Week 64: Stay and Die for BHI
Dear Loved Ones,
This week has changed the way I see food. As early as Monday night, when we were still working around the clock, our meals with members turned into door drop-offs. I was given an enchilada that I realized while biting into it had been made with canned corn and beans. That was so precious to me. Canned foods keep well and a family was willing to sacrifice food they might need soon to give something to us. I feel guilty about all the food I have here, both from members and what I was able to buy on my own, when I know people in Raytown, Independence, and Kansas City are struggling. Little Saydi, my nine year old convert, has a family with a very hand-mouth existence and I keep wishing I could drive over there and drop off a bag. Another couple I taught, Kim and T, are also on my mind. But Grain Valley is better off and I don't think anyone I teach is at risk of going hungry right now.
And then as if that wasn't bad enough, I received word this week that Utah was struck by an earthquake. I knew Magna was the center of it but i couldn't remember where Riverton and Provo were in relation to the fault line. No one from mission leadership announced this, I found out through a member. For all i knew, my family and friends were dead. Grimly, I thought that if my family was dead and the world had the plague and anybody tried to send me home, I'd just camp out here in Jackson County and stake out the Second Coming. I tried calling the mission office but all I got was a stressed secretary saying, "Can you call me back later?"
I later found out why. Most of the mission office staff jumped ship because they're old enough to be at risk for corona, leaving behind a few brave souls to keep us afloat. Like the guy who fixed the telegraph machine as the Titanic was sinking. And our new batch of missionaries were in the airport while the earthquake happened.
That delayed transfers for my departing companion by a day. In the middle of a Skype lesson with our quarantined friend Brooke, we got a call from the APs telling her to be at the mission home with her luggage at 8 am the next day. I asked if I should pack a bag and prepare to spend the night at the mission home, too, while awaiting transfers, but they told me I wouldn't need it.
I figured they had just as little idea of what I was doing with my life as I did and packed anyway.
I dropped my companion at the mission home and got shoved into an emergency trio with sisters Leakehe (my old companion) and De Leon (my friend). That set us off on a madcap day in what I termed the Kaw Valley First Ward-Kaw River, Grain Valley, and Inde 1st. For perspective on the distance this entails, people in Kaw River had no idea where Grain Valley is. Also, Kaw River is Spanish, a language Leakehe and I don't speak.
Adventures of the day included:
-Putting a guy named Todd on date in Inde 1st
-Getting yelled at by a crazy lady in Inde 1st
-Teaching Skype lessons in Grain Valey
-Putting 121 miles on the Grain Valley car (but who cares because quarantine happened the next day and now we have enough miles to drive to Italy).
-All of us trying and failing to fix a TV in Kaw River
-Dinner! In Spanish. A language I don't speak.
It was late by the time we reunited with our companions in Liberty, so Sister Howard and I ended up staying the night in the jailhouse-a house across the street from Liberty Jail. It used to hold four companionships. But that night, it was a boarding house for lost sisters. One of them was a girl named Sister Fox who got sent here after six straight weeks of quarantine in Mongolia. She told us about Genghis Khan and teaching English and everything else I could think to ask her. She really loved it there. But when I asked about the virus in Asia, she said, "No one even knows anyone who knows anyone who's sick."
And then we woke up to the news that we're under quarantine as well. At first it was just a mission thing, but on Tuesday, the entire state of Missouri goes into Italian lockdown for 30 days. We're not even supposed to leave the house to go on walks. It's a step above martial law, but not a far step. My mom lived under martial law for a little while in Iran in the 70's before she got evacuated. I know I can do it if she did, but it's hard, and she had her family and Charlie's Angels to entertain her.
I know we have to play by the rules so America doesn't become Italy, but it's maddening to me that we're stuck inside when we're perfectly healthy and everyone in Grain Valley seems to be, too.
I bid Sister Howard farewell Friday morning and met my new companion, Sister Coronado.
One of the only bright moments of that day was being able to see Elder Dunn, my favorite senior elder, before he departed. He's eighty years old and has a heart condition. He resents that he's supposed to shake hands with sisters instead of hugging them and always does "hand hugs" instead. But this time he went for a real hug.
"Should you be doing that?" I asked.
He looked me dead in the eyes. "What are they going to do? Send me home?"
Love that man!
So many missionaries are departing early. Some of them my friends. One of them my brother. He hits 21 months next month and needs to clear out so some foreign evacuee from the Phillipines or somewhere can take his spot. The Stowes' son Connor is home now after spending only three months in the Phillipines. I know it's fair that people like us should leave so other people have more of a shot, but I also feel cheated. I waited so long for this. I whine and act cynical and place the social critic, but really, I love my job. I want to be out teaching the Coneys and Li and Brooke and everyone, and there's only so much I can do over video chat. I want to work!
Will I be sent home? I don't know. If life will resume after this month and I can serve hard for my mission's final two months, it will be worth it. My father gave me a blessing before I left for Idaho promising me I'd serve 18 months. I found comfort in that during my Idaho probation and during two times in Missouri-Kansas when I thought I was at risk of being sent home. I find comfort in it now.
My new companion, Sister Coronado, is from Mexico and worried she would be kicked out to clear spots for Americans, but now the border's closed and she's really happy because that leaves her stuck here.
The second highlight of this week was getting to take the sacrament one last time. We met up as a group of ten missionaries in the building where I would normally hold church and did a quick service with hymns and 5 minute talks. It had the fixings of a full meeting, but there could be no denial that the purpose of it, the only purpose of it, was to take the sacrament and remember the Savior. I've never appreciated the sacrament so fully and my eyes watered multiple times while getting ready to take it. Oh, I appreciate the Savior's sacrament and sacrifice today. I know he has gone through my despair, through Saydi's stress, through the terror of Crystal, a lady with health problems who I dropped off brownies to before full lockdown begins, through the anguish of Italians, and through my brother's wreckage of being forced to quit early. He told me last Monday, "I just want to go tracting because they're all home." And he knew what it was like when my eleven year old mom had to leave behind a lot of stuff when her family was evacuated from Iran.My grandpa initially volunteered to stay for his company, BHI, when other Americas were leaving. My mom has a picture of her in a shirt that says Stay and Die for BHI. It's decorated with bullet holes. She also had a doll as big as she was that wouldn't fit into her allotted one foot locker and one suitcase. She's told me how she hugged the doll one last time, put it on her bed, and shut the door. Her luggage got lost and her foot locker was water-damaged when she landed. She came back to America with nothing.
I was the last one out of the chapel and shut out the lights, thinking of my mother closing her bedroom door as I did.
I thought during the sacrament about how Jesus went through all of our pain, self-brought or otherwise. So while I'm struggling to find the motivation to do anything as the hours stretch before me like beads on a rosary, I know I must keep good spirits in myself through whatever means I can. I don't want to, through whatever myriad of time and choice and consequence brings rise to the pain the Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane, bring more pain upon him by wallowing myself.
I would love to hear from all of you in the long week that follows. I know other missionaries need the same. Joseph Smith wrote that no one who has not been enclosed within the walls of a prison can have any desire how sweet the word of a friend is. I hope to get some spiritual revelation from this time that I look back on fondly. At the beginning of the second stage of my mission, one of my goals was "understand Liberty Jail." This was not what I had in mind.
I am choosing to believe that my last look at the chapel isn't like my mother's last look at her doll. That I'll see it full again, full with people I've brought there.
I'll close with the words I often used to end tours at the visitors' center in Independence. We weren't given a script, these are my own invention.
"Some people like to look for signs of the times, at natural disasters and wars and rumors of wars, and say, 'Doesn't it seem like the world is ripe for the Second Coming?' But there's always been enough wickedness in the world. What there hasn't been is enough righteousness. I know as we keep building up the church through sharing the gospel, through ministering to those in need, in our families, our wards, and the work we do in the temple, we're preparing the whole world for the Savior to return. And when he does, He's coming here.'"
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
This week has changed the way I see food. As early as Monday night, when we were still working around the clock, our meals with members turned into door drop-offs. I was given an enchilada that I realized while biting into it had been made with canned corn and beans. That was so precious to me. Canned foods keep well and a family was willing to sacrifice food they might need soon to give something to us. I feel guilty about all the food I have here, both from members and what I was able to buy on my own, when I know people in Raytown, Independence, and Kansas City are struggling. Little Saydi, my nine year old convert, has a family with a very hand-mouth existence and I keep wishing I could drive over there and drop off a bag. Another couple I taught, Kim and T, are also on my mind. But Grain Valley is better off and I don't think anyone I teach is at risk of going hungry right now.
And then as if that wasn't bad enough, I received word this week that Utah was struck by an earthquake. I knew Magna was the center of it but i couldn't remember where Riverton and Provo were in relation to the fault line. No one from mission leadership announced this, I found out through a member. For all i knew, my family and friends were dead. Grimly, I thought that if my family was dead and the world had the plague and anybody tried to send me home, I'd just camp out here in Jackson County and stake out the Second Coming. I tried calling the mission office but all I got was a stressed secretary saying, "Can you call me back later?"
I later found out why. Most of the mission office staff jumped ship because they're old enough to be at risk for corona, leaving behind a few brave souls to keep us afloat. Like the guy who fixed the telegraph machine as the Titanic was sinking. And our new batch of missionaries were in the airport while the earthquake happened.
That delayed transfers for my departing companion by a day. In the middle of a Skype lesson with our quarantined friend Brooke, we got a call from the APs telling her to be at the mission home with her luggage at 8 am the next day. I asked if I should pack a bag and prepare to spend the night at the mission home, too, while awaiting transfers, but they told me I wouldn't need it.
I figured they had just as little idea of what I was doing with my life as I did and packed anyway.
I dropped my companion at the mission home and got shoved into an emergency trio with sisters Leakehe (my old companion) and De Leon (my friend). That set us off on a madcap day in what I termed the Kaw Valley First Ward-Kaw River, Grain Valley, and Inde 1st. For perspective on the distance this entails, people in Kaw River had no idea where Grain Valley is. Also, Kaw River is Spanish, a language Leakehe and I don't speak.
Adventures of the day included:
-Putting a guy named Todd on date in Inde 1st
-Getting yelled at by a crazy lady in Inde 1st
-Teaching Skype lessons in Grain Valey
-Putting 121 miles on the Grain Valley car (but who cares because quarantine happened the next day and now we have enough miles to drive to Italy).
-All of us trying and failing to fix a TV in Kaw River
-Dinner! In Spanish. A language I don't speak.
It was late by the time we reunited with our companions in Liberty, so Sister Howard and I ended up staying the night in the jailhouse-a house across the street from Liberty Jail. It used to hold four companionships. But that night, it was a boarding house for lost sisters. One of them was a girl named Sister Fox who got sent here after six straight weeks of quarantine in Mongolia. She told us about Genghis Khan and teaching English and everything else I could think to ask her. She really loved it there. But when I asked about the virus in Asia, she said, "No one even knows anyone who knows anyone who's sick."
And then we woke up to the news that we're under quarantine as well. At first it was just a mission thing, but on Tuesday, the entire state of Missouri goes into Italian lockdown for 30 days. We're not even supposed to leave the house to go on walks. It's a step above martial law, but not a far step. My mom lived under martial law for a little while in Iran in the 70's before she got evacuated. I know I can do it if she did, but it's hard, and she had her family and Charlie's Angels to entertain her.
I know we have to play by the rules so America doesn't become Italy, but it's maddening to me that we're stuck inside when we're perfectly healthy and everyone in Grain Valley seems to be, too.
I bid Sister Howard farewell Friday morning and met my new companion, Sister Coronado.
One of the only bright moments of that day was being able to see Elder Dunn, my favorite senior elder, before he departed. He's eighty years old and has a heart condition. He resents that he's supposed to shake hands with sisters instead of hugging them and always does "hand hugs" instead. But this time he went for a real hug.
"Should you be doing that?" I asked.
He looked me dead in the eyes. "What are they going to do? Send me home?"
Love that man!
So many missionaries are departing early. Some of them my friends. One of them my brother. He hits 21 months next month and needs to clear out so some foreign evacuee from the Phillipines or somewhere can take his spot. The Stowes' son Connor is home now after spending only three months in the Phillipines. I know it's fair that people like us should leave so other people have more of a shot, but I also feel cheated. I waited so long for this. I whine and act cynical and place the social critic, but really, I love my job. I want to be out teaching the Coneys and Li and Brooke and everyone, and there's only so much I can do over video chat. I want to work!
Will I be sent home? I don't know. If life will resume after this month and I can serve hard for my mission's final two months, it will be worth it. My father gave me a blessing before I left for Idaho promising me I'd serve 18 months. I found comfort in that during my Idaho probation and during two times in Missouri-Kansas when I thought I was at risk of being sent home. I find comfort in it now.
My new companion, Sister Coronado, is from Mexico and worried she would be kicked out to clear spots for Americans, but now the border's closed and she's really happy because that leaves her stuck here.
The second highlight of this week was getting to take the sacrament one last time. We met up as a group of ten missionaries in the building where I would normally hold church and did a quick service with hymns and 5 minute talks. It had the fixings of a full meeting, but there could be no denial that the purpose of it, the only purpose of it, was to take the sacrament and remember the Savior. I've never appreciated the sacrament so fully and my eyes watered multiple times while getting ready to take it. Oh, I appreciate the Savior's sacrament and sacrifice today. I know he has gone through my despair, through Saydi's stress, through the terror of Crystal, a lady with health problems who I dropped off brownies to before full lockdown begins, through the anguish of Italians, and through my brother's wreckage of being forced to quit early. He told me last Monday, "I just want to go tracting because they're all home." And he knew what it was like when my eleven year old mom had to leave behind a lot of stuff when her family was evacuated from Iran.My grandpa initially volunteered to stay for his company, BHI, when other Americas were leaving. My mom has a picture of her in a shirt that says Stay and Die for BHI. It's decorated with bullet holes. She also had a doll as big as she was that wouldn't fit into her allotted one foot locker and one suitcase. She's told me how she hugged the doll one last time, put it on her bed, and shut the door. Her luggage got lost and her foot locker was water-damaged when she landed. She came back to America with nothing.
I was the last one out of the chapel and shut out the lights, thinking of my mother closing her bedroom door as I did.
I thought during the sacrament about how Jesus went through all of our pain, self-brought or otherwise. So while I'm struggling to find the motivation to do anything as the hours stretch before me like beads on a rosary, I know I must keep good spirits in myself through whatever means I can. I don't want to, through whatever myriad of time and choice and consequence brings rise to the pain the Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane, bring more pain upon him by wallowing myself.
I would love to hear from all of you in the long week that follows. I know other missionaries need the same. Joseph Smith wrote that no one who has not been enclosed within the walls of a prison can have any desire how sweet the word of a friend is. I hope to get some spiritual revelation from this time that I look back on fondly. At the beginning of the second stage of my mission, one of my goals was "understand Liberty Jail." This was not what I had in mind.
I am choosing to believe that my last look at the chapel isn't like my mother's last look at her doll. That I'll see it full again, full with people I've brought there.
I'll close with the words I often used to end tours at the visitors' center in Independence. We weren't given a script, these are my own invention.
"Some people like to look for signs of the times, at natural disasters and wars and rumors of wars, and say, 'Doesn't it seem like the world is ripe for the Second Coming?' But there's always been enough wickedness in the world. What there hasn't been is enough righteousness. I know as we keep building up the church through sharing the gospel, through ministering to those in need, in our families, our wards, and the work we do in the temple, we're preparing the whole world for the Savior to return. And when he does, He's coming here.'"
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
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