Week 60: Sincerely Sister Swann
Dear Loved Ones,
This week I started doing something I've never done before: teaching a whole family! I've taught single people, couples, and pieces of families, like a single mother with one daughter, but this week I met an entire family of six-and they're restoration branch! Our beliefs are entirely in sync, except for priesthood and temples and all temple ordinances. They are so close, so much closer than the Church of Christ guy I met with before.
They use the doctrine and covenants, or at least an edition of it.
I am really struggling this week and any nice emails about things other than missions would be much appreciated.
My cousin Max, serving in the Netherlands, wrote last week about how his mission life reminded him of a favorite episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, so I'm going to chime in with a TV connection of my own.
My all time favorite TV show is Once Upon A Time. It kickstarted my love for fairy tales and led into a job where I literally got paid to watch Netflix for a folklore professor. The main character, Emma Swann, was supposed to be a princess. Her parents, Snow White and Prince Charming, lost all memory of her through a curse after she was transported to our world. So instead of living in a fairy tale palace, she grew up in foster care, ran away as a teenager, fell in love with a criminal, and ended up giving birth in jail at age eighteen. Necessity forces her to place her son for adoption and at age 28, when her son tracks her down and the show begins, she's a hardened, cynical bail bondswoman.
Even reuniting with her family as the season goes on can't undo her past. But magic can. Towards the end of series, Emma enters a Wish Realm where the curse was never cast. She lives as Princess Emma, who still managed to fall in love with the same man and have the same child, but everything about her is different. Emma's frenemy Regina, who was not affected by the curse, is mortified to find Emma picking flowers and singing to herself in the woods, tra la la.
To snap Emma back into her old self and into the hero she needs to be, she stages a hostile takeover of the kingdom. But Princess Emma's response is to kneel down on the throne room dais and beg for mercy. And turn over the key to the kingdom. Eventually Emma gets out of the curse and she's absolutely mortified by the weakling she'd become. Her first line of dialogue is "Eww."
I wonder a lot about what kind of missionary I'd be if I'd never been barred from serving. I think it very likely that I would be a fairy princess missionary. I've met lots of those. Very tender and obedient and happy, but not always the best at practical things. I once knew a Sister Princess who sang hymns at Ring doorbells because she thought the homeowners would be charmed by the Spirit instead of weirded out by the singing girl on their porch. Remember several months back when I handed a lady her cremated child's packaged ashes, told some other missionaries that story later that day, and their only response was "Did you find anyone new to teach?" Sister Princess was one of them.
That's Eww to me.
But then, if Princess Emma would probably be ewwed by hardened bail bondswoman Emma Swann. There's good in being both. Princess Emma is definitely happier, but she can't save the kingdom. I can't say I've been changed for the better, but I'm definitely more equipped to meet some people's needs. Like when my companion and I staked out the baptistry with combat knives for Fia's sake. Sister Princess taught Fia once when I was away on exchanges. Now, I've mentioned before that Fia had a HARD life. I can't say much more then that because of Witness protection program stuff, but a lot of it was severe and I would have to process a lot whenever I got out of a lesson with her. I asked my companion what Sister Princess's reaction to learning Fia's survival story had been and she said that her only comment was, "That lesson lasted an hour and a half. I've never had a lesson that long and I never want to again."
My record for time logged at Fia's is four hours.
Now, lest you think Sister Princess is awful, she once felt prompted to street contact an eleven year old child-who then got baptized. I wouldn't feel a promoting like that. I'm just not that kind of person. That eleven year old needed Sister Princess, and Fia needed me.
There's another episode of Once Upon A Time I connect with a lot. It's called The Final Battle, and with a title like that, I expected the usual clashing swords and smoking magic situations Emma usually gets herself into. But the battlefield is a psychologist's office.
At the time that episode aired, my family was trying to convince me to go on mental illness medication as a ploy to get a mission call. They thought that if I was submissive, agreed with them that I was mentally unstable, and took extreme measures to correct it, that they'd let me go. But I knew that:
1. I didn't have anything beyond mild OCD, so medication was overkill.
2. Any medication could have side effects that would be hard to live with.
3. Rather than enabling me to serve, me being on medication could easily be twisted around to sound like another reason I shouldn't serve.
So I had to hold my own for a long time. It was putting strain on my relationship with my parents, who do love me and wanted me to be happy, but they were advising me to do something that would hurt me.
I had just about given in. I was looking into psychiatrists. But then that episode aired, and Emma's final battle echoed mine. She's told that her memories of being a hero and living in a world of magic are delusion and asked to burn the storybook that holds the tales of everyone in her fairy tale town. That's the test, to see if she can deny the hero inside her.
My road wasn't easy. I would have been a different missionary if I had gone at age nineteen. Someone who fit within the mission system, tested boundaries a lot less, and didn't get so paranoid. But what I am now is what I'm going to be, and I'm going to serve in my OWN way.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
This week I started doing something I've never done before: teaching a whole family! I've taught single people, couples, and pieces of families, like a single mother with one daughter, but this week I met an entire family of six-and they're restoration branch! Our beliefs are entirely in sync, except for priesthood and temples and all temple ordinances. They are so close, so much closer than the Church of Christ guy I met with before.
They use the doctrine and covenants, or at least an edition of it.
I am really struggling this week and any nice emails about things other than missions would be much appreciated.
My cousin Max, serving in the Netherlands, wrote last week about how his mission life reminded him of a favorite episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, so I'm going to chime in with a TV connection of my own.
My all time favorite TV show is Once Upon A Time. It kickstarted my love for fairy tales and led into a job where I literally got paid to watch Netflix for a folklore professor. The main character, Emma Swann, was supposed to be a princess. Her parents, Snow White and Prince Charming, lost all memory of her through a curse after she was transported to our world. So instead of living in a fairy tale palace, she grew up in foster care, ran away as a teenager, fell in love with a criminal, and ended up giving birth in jail at age eighteen. Necessity forces her to place her son for adoption and at age 28, when her son tracks her down and the show begins, she's a hardened, cynical bail bondswoman.
Even reuniting with her family as the season goes on can't undo her past. But magic can. Towards the end of series, Emma enters a Wish Realm where the curse was never cast. She lives as Princess Emma, who still managed to fall in love with the same man and have the same child, but everything about her is different. Emma's frenemy Regina, who was not affected by the curse, is mortified to find Emma picking flowers and singing to herself in the woods, tra la la.
To snap Emma back into her old self and into the hero she needs to be, she stages a hostile takeover of the kingdom. But Princess Emma's response is to kneel down on the throne room dais and beg for mercy. And turn over the key to the kingdom. Eventually Emma gets out of the curse and she's absolutely mortified by the weakling she'd become. Her first line of dialogue is "Eww."
I wonder a lot about what kind of missionary I'd be if I'd never been barred from serving. I think it very likely that I would be a fairy princess missionary. I've met lots of those. Very tender and obedient and happy, but not always the best at practical things. I once knew a Sister Princess who sang hymns at Ring doorbells because she thought the homeowners would be charmed by the Spirit instead of weirded out by the singing girl on their porch. Remember several months back when I handed a lady her cremated child's packaged ashes, told some other missionaries that story later that day, and their only response was "Did you find anyone new to teach?" Sister Princess was one of them.
That's Eww to me.
But then, if Princess Emma would probably be ewwed by hardened bail bondswoman Emma Swann. There's good in being both. Princess Emma is definitely happier, but she can't save the kingdom. I can't say I've been changed for the better, but I'm definitely more equipped to meet some people's needs. Like when my companion and I staked out the baptistry with combat knives for Fia's sake. Sister Princess taught Fia once when I was away on exchanges. Now, I've mentioned before that Fia had a HARD life. I can't say much more then that because of Witness protection program stuff, but a lot of it was severe and I would have to process a lot whenever I got out of a lesson with her. I asked my companion what Sister Princess's reaction to learning Fia's survival story had been and she said that her only comment was, "That lesson lasted an hour and a half. I've never had a lesson that long and I never want to again."
My record for time logged at Fia's is four hours.
Now, lest you think Sister Princess is awful, she once felt prompted to street contact an eleven year old child-who then got baptized. I wouldn't feel a promoting like that. I'm just not that kind of person. That eleven year old needed Sister Princess, and Fia needed me.
There's another episode of Once Upon A Time I connect with a lot. It's called The Final Battle, and with a title like that, I expected the usual clashing swords and smoking magic situations Emma usually gets herself into. But the battlefield is a psychologist's office.
At the time that episode aired, my family was trying to convince me to go on mental illness medication as a ploy to get a mission call. They thought that if I was submissive, agreed with them that I was mentally unstable, and took extreme measures to correct it, that they'd let me go. But I knew that:
1. I didn't have anything beyond mild OCD, so medication was overkill.
2. Any medication could have side effects that would be hard to live with.
3. Rather than enabling me to serve, me being on medication could easily be twisted around to sound like another reason I shouldn't serve.
So I had to hold my own for a long time. It was putting strain on my relationship with my parents, who do love me and wanted me to be happy, but they were advising me to do something that would hurt me.
I had just about given in. I was looking into psychiatrists. But then that episode aired, and Emma's final battle echoed mine. She's told that her memories of being a hero and living in a world of magic are delusion and asked to burn the storybook that holds the tales of everyone in her fairy tale town. That's the test, to see if she can deny the hero inside her.
My road wasn't easy. I would have been a different missionary if I had gone at age nineteen. Someone who fit within the mission system, tested boundaries a lot less, and didn't get so paranoid. But what I am now is what I'm going to be, and I'm going to serve in my OWN way.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
Comments
Post a Comment