Week 28: To Those Who Wait
Dear Loved Ones,
Last week, my brother and I were talking about movies. I asked him which ones I ought to see later and he told me he didn't want to tell me if it made me trunky (ready to be done). I told him, "Girls have to stay committed to their missions for a year and a half. Boys have to stay committed for two years. Mission presidents have to stay committed for three years. I've had to stay committed for four and a half years."
I'm an odd mix of tired and sincere.
I was rejected on February 10, 2016 and my mission will conclude June of 2020. By fall of 2017, eighteen months after this all began, when I had just been rejected a second time and I should have been in the final months of my mission, I was very weary. Weary of commitment without reward. I no longer wanted to start a mission, I wanted to be home from a mission. Home with sweet memories of people I'd served and a place I'd loved, able to move on. Able to plan out my life instead of moving in with strangers two days before school starts because housing registration starts in February and I didn't know I was rejected until August.
I'm told sometimes that my emails are bitter, but this is the only life I've got. I don't have a different life story hiding behind this one. I'm still very weary.
I like hearing stories about faithful black people who joined and remained in the church without being allowed to receive all its blessings. I can relate to them. I don't know the sting of racism, but I know what it's like to sit through church lessons on missions and temples while being denied entrance to them. I figured out a while back that one of the few websites my phone filter doesn't block is the BYU site. This means I can listen to BYU speeches. I listened to one on Thursday called African Converts Without Baptism by E. Dale Lebaron, the first mission president in Africa. Throughout the mid twentieth century, thousands of Africans heard of the church one way or another and wrote to church headquarters requesting church reading materials. The church received more requests from Nigeria and Ghana than the rest of the world combined. Some of the requests arrived on stationery with "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Nigeria Branch" written across the top.
But it wasn't enough that they called themselves by the church's name, that they set up church bookstores filled with their requested literature, printed stationery, and built chapels, or that their deceased family visited to tell them everything from the name of the church to the lyrics of Come, Come Ye Saints. The church sent a man to Africa to gauge whether these unbaptized converts were "sincere". One old man, who attended the first church meeting presided over by a real church representative, said he was old and sick and had to walk thirty-two miles there and back to hear this man speak. He said, "I am sincere or I would not be here."
Awhile back, I was trying to figure out whether I sincerely believed in the church after all that had been done to me. I was watching general conference and most of the talks fell flat, so I got into the temple website and started researching the temples around the world. Then it him me: I love temples. If I love them so much, of course I'm all in. Of course I'm staying in the church. If I were not sincere I would not be here.
Here are some quick sincerity stats: By the time the priesthood was made available to black men, 16,000 had joined in practice without a single missionary or church leader setting foot on the continent. On the first day missionaries arrived in West Africa, 149 people were baptized in a single day. 1,700 were baptized in the first year. It could've been 16,000, but they had to slow the baptismal rate so membership wouldn't outpace leadership. Those are high, fancy numbers, and when I first heard this talk, I marveled at the tremendous faith of those thousands who stayed sincere despite years of waiting with no end in sight.
But what of those who were too weary to be sincere? I wonder how many we lost along the way. Props to the people who remained sincere for fourteen years without reward, but what about the people who could only remain faithful for eight until being faithful took its toll? Who would've been faithful, but they had no scriptures in their language to answer questions of the soul. Who would've been faithful, but they had no systematic method of visiting teaching or ministering where fellow believers could meet their needs. Who would've been faithful, but there was no leadership to answer questions about confusing or difficult doctrinal matters. Who would've been faithful, but persecution broke them. Maybe we could've had thousands more. Even with a testimony of the truth of the gospel, it is hard to be a sincere believer during the trial of more than one year or two.
To the mother who tried so hard to be devout until one son came out as gay and the other as transgender, to the woman who feels marginalized because of her mental illness, to the woman who feels on the fringe of the church because of her sociopolitical beliefs, to the Idaho missionary who is wearily approaching the end of his service, and especially to my friend who developed PTSD because of brutal treatment during his mission and is now taking a step back from the church, please, look to me as an example of someone who managed to stay sincere. I do not fault you for your struggles because I have wept the same tears you've wept. I am crying as I write this as I think of all you've gone through. You are the reason I write honest emails instead of dry weekly reviews interspersed with cute scriptures. The narratives of those who find sincerity easy and of those who choose to leave are already well known to you. I want to tell stories as someone who chose to remain in the church even through times when doubts gratated on my brain and I was not sincere. You do not need to pressure yourself to feel or act sincere right now. You just need to wait.
My end came after three years of trial. For the African saints, it came after thirty years. I don't know when your payoff is coming, but it. Will. Come. Whether you currently can identify as sincere or not.
I usually end emails with "Sincerely Sister Smith," but that seems arrogant this week, so I am:
Yours,
Erica
Last week, my brother and I were talking about movies. I asked him which ones I ought to see later and he told me he didn't want to tell me if it made me trunky (ready to be done). I told him, "Girls have to stay committed to their missions for a year and a half. Boys have to stay committed for two years. Mission presidents have to stay committed for three years. I've had to stay committed for four and a half years."
I'm an odd mix of tired and sincere.
I was rejected on February 10, 2016 and my mission will conclude June of 2020. By fall of 2017, eighteen months after this all began, when I had just been rejected a second time and I should have been in the final months of my mission, I was very weary. Weary of commitment without reward. I no longer wanted to start a mission, I wanted to be home from a mission. Home with sweet memories of people I'd served and a place I'd loved, able to move on. Able to plan out my life instead of moving in with strangers two days before school starts because housing registration starts in February and I didn't know I was rejected until August.
I'm told sometimes that my emails are bitter, but this is the only life I've got. I don't have a different life story hiding behind this one. I'm still very weary.
I like hearing stories about faithful black people who joined and remained in the church without being allowed to receive all its blessings. I can relate to them. I don't know the sting of racism, but I know what it's like to sit through church lessons on missions and temples while being denied entrance to them. I figured out a while back that one of the few websites my phone filter doesn't block is the BYU site. This means I can listen to BYU speeches. I listened to one on Thursday called African Converts Without Baptism by E. Dale Lebaron, the first mission president in Africa. Throughout the mid twentieth century, thousands of Africans heard of the church one way or another and wrote to church headquarters requesting church reading materials. The church received more requests from Nigeria and Ghana than the rest of the world combined. Some of the requests arrived on stationery with "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Nigeria Branch" written across the top.
But it wasn't enough that they called themselves by the church's name, that they set up church bookstores filled with their requested literature, printed stationery, and built chapels, or that their deceased family visited to tell them everything from the name of the church to the lyrics of Come, Come Ye Saints. The church sent a man to Africa to gauge whether these unbaptized converts were "sincere". One old man, who attended the first church meeting presided over by a real church representative, said he was old and sick and had to walk thirty-two miles there and back to hear this man speak. He said, "I am sincere or I would not be here."
Awhile back, I was trying to figure out whether I sincerely believed in the church after all that had been done to me. I was watching general conference and most of the talks fell flat, so I got into the temple website and started researching the temples around the world. Then it him me: I love temples. If I love them so much, of course I'm all in. Of course I'm staying in the church. If I were not sincere I would not be here.
Here are some quick sincerity stats: By the time the priesthood was made available to black men, 16,000 had joined in practice without a single missionary or church leader setting foot on the continent. On the first day missionaries arrived in West Africa, 149 people were baptized in a single day. 1,700 were baptized in the first year. It could've been 16,000, but they had to slow the baptismal rate so membership wouldn't outpace leadership. Those are high, fancy numbers, and when I first heard this talk, I marveled at the tremendous faith of those thousands who stayed sincere despite years of waiting with no end in sight.
But what of those who were too weary to be sincere? I wonder how many we lost along the way. Props to the people who remained sincere for fourteen years without reward, but what about the people who could only remain faithful for eight until being faithful took its toll? Who would've been faithful, but they had no scriptures in their language to answer questions of the soul. Who would've been faithful, but they had no systematic method of visiting teaching or ministering where fellow believers could meet their needs. Who would've been faithful, but there was no leadership to answer questions about confusing or difficult doctrinal matters. Who would've been faithful, but persecution broke them. Maybe we could've had thousands more. Even with a testimony of the truth of the gospel, it is hard to be a sincere believer during the trial of more than one year or two.
To the mother who tried so hard to be devout until one son came out as gay and the other as transgender, to the woman who feels marginalized because of her mental illness, to the woman who feels on the fringe of the church because of her sociopolitical beliefs, to the Idaho missionary who is wearily approaching the end of his service, and especially to my friend who developed PTSD because of brutal treatment during his mission and is now taking a step back from the church, please, look to me as an example of someone who managed to stay sincere. I do not fault you for your struggles because I have wept the same tears you've wept. I am crying as I write this as I think of all you've gone through. You are the reason I write honest emails instead of dry weekly reviews interspersed with cute scriptures. The narratives of those who find sincerity easy and of those who choose to leave are already well known to you. I want to tell stories as someone who chose to remain in the church even through times when doubts gratated on my brain and I was not sincere. You do not need to pressure yourself to feel or act sincere right now. You just need to wait.
My end came after three years of trial. For the African saints, it came after thirty years. I don't know when your payoff is coming, but it. Will. Come. Whether you currently can identify as sincere or not.
I usually end emails with "Sincerely Sister Smith," but that seems arrogant this week, so I am:
Yours,
Erica
Comments
Post a Comment