Years that come and go

This will be a very reflective post for me.  It's fairly religious and describes some of my beliefs and motivations in my religion.  If you want to skip this one, that's okay too :).  I'll be posting a couple of posts this weekend, likely, as I have a lot of thoughts about a lot of things right now. 

It's late for this week, but it's because I needed to devote more time to it than I had this last Sunday. 

This last week I celebrated four years since leaving and two years since returning from serving a full time LDS mission in and around Mexico City.  To say that the experience was transformative would be an understatement.  My mission meant absolutely everything to me.

For those of you reading that are less aware of what a mission means, let me explain.  Young members of the LDS church can elect to leave their normal lives behind for a period ranging from 18 months to two years to devote full time ministerial service to the church.  We pay our own way.  We are not in employ of the church.  The LDS church uses a lay ministry and missionaries are no different.  The assignment is made by the leaders of the church.  We believe that the assignment is made by revelation of God to them and is specific for the person in question.

I was assigned to the area in and around Mexico City, known as the Mexico Mexico City South Mission (yes, two Mexicos without a comma; no, I don't understand it).  This became my home for two years of my life.  I paused college and personal life to do so.  I refused to date seriously in high school so that nothing would be a distraction for me when I left (though, honestly, I am weird enough that it wasn't hard to pull off for lack of interested parties :P).  I threw myself into missionary work with a fervor, and it was very, very, very hard for me.  I left on St. Patrick's day, my favorite holiday.  Donning my best emerald green tie I drove to the Missionary Training Center in Provo.  My days consisted of class or exercise or eating basically all day every day but Sunday, which consisted largely of church meetings all day.  I had (probably have is a more accurate conjugation) a fairly steady streak of stubbornness and pride and I don't think I was the easiest person in the world with whom to get along.  I didn't make friends easily in the MTC, and never really did make friends easily throughout my mission.  At first it was because I was self-absorbed and self-righteous, then it was because I had so little understanding for people that wanted to bend rules, and then simply because I had a reputation for being a punk. 

I don't have the list of mission companions with whom I keep constant contact.  I think most of the missionaries tolerated me out of necessity more than anything.  I engendered nicknames like "Élder Sudburro" (appending the term donkey to my last name) because of policies that I implemented and enforced about reimbursements as a financial secretary that slowed the process down significantly (donkeys are slow :P).  I know missionaries that sincerely warned my companions that I would be a nightmare before they were assigned to be with me.  Frankly, this was not the aspect of my mission that I really liked (If you were one of the missionaries with whom I served, I'm sincerely sorry for any pain I caused you). 

Secondly I had a reputation for being a jerk about rules.  Rules that I bent to try to be "extra good."  I got up at 6:00 with my companion every morning and we went running.  We weren't really supposed to be up before 6:30 AM and were supposed to get 8 hours of sleep, but it was the only way I could see us getting what we needed to do done on time.  We were supposed to do a half hour of exercise every morning, shower, dress, and eat breakfast before 8:00 AM every morning.  This was hard for me to accomplish when the water boiler had to be started every morning manually and there was only one good bathroom available.  Hence the getting up at 6:00.  What followed was a fairly precise regimen.  An hour of studying alone.  An hour to two hours of studying with my companion.  Another hour of studying the Spanish and English languages.  Leave to look for people that wanted to be taught the gospel.  Teach the gospel.  Lunch at 2:00PM, keep going until 9:00PM.  Plan for the next day.  Be in bed by 10:30.  Repeat the following day.  This largely happened every day for two years.  It's hard to describe why I was such a stickler to many people.  I believed that exact obedience to the mission rules would bring miracles in my life and the lives of those that I taught.  I wanted desperately to bring those miracles to bear, and got frustrated when anybody seemed like they were getting in my way of doing that, even if that person was myself.  I wanted to do all in my power to bring the blessings of God to the lives of those that I served.  It's a weird thing, maybe, but it was important to me at the time.  I wanted to be almost military-like in my following orders.  This gained me a bad reputation quickly.  I learned to try to explain why I wanted to do what I did, but I don't think many ever really understood.

By the time I learned to communicate better, to teach my companions why I felt it was important, I had one of the worst reputations in my mission.  As wonderful as I feel missions are, they are still populated with mostly late teenagers and early twenty-year-olds.  We are as immature as that sounds.  Reputations are seldom healed.  I felt like (and still do feel like) I was, at least for a time, the most hated and feared elder in the mission. 

So why, might you ask, did I love my mission?  Because my mission wasn't about any of this, it was about my relationship to God and His gospel as I believe it.  It was about bringing the Love of God into the lives of those with whom I interacted on a daily basis (too late I understood that this meant the other missionaries too).  It was about "mourn[ing] with those that mourn, comfort[ing] those who stand in need of comfort."  It was about seeing and being part of incredible miracles.  We don't talk about them much, because any act of God is for the lives of the people directly affected and we consider these experiences sacred and so not broadly shared.  Suffice it to say that I took part in miraculous healings, saw miraculous protections occur, and saw miraculous changes happen in the lives and hearts of those that I taught, including myself.  Miracles were part of my daily walk.  I truly feel to call that time of my life "blessed."  I would not trade it for all the world and would do it again, hatred and all, in a heartbeat.

My mission, what I did there, why I did it, and how I did it, are the reasons I am the person that I am today.  It's the reason I can't bear to let my hair grow any semblance of long, even two years after getting back.  It's the reason I decided to take a position as a resident advisor of a house while agreeing to minimal compensation.  It's the reason I am devoted to my church service still.  It's the reason I'm devoted to service in general.  It is me. 

Why did I serve a mission?  Because, dear reader, I feel in my heart that a young man named Joseph Smith really did see God the Father and Jesus Christ in a grove of trees one day after praying to them.  I feel in my heart that he was called as their Prophet.  I feel in my heart that there has been an unbroken succession of Prophets for God the Father and Jesus Christ since that day and that those Prophets lead this church.  I sincerely believe all of this.  I believe that Jesus was the Christ, meaning the anointed one.  He was the one anointed (chosen in a special way) to come and suffer for every one of us, feeling everything that we feel, suffering everything we do, and paying any penalty we're asked to.  I believe that faith, repentance, baptism, confirmation, and endurance to the end are the path to eternal life.  I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS church) is the church and kingdom of God on the earth today.  I believe in real, miraculous power in Priesthood.  I believe in angels that still come down, in Gifts, in the Holy Ghost, in things that cannot yet be measured in any way.

I am a scientist.  Physical things demand physical proof.  So too do spiritual things demand spiritual proof.  I have proved them time and again.  I know the truth of these things from personal experience, God bearing witness of it.

I'm sorry that this post was long and not really that funny, but I wanted to help you, dearest reader, understand a little bit more of this part of my life.  It is, I believe, the biggest part of who I am.  I hope you have learned a little from the chain I wear. :)