Week 49: Temples and Timing
Dear Loved Ones,
This week I did something I've wanted to for a long time: I taught a restoration branch person! Before I moved to Independence, I thought the RLDS church became the Community of Christ, but that's not really what happened. That's like saying Henry VIII's Catholics all became Anglicans. In 1984, RLDS women were given the priesthood (though they still don't speak or pray in church, so I'm not sure of the function of that) and people who didn't like that formed splinters groups. They all have names like Church of Jesus Christ Outreach Restoration Branch, Church of Jesus Christ New Jerusalem Restoration Branch, Church of Jesus Christ Living Hope Restoration Branch, Mount Zion Restoration Branch, etc. I don't think there's any central prophet or leader. It's just every pastor for himself. The woman we met with this week goes to the Outreach branch. She was very nice and has a love for the Book of Mormon and a genealogy sheet mapping out Joseph Smith's descendency. Whenever people call her church's summer program vacation Bible school, she corrects it to vacation church school because the Bible isn't all the scripture they have. She is content in her own church, but in the past, she's attended ours whenever she moved around and couldn't find a restoration branch one nearby. We probably won't teach her much, but it was a nice visit.
We have so much in common. Members of our church think Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon are central to our validity, but they're really not. You can form as many churches out of the Book of Mormon as you can the Bible. What sets us apart from the churches of the world is our temples.
I got my temple recommend almost two Decembers ago after moving around to five different bishops in twelve months. One bishop (the one who had my roommate stop taking the sacrament after she was sexually assaulted) pressed me on whether or not I had a mental illness. I'd played my cards close to my chest and he didn't know I'd ever been barred from serving a mission. He told me that he didn't want people with mental illnesses to get endowed and then transgress their covenants.
I can't tell you how much it hurts to be marginalized from something so central to our earthly truth and celestial exaltation. Please, don't look too hardly on people who feel that they have to leave or stop attending church. It is incredibly painful to believe something is true but feel so sad as you live it. The temple still hasn't quite settled into my new normal yet. I feel a sense of "finally" every time they let me in. It still hurts, writing about it.
I had the opportunity to attend the temple with all the other missionaries this week and my recommend was expiring, so I got an interview. A quick and painless interview where I never worried I was at risk or being sent home from my mission or having my recommend taken away. This means a lot to me. I'm going to be a temple worker when I'm done with my mission.
I'm trying to read through the Doctrine and Covenants by the end of the year and I got to section 101, which deals with the Saints getting expelled from Jackson County. In tours, I tell people how Joseph's revelations specified that Zion was not to be built up in haste and only certain people who had been called were supposed to move to Independence. But people were so excited for Zion and tantalized by the possibility of the Second Coming that they moved here without permission. We soon overran the city (1,200 people moving in over the course of two years in a place with a total population of 3,000) and that overpopulation contributed to us getting kicked out of here.
These were good people, most of them. People who wanted to wait on Christ. But they weren't supposed to be here yet.
In section 101:2-3, it says, "I, the Lord, have suffered the affliction to come upon them, wherewith they have been afflicted, in consequence of their transgressions; Yet I will own them, and they shall be mine in that day when I shall come to make up my jewels."
Some people were guilty of "jarrings, and contentions, and envyings, and strifes, and lustful and covetous desires," but some people were just transgressors, not sinners. Transgression is doing something you weren't supposed to do, like Eve eating the forbidden fruit. She didn't sin, she just wasn't supposed to do that. And come to think of it, Eve and Adam were kicked out of Jackson County as well. The transgression of so many people here was simply that they wanted to be in the right place at the wrong time. Independence wasn't ready to accommodate that many people. Their persecution, like mine, was the natural result of wanting to be in the right place at the wrong time.
There was no fault in wanting to live here, or in me wanting to serve a mission. Please don't think me bitter. I'm very happy here. I love Independence, the Christmas-decorated visitors' center, the camaraderie I have with all the other sisters (we pulled four mattresses together to make a mega-bed and have plans for an eight person slumber party next week). I love serving in Zion and I hope I get to stay here for Christmas! Other sisters deal with homesickenss around Christmas, but I very much wanted to be gone the last three years and now I finally am. These last few weeks have been some of the happiest of my life.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
This week I did something I've wanted to for a long time: I taught a restoration branch person! Before I moved to Independence, I thought the RLDS church became the Community of Christ, but that's not really what happened. That's like saying Henry VIII's Catholics all became Anglicans. In 1984, RLDS women were given the priesthood (though they still don't speak or pray in church, so I'm not sure of the function of that) and people who didn't like that formed splinters groups. They all have names like Church of Jesus Christ Outreach Restoration Branch, Church of Jesus Christ New Jerusalem Restoration Branch, Church of Jesus Christ Living Hope Restoration Branch, Mount Zion Restoration Branch, etc. I don't think there's any central prophet or leader. It's just every pastor for himself. The woman we met with this week goes to the Outreach branch. She was very nice and has a love for the Book of Mormon and a genealogy sheet mapping out Joseph Smith's descendency. Whenever people call her church's summer program vacation Bible school, she corrects it to vacation church school because the Bible isn't all the scripture they have. She is content in her own church, but in the past, she's attended ours whenever she moved around and couldn't find a restoration branch one nearby. We probably won't teach her much, but it was a nice visit.
We have so much in common. Members of our church think Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon are central to our validity, but they're really not. You can form as many churches out of the Book of Mormon as you can the Bible. What sets us apart from the churches of the world is our temples.
I got my temple recommend almost two Decembers ago after moving around to five different bishops in twelve months. One bishop (the one who had my roommate stop taking the sacrament after she was sexually assaulted) pressed me on whether or not I had a mental illness. I'd played my cards close to my chest and he didn't know I'd ever been barred from serving a mission. He told me that he didn't want people with mental illnesses to get endowed and then transgress their covenants.
I can't tell you how much it hurts to be marginalized from something so central to our earthly truth and celestial exaltation. Please, don't look too hardly on people who feel that they have to leave or stop attending church. It is incredibly painful to believe something is true but feel so sad as you live it. The temple still hasn't quite settled into my new normal yet. I feel a sense of "finally" every time they let me in. It still hurts, writing about it.
I had the opportunity to attend the temple with all the other missionaries this week and my recommend was expiring, so I got an interview. A quick and painless interview where I never worried I was at risk or being sent home from my mission or having my recommend taken away. This means a lot to me. I'm going to be a temple worker when I'm done with my mission.
I'm trying to read through the Doctrine and Covenants by the end of the year and I got to section 101, which deals with the Saints getting expelled from Jackson County. In tours, I tell people how Joseph's revelations specified that Zion was not to be built up in haste and only certain people who had been called were supposed to move to Independence. But people were so excited for Zion and tantalized by the possibility of the Second Coming that they moved here without permission. We soon overran the city (1,200 people moving in over the course of two years in a place with a total population of 3,000) and that overpopulation contributed to us getting kicked out of here.
These were good people, most of them. People who wanted to wait on Christ. But they weren't supposed to be here yet.
In section 101:2-3, it says, "I, the Lord, have suffered the affliction to come upon them, wherewith they have been afflicted, in consequence of their transgressions; Yet I will own them, and they shall be mine in that day when I shall come to make up my jewels."
Some people were guilty of "jarrings, and contentions, and envyings, and strifes, and lustful and covetous desires," but some people were just transgressors, not sinners. Transgression is doing something you weren't supposed to do, like Eve eating the forbidden fruit. She didn't sin, she just wasn't supposed to do that. And come to think of it, Eve and Adam were kicked out of Jackson County as well. The transgression of so many people here was simply that they wanted to be in the right place at the wrong time. Independence wasn't ready to accommodate that many people. Their persecution, like mine, was the natural result of wanting to be in the right place at the wrong time.
There was no fault in wanting to live here, or in me wanting to serve a mission. Please don't think me bitter. I'm very happy here. I love Independence, the Christmas-decorated visitors' center, the camaraderie I have with all the other sisters (we pulled four mattresses together to make a mega-bed and have plans for an eight person slumber party next week). I love serving in Zion and I hope I get to stay here for Christmas! Other sisters deal with homesickenss around Christmas, but I very much wanted to be gone the last three years and now I finally am. These last few weeks have been some of the happiest of my life.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
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