Posted by:
kimball
(
)
Date: May 20, 2011 05:28PM
I arrived at Genova a worn-down missionary. With six months left on my mission I knew it was going to be the last area I served in. I had come off of 18 months of failure, having failed to bring anyone to the gospel, and thus failed in being a worthwhile servant of the Lord. I had taught roughly 1 discussion per month, which meant that most of the other 259 work hours each month were spent looking for people to teach. I read and re-read my patriarchal blessing, as well as my father’s blessing in which I was confirmed an elder, and both spoke generously of the numerous people I would bring to Christ. Despite how strictly I would follow the rules and how laboriously I would try to spread the word in the streets and on the rooftops, I had failed to live up to the Lord’s expectations.
What’s more, I had failed to live up to the expectations of my mission president. Just 4 months prior to this transfer he had promised me that I would get to train a brand new missionary. This was something I had always wanted to do, and I was looking forward to it immensely. Now, two companions later, I still had yet to receive a brand new missionary for a companion. My new companion was smack dab in the middle of his mission, like all my other companions had been, and none too happy inside.
We had an investigator, though, and what was more, he actually seemed excited about the gospel. Teaching the gospel was what I lived for, and considering the fact that I rarely got to do it, this was a big boost for my missionary morale. Within a few days I taught him the second discussion, after which he emphatically accepted in the invitation to be baptized. I was floating on cloud nine. God had seen to it to allow me to fulfill the purpose of why I had sacrificed two of my best years to Him. We took this investigator to church and he hit it off beautifully with the faithful members. He had such charisma, wit and goodness that we knew he would someday make a wonderful bishop.
By the fourth discussion our golden investigator had disappeared. He was nowhere to be found. We tried calling him and going to his house, but even his car was gone. Where could he have gone to without letting us know? The answer reached out and grabbed us when we visited the home of a less-prosperous family in the ward. Their teenage daughter had disappeared at the same time.
Putting the pieces together we realized that our golden investigator was, in fact, a con man, and had used the church to get close to this particular young woman. She was so bright and lovely, the only way he could hope to deflower her was to lend a sympathetic ear toward her religion. His scheme had worked. The evidence that this man was involved with the mafia also started adding up, but we decided to pursue our investigation no longer. We had better things to do with our time.
However we had no investigators to do them with. It was a dark time for my mission. As a result of our stress my companion’s physical health took a turn for the worst. We found it more and more difficult each day to find motivation to go outside and get rejected by strangers for 10 hours. We would look at our day’s schedule each morning, and when it was blank (as it most often was) my companion would develop splitting headaches and horrible nausea. He would lie in bed for days on end, unable to move.
I would still wake up at 6:30AM and do my morning study. When 9:30AM arrived and I could still not awaken my companion I would then commence further study, reading through great works such as Jesus the Christ and Articles of Faith. I found a stash of old Ensigns in the closet and pored through them in my research to better understand church doctrines. I also looked through old area books and called phone numbers I had discovered, sometimes even numbers straight out of the phone book. I was content that I could still be looking for people to teach while in my apartment.
This didn’t bode well with the zone leaders and mission president. As senior companion it was my responsibility to be sure that we were outside working and reporting high numbers. The doctor had reported that my companion’s symptoms were the result of stress and not actual sickness. Thus if I didn’t motivate him to go out and work, the blame fell on me.
But try as I might, I didn’t have it in me to force the guy to do work that he didn’t want to do. I tried encouraging him and setting a good example, but he knew that as long as he wasn’t dressed and ready, we wouldn’t walk out the door. Once again I felt a failure for not being a good enough senior companion.
One day I had an experience that shook me. While my companion was in bed suffering I found a discman with earphones lying in an empty room. I knew that my companion sometimes got up in the middle of night to do things, though I didn’t know to what extent (because I was asleep). I figured he must have been listening to some music in this room the previous night. Curiosity and plain nosiness got the best of me. I put the earphones on and pushed play. The loud heavy death metal music that assaulted my ears nearly caused me to jump out of my pajamas. I turned the bad influence off immediately and put the discman back where it had been.
I became concerned about what my companion was doing at night while I was asleep. I took a small fragment of paper and placed it on the front door in such a way that it would only be disturbed if the door was opened. When I woke up the next morning I found the fragment on the ground several feet away.
The weeks of my mission ticked by with nothing to show but rebukes from my zone leaders and despair for my companion. The zone leaders did splits with us in order to try to help teach us what we should do – in my case to be more aggressive, and in my companion’s case to do any work at all. On one such morning the zone leader and I stopped by the local bread store to get some edible motivation before starting our work. The lady behind the counter was one of our neighbors who lived in the same building as us. I’ll never forget what she said.
“Oh, it’s you. I saw your friend on the balcony smoking a cigarette last night. How are you doing?”
My zone leader and I were perplexed. We doubted this lady’s sincerity, so we asked some questions to see if we could discredit her story. Was she sure that it was my companion?
“The one you usually go around with? Oh yes, it was definitely him.”
Was it cold? Could it have just been the fog in his breathing?
“No, it was definitely a cigarette. I know the difference.”
As my zone leader walked out of the store I could tell that he was very concerned. So was I. “I’m sure it was just his breath in the cold” he said to me, and we didn’t discuss it any further.
Of course the other zone leader returned with my companion with a lovely report of how many people they had talked to and how much work they had done. “You see, you just have to go out and do it, and the Lord will bless you.”
I reported my concerns about my companion to my mission president in personal letters, citing the evidence I had found that concerned me. Obviously the zone leaders were giving him status reports too. My mission president never responded to me, except that in a subsequent personal interview he stressed to me the importance of being assertive in getting out to work.
I had three months left on my mission, and still nobody to teach the gospel to when I received my last companion. Rather than being the brand new missionary to train that I had so long expected, it was a missionary well-known for ending other guy’s missions. I was his fourth companion to be at the end of his mission term. The reason for this niche was his infamous work ethic, helping guys go out with a bang.
To top it off, I received word that the 7th guy in my original MTC district of 8 had been appointed as a zone leader. Despite being the most diligent and faithful of the bunch to begin with, I was to be the only one missing from the group at the final zone-leader conferences. Not only that, but my last companion was appointed to be district leader over me, “to help train him for that role” my mission president said.
My previous companion had gone to the mission home to work directly under the supervision of my mission president. He told me that he wanted to get a direct feel as to what was going on with him. What better way to get him in line than to constantly supervise him?
I swallowed my disappointment and relished in the rare opportunity to have a hard-working companion. It was night and day for me – literally. We exhausted ourselves working the streets and houses. We even devoted one week to be our 100-hour week. We figured that if we worked 14.5 hours each day, giving ourselves 1.5 hours to eat and get dressed, etc…, and 8 hours to sleep, we could pull of the triple digits. We were on track by Thursday before we contracted horrible cases of the flu from our exposure to the elements. In the end, for the sake of our health, we had to settle for 87 hours.
We even reactivated an entire family – mom, grandma, and three kids. With no priesthood in their home, our visits were held in such high esteem that they developed the motivation to come back to church on a regular basis.
Our zone leaders, however, weren’t satisfied. The mission had just come up with a new emphasis, and that was a concept called “golden questions.” By decree of the mission president, we would no longer report hours, discussions, Books of Mormon, or anything besides baptisms and golden questions. Basically, a golden question is an invitation to someone to hear the discussions.
My approach to people was not conducive to golden questions. Rather, my approach was to get to know people on a personal level and teach them gospel principles. Then if they showed any interested whatsoever (which in 99% of cases they didn’t) I would invite them to learn more. I wanted to make sure I played on people’s desire to learn the gospel, and not try to force it on them unwillingly.
This meant that, despite my new heightened level of work, the reports to my zone leaders and mission president were still abysmally low. Not just this – they were low despite the fact that I had been given the hardest working missionary in the mission.
One month into our term together Elder Cunningham joined our companionship. Elder Cunningham had come directly from the mission home and was preparing our area to open a new companionship of missionaries. This was wonderful news. I had closed my companionship in my last area, meaning that my companion and I were both transferred out and nobody took our places. My previous two companionships before that had both also ceased to exist since I had left. The church was greatly reducing the missionaries in Italy, and had even closed the mission I had originally been assigned to. The fact that a new companionship was opening was very encouraging.
Elder Cunningham’s reports from the mission home were not as encouraging – for me anyway. My previous companion was doing very well. In fact, he was doing so well that the mission president could find nothing wrong in his work ethic. Since going under the president’s scrutiny he had done nothing but impress. “All he needed was a push” Elder Cunningham would constantly tell me with a smile.
Elder Cunningham was a golden question God, and our zone leaders loved him. Two words couldn’t come out of his mouth but he was inviting someone to hear the discussions. After two weeks as our third wheel he received his very own companion – a greenie straight out of the MTC.
I now had only 6 weeks left of my mission, and nothing to show for it. This transfer period would be my last. Had I know that at the end of it the president was going to close my companionship and replace it with Elder Cunningham’s, I would have been pissed.
It was around this time that my zone leaders called and asked me to give a lesson on member missionary work at our next meeting with all the missionaries in our zone. Having just reactivated an entire family and shown that members of the church in general trusted me, they figured that giving me the opportunity to teach other missionaries would help me develop as a missionary myself - despite the fact that I had far more missionary experience than they did. I prepared a lesson as best I knew, outlining all the points that I thought were the most important, including showing members that you cared about them personally, encouraging them, befriending them, and not pushing them beyond their comfort limits. Then they would open up to you in wonderful ways, as I had seen happen.
I felt the spirit strongly within me as I taught the lesson, but was puzzled that the zone leaders would not match my gaze. When my lesson ended they hesitantly began a lesson of their own. A new policy had come down from a travelling apostle, and they were there to tell us that our mission was to put it into effect immediately. The policy was that we not spend longer than one hour in the homes of members of the church, and that while there we were not to discuss anything that was not gospel-related. They then gave a lengthy and well-planned lesson about how spiritual relationship were far more effective and compelling than personal ones. I was effectively denounced by their every word. Not once in their lesson did they pay homage to anything I had said, except in criticism.
I struggled with this. I struggled with many things at that point. My mission was a complete failure. Despite my daily struggle I had not brought anyone to Christ, nor was it looking likely that I would. I had actually regressed in leadership roles. I was considered an indolent missionary by my superiors. My zone leaders were constantly trying to encourage me to shove the gospel down as many people’s throats as possible. The spirit kept bugging me that my zone leaders and mission president were wrong. My branch was hateful and I was sure that they would drive away any new investigator that we brought to them. All of my female friends (of which there were a couple dozen – I had filled my canteen) had stopped writing letter and e-mails to me. And, above all, I had failed in my dad’s specific prophecy that I would baptize people on my mission. I had given my mission up for a complete failure, and was ready to go through the motions for 6 more weeks just to get the waste of time over with.
I almost didn’t even realize what was happening when we started teaching the discussions to a bright 20 year-old girl, a cousin of the family we had reactivated. Her investigation of the church was making such progress, in fact, that it seemed likely that if we didn’t suffer the usual setbacks we could get her baptized before I went home. I couldn't believe it every time that she would actually follow through with commitments.
The setbacks did come, however, in the form of her parents. The catholic church was such an integral part of their lives, and she being their only child, they fought tooth and nail to convince her that the Mormon church was evil. She was still living with them, and without a job, so they threatened to throw her out of the house and never talk to her again if she were to be baptized. Suddenly our discussions would begin with a bath of tears as she expressed her fear and despair about joining the church. She didn’t want to lose her family forever, and didn’t know how she would get by on her own. We then filled her mind with the glories of heaven and encouraged her that to follow God was true life, and worth any sacrifice necessary. The words sounded grandiose coming out of my mouth, but I felt like complete garbage inside as I spoke them, knowing what they would mean for this girl and her life.
I did eventually baptize her two weeks before the end of my mission. The members of my ward strongly protested, saying that she was not ready for the gospel, and that we should wait to see if her commitment to endurance was sincere. The bishop warned her in personal interview about the possibility that her faith would slacken. I knew better, and I knew that despite how horrible the members of my ward would be to her, and how horrible the loss of her family would be, her faith was strong enough to endure. Even the scandal of her immersion wouldn’t hold her back – the scandal being that her baptismal dress became transparent and sticky when wet, and she was wearing brightly-colored underwear underneath.
As I walked out of the church with her I expected to feel that satisfaction that I had so long waited for, knowing that the joy of bringing save one soul unto Christ would be mine. I looked at her face. She looked so innocent and pure, like an unknown light was shining upon her. And I thought about the future that awaited her and all I felt was unwanted regret. No joy.
I left the problems of my mission behind me when I went home. I so quickly learned the joys of a free life that my mission very soon became like a long lost memory of an unhappy time. I listened to the stories of my friends and the multitudes that they had baptized with indifference. I let all the expressions of a mission being the best two years of a young man’s life bounce off me. I had learned to care about people, and I had brought one soul unto Christ. That was good enough for me.
I only received two messages from this girl I had baptized in the following two years, and neither said anything noteworthy about how she was doing. She basically asked me how I was doing in two paragraphs or less. Despite my constant attempts to reconnect, she gave no response beyond those.
It was not long after my last message from her, six years ago, that I attended a mission reunion. The mission president avoided talking to me, but that no longer mattered. I connected with one missionary I had grown to admire, who was of the more genuine and rebellious nature, and he was in contact with someone from Genova. Through him I was able to learn that the bishop of my last ward had continued to have personal interviews with the girl I baptized, and had told her at one point that she needed to abandon her homosexual friend (who was the closest person to her at that time, emotionally) and repent. His demeanor and uncaring attitude had caused the girl I had baptized to stop attending church.
Despite my many efforts to contact her after that, she never responded. My lone convert, who was supposed to be the one to give me such joy, was forever lost.
Several years later I came to the realization that the LDS church is a complete fraud, and my mind went back to my lone convert. I thought of all the heartache and emotional damage that was caused by her membership in the church, and how I had personally driven a wedge through her family. I considered it ironic to find my own family guilty of the exact same things I had so criticized this girl’s family for. And yet I had told her to stick to her faith. So find I myself now in a situation with reversed roles.
Yesterday I found the courage to make one more attempt to find her, six years after my last time I heard from her. I’m not sure if she even uses it anymore, but I sent a message to her last known e-mail apologizing for the heartache I had caused, confessing that the religion I taught her was false, and hoping that all is happy in her life. I don’t know if I’ll get a response.
And yet the LDS church keeps rolling. I once found myself in the same BYU class once as Elder Cunningham and one of the zone leaders I had detested, at the same time. They discussed our mission glory days with the utmost regard, confident that they had done the Lord a great service. My younger brother sends weekly reports of his mission, full of confidence that the multitudes he is baptizing are proof of the glory and truth or Mormonism. And I find myself growing ever more sure that there was never any God to begin with.