I had seen this woman in passing a few times but never spoken to her. As my companion and I were exiting the chapel, a woman pulled us aside and told us Rosie has a desire to be baptized.
I was ecstatic. Rosie has Down's syndrome and Down's syndrome people have a special place in my heart. In high school, I volunteered with a special needs program where I met my friend Vanessa, who I stayed in touch with after the program ended. She came to my farewell. She believed in me and my capacity to serve a mission. The first time I participated in a March for Life, she asked me to carry a sign that mentioned Down's syndrome (babies are commonly aborted for it), so I marched on the Capitol with a Disabled Baby Lives Matter sign. I was stoked to help someone with Down's syndrome get baptized
.
Then we contacted her guardians. Though members, they are vehemently opposed to Rosie being baptized because she has Down's syndrome. I won't share everything they said to me, but they are very opposed.
On Wednesday, we dropped by the church for our Come Follow Me group. The bishop was there and I asked him about some stuff relating to Luvlee's records (she moved to New Mexico immediately following her baptism). He answered my question, paused, and said, "have you been working with Rosie?"
That question terrified me. I learned to live in fear of bishops while I was barred from serving. I faced a number of them who opposed me going on a mission and receiving my temple endowment. I won't talk about all of them, but here my five from the year 2017:
1. Asked a bishop to let me go to the temple. I told him I had taken temple prep three times, read over the Pearl of Great Price and Genesis to learn about covenants, researched temple history, and planned to visit ten temples on the Wasatch Front before I got my endowment. He told me, "Erica, you are more prepared than any other young person I've interviewed, but I'm not going to let you go to the temple." He was operating out of an outdated bishopric manual that said non-missionaries were justified in being denied the blessings of the temple unless they get married.
2. I tried my Provo YSA bishop, who operated out of the same manual.
3. I moved home from the summer and tried a hometown YSA. I went after a mission instead of my endowment with him. He probably would have given me that. My friend Camille was endowed through that ward. I told him I wanted to go on a mission and he wouldn't let me even fill out the paperwork without LDS Family Services saying they believed in me.
4. Moved to Provo for summer term on 48 hours' notice to get away from my dead-end summer life and that YSA ward while waiting to hear back on the LDSFS verdict. I never actually interacted with this bishop.
3. Ten minutes before I moved out of my summer term apartment, I got a text from Bishop Three telling me I was barred from serving. When I called him up, he yelled at me a little and told me to give up and do a service mission. He wouldn't even tell me why they barred me. I had to have my parents call him.
5. I hadn't registered for fall classes or housing because I'd planned on being on a mission. I had a job at Seagull Book in Sandy that I planned on working while I waited on my call. Selling mission products doesn't hurt when you think you're going. But I ended up moving in with strangers in Provo on a few days' notice and a cobbled together class schedule. One of my new roommates had been sexually assaulted shortly before I moved in with her and the bishop barred her from taking the sacrament. Later that semester, she was raped. He told her she had provoked her attacker by dressing immodestly, though she had actually been in a long shirt and jeans at the time. I saw enough of the way he treated her to know he wouldn't look kindly on me if I told him I had been barred from serving. So I just went after my endowment.
He didn't mention the outdated manual. He just refused me straight-up. While fishing for reasons to ban me from the temple, he told me that people with mental illnesses ought not to go to the temple because they'd just end up transgressing and breaking their covenants later. When I held my ground, he passed the buck to the stake president, thinking he would also refuse me.
Instead, the stake president welcomed me into his office and spoke at length of the Savior's love for me. He was the one priesthood leader I spoke with that year who I know was in tune with the Spirit. I looked back on the memory of that stake president when I needed to remind myself why I had not left the church.
I'm sharing these stories not because I want to talk about my life, but because I know there are people on this mailing list who are struggling within the church. I went to show you that if I can not only remain in the church but go on a mission and propagate it, you can stay as well.
Even my good interview with the stake president didn't sway Bishop Five. I could not get my endowment while in that ward. So I needed to move yet again. My friend Alyssa saved me by buying my apartment contract. Alyssa, thank you so much for doing me a favor I couldn't fully explain at the time. I'm tearing up in gratitude as I write this. The fees associated with moving were a small price to pay for the temple.
I didn't move into a new apartment quite yet, placing my records into a limbo so they could land in Bishop One's ward. Twelve months had passed. My dad, a bishopric counselor, had found the policy change in March, and in December he finally was able to get the original bishop to interview me. This bishop is the same one who ultimately let me go on a mission. I received my endowment January 3, 2018. On January 3, 2019, I woke up to my first day in Idaho.
And now I'm in Kansas, and a bishop was asking me if I had done anything with Rosie.
I froze. I thought I was in trouble for wanting to help her be baptized. I have had very few good experiences with bishops and fully expected him to be angry at me. But it turns out that this bishop is actually on Rosie's side and said he'd talk with her guardians.
I don't want to see anyone else denied ordinances because of a mental illness. My friend Vanessa was baptized and has a patriarchal blessing and a limited use temple recommend. I know Rosie could be baptized. But also, I know from sad experience that I cannot sway her guardians and have not attempted to do so. Someone needs to soften their hearts, either the bishop or the Spirit. I pray that she will be baptized in this life. It will haunt me for the rest of my life if she can't be.
Joseph Smith received a revelation in Liberty Jail that "No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned." I am glad to be serving in a ward with a gentle bishop.
In other news, my companion went to Urgent Care last night and we're under house arrest for much of the coming week, so I'm not sure what to do with myself. Guess I'll open the scriptures and learn and grow or something.
Picture: Kansas is the Sunflower State, but I haven't seen one the whole time I've been here and I had to go to Missouri to find this picture.
As of today, I officially have one year left in my mission! I love milestones.
I would like to start off this email by sharing something my folklore professor boss wrote to me in response to my email last week:
Of course you can learn and grow on your mission. I would hope that I have taught you to think of education and intelligence more broadly than what you can read in books and find on google.
If I had not been able to learn and grow from people who couldn’t read and write during my time in Guatemala, I would never have studied folklore when I returned home. Enjoy this time you have to ponder deeply and think for yourself about mighty truths related to the gospel and to people. I hope you can think of learning and growing and gaining knowledge as a big loop between book learning and experience learning. I believe this is why the scriptures speak about learning in your heart and mind.
You know also that there isn’t an fixed age-range for learning and growing; it can, and should, happen all through your life. Please don’t narrow your vision even as you must calibrate your expectations.
My mother sent me a similar email about the importance of things she learned on her mission, and it struck me too, but sometimes you just need a professor to tell you when you're learning. Thank you, Dr. Rudy.
Now, here's how my week went.
Last Sunday, a woman I'll codename Rosie got up in testimony meeting and bore a beautiful testimony about how she loves the church and loves to read the Book of Mormon every day when she gets home from her special needs day program. I had seen this woman in passing a few times but never spoken to her. As my companion and I were exiting the chapel, a woman pulled us aside and told us Rosie has a desire to be baptized.
I was ecstatic. Rosie has Down's syndrome and Down's syndrome people have a special place in my heart. In high school, I volunteered with a special needs program where I met my friend Vanessa, who I stayed in touch with after the program ended. She came to my farewell. She believed in me and my capacity to serve a mission. The first time I participated in a March for Life, she asked me to carry a sign that mentioned Down's syndrome (babies are commonly aborted for it), so I marched on the Capitol with a Disabled Baby Lives Matter sign. I was stoked to help someone with Down's syndrome get baptized
.
Then we contacted her guardians. Though members, they are vehemently opposed to Rosie being baptized because she has Down's syndrome. I won't share everything they said to me, but they are very opposed.
On Wednesday, we dropped by the church for our Come Follow Me group. The bishop was there and I asked him about some stuff relating to Luvlee's records (she moved to New Mexico immediately following her baptism). He answered my question, paused, and said, "have you been working with Rosie?"
That question terrified me. I learned to live in fear of bishops while I was barred from serving. I faced a number of them who opposed me going on a mission and receiving my temple endowment. I won't talk about all of them, but here my five from the year 2017:
1. Asked a bishop to let me go to the temple. I told him I had taken temple prep three times, read over the Pearl of Great Price and Genesis to learn about covenants, researched temple history, and planned to visit ten temples on the Wasatch Front before I got my endowment. He told me, "Erica, you are more prepared than any other young person I've interviewed, but I'm not going to let you go to the temple." He was operating out of an outdated bishopric manual that said non-missionaries were justified in being denied the blessings of the temple unless they get married.
2. I tried my Provo YSA bishop, who operated out of the same manual.
3. I moved home from the summer and tried a hometown YSA. I went after a mission instead of my endowment with him. He probably would have given me that. My friend Camille was endowed through that ward. I told him I wanted to go on a mission and he wouldn't let me even fill out the paperwork without LDS Family Services saying they believed in me.
4. Moved to Provo for summer term on 48 hours' notice to get away from my dead-end summer life and that YSA ward while waiting to hear back on the LDSFS verdict. I never actually interacted with this bishop.
3. Ten minutes before I moved out of my summer term apartment, I got a text from Bishop Three telling me I was barred from serving. When I called him up, he yelled at me a little and told me to give up and do a service mission. He wouldn't even tell me why they barred me. I had to have my parents call him.
5. I hadn't registered for fall classes or housing because I'd planned on being on a mission. I had a job at Seagull Book in Sandy that I planned on working while I waited on my call. Selling mission products doesn't hurt when you think you're going. But I ended up moving in with strangers in Provo on a few days' notice and a cobbled together class schedule. One of my new roommates had been sexually assaulted shortly before I moved in with her and the bishop barred her from taking the sacrament. Later that semester, she was raped. He told her she had provoked her attacker by dressing immodestly, though she had actually been in a long shirt and jeans at the time. I saw enough of the way he treated her to know he wouldn't look kindly on me if I told him I had been barred from serving. So I just went after my endowment.
He didn't mention the outdated manual. He just refused me straight-up. While fishing for reasons to ban me from the temple, he told me that people with mental illnesses ought not to go to the temple because they'd just end up transgressing and breaking their covenants later. When I held my ground, he passed the buck to the stake president, thinking he would also refuse me.
Instead, the stake president welcomed me into his office and spoke at length of the Savior's love for me. He was the one priesthood leader I spoke with that year who I know was in tune with the Spirit. I looked back on the memory of that stake president when I needed to remind myself why I had not left the church.
I'm sharing these stories not because I want to talk about my life, but because I know there are people on this mailing list who are struggling within the church. I went to show you that if I can not only remain in the church but go on a mission and propagate it, you can stay as well.
Even my good interview with the stake president didn't sway Bishop Five. I could not get my endowment while in that ward. So I needed to move yet again. My friend Alyssa saved me by buying my apartment contract. Alyssa, thank you so much for doing me a favor I couldn't fully explain at the time. I'm tearing up in gratitude as I write this. The fees associated with moving were a small price to pay for the temple.
I didn't move into a new apartment quite yet, placing my records into a limbo so they could land in Bishop One's ward. Twelve months had passed. My dad, a bishopric counselor, had found the policy change in March, and in December he finally was able to get the original bishop to interview me. This bishop is the same one who ultimately let me go on a mission. I received my endowment January 3, 2018. On January 3, 2019, I woke up to my first day in Idaho.
And now I'm in Kansas, and a bishop was asking me if I had done anything with Rosie.
I froze. I thought I was in trouble for wanting to help her be baptized. I have had very few good experiences with bishops and fully expected him to be angry at me. But it turns out that this bishop is actually on Rosie's side and said he'd talk with her guardians.
I don't want to see anyone else denied ordinances because of a mental illness. My friend Vanessa was baptized and has a patriarchal blessing and a limited use temple recommend. I know Rosie could be baptized. But also, I know from sad experience that I cannot sway her guardians and have not attempted to do so. Someone needs to soften their hearts, either the bishop or the Spirit. I pray that she will be baptized in this life. It will haunt me for the rest of my life if she can't be.
Joseph Smith received a revelation in Liberty Jail that "No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned." I am glad to be serving in a ward with a gentle bishop.
In other news, my companion went to Urgent Care last night and we're under house arrest for much of the coming week, so I'm not sure what to do with myself. Guess I'll open the scriptures and learn and grow or something.
Picture: Kansas is the Sunflower State, but I haven't seen one the whole time I've been here and I had to go to Missouri to find this picture.
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