Setting High Goals for Life After the Mission

Any of my companions will remember my love for keeping the ward list cleaned up.  I really enjoyed getting updated addresses & phone numbers from members of the ward (especially inactive members) and passing that info back to get it updated in the system.  I hated to see mistakes like a family split into two separate groupings or a child duplicated in the system.  At least once on a slow day, I recall getting out the phone book, hoping to find inactive members who were "lost", get their contact info back on the list, and of course eventually reactivate them.  On the other hand, when contacting members of the church who were no longer active, who expressed no desire to be contacted by members or missionaries, and who appeared to no longer believe in the gospel, I believed that they should remove their names from the Book of Life (or at the very least remove it from our ward directory so it would be cleaner!)  I didn't like discussing increasing our ward activity rates and knowing that there were people among the number of inactives who seemed completely impossible to reactivate, since they wouldn't even TALK to us.

I do think this belief played a small part into why, after being inactive and an unbeliever myself for the past couple of years, I decided to have my name removed from the records of the church.  If I don't believe it, why would I want my name to remain there?  If I don't want anything to do with the church anymore, why would I want well-intentioned missionaries banging on my door every few transfers?  If I believe in all that is good and true as it relates to organization and record-keeping, why on earth would I want my name to stay there on that record, distorting the membership numbers of the church and lowering their activity rates?  They will be grateful I'm removing my name, for accuracy's sake!  Right?  Right.

However, that was never my thought while on my mission, of course.  I never expected ME to be one of those people.  The following blog entry details the lofty goals and high hopes I had for myself following my mission:

20 Jan 2002 – No Aparicios at church, but Hna Guerrero came again!  :)  Zone Activity cancelled for tomorrow… or postponed for the next Monday.  So, we think we’ll play volleyball & who knows what else, with the Tapias & all the district.  Should be fun! :) Today S Williams & I were going through the new ward list that Mark Brown just gave us, and making corrections of address, phone, name, etc… I enjoy that type of stuff.  I would like to be ward clerk.  But maybe I’ll just strive to be wife of the ward clerk, & I’ll talk my husband into letting me help out.  :)  I’m not quite sure why that’s a priesthood calling.  Well… I guess in a way I understand it but I don’t like it.  :(  Today, we told Pres Berry that we’d like to start going to some of the youth basketball games (because of the nonmember families) but they are Saturday mornings, the same time we go to the Remate*.  Maybe we’ll have to do companion exchanges to get both things done.  :(  I’d like to do both!

*Note: Remate = flea market in spanish.  We would go there to set up a booth to try to contact people and hand out pass-along cards. 

In case you were wondering, yes, I did obtain the high and lofty status as Ward Clerk's Wife.  Thankfully, I obtained said calling just a short time before finally drifting away from church.  It didn't turn out as fun as I'd always hoped, and my husband never let me update records directly into MLS.  It is, after all, a priesthood calling, and I wasn't born with the right body parts for that.

How many baptisms do YOU have?

Wouldn't it have been funny if we all had received one of these for each baptism that we participated in?  I'm imagining us wearing them all on our shoulder like military (or boy scout) badges.  It would have shown our rank. 

Of course, we were sometimes reminded that the important thing was not how many baptisms we got.  On the other hand, we were sometimes subtly told that how many baptism we got was exactly what was important.  I recall a Zone Conference about "Inner Circle Missionaries."  If I recall, to be an Inner Circle Missionary, you were supposed to be obedient and diligent and all those wonderful virtues.  But there was (at least) one missionary whose main technique seemed to be Flirt to Convert and who had been caught in deception and who otherwise seemed to be NOT living the wonderful virtues, but who was considered an Inner Circle Missionary - due entirely, from my understanding at the time, to the number of baptisms said missionary had achieved. I also remember, one particular transfer, being told to set a goal of how many baptisms we were going to get during that transfer.  My comp & I set a ridiculously high number (well, it only seems ridiculous in retrospect, since it was about the number of baptisms I "got" my entire mission) and ended up with zero that transfer, I think.

I also remember disliking the fact that my number of baptisms was marked on the little ID card kept in the Mission President's office.  The card had my name, my picture, it showed what area I was currently in and who my companion was, and it had a tally of how many baptisms I had so far.  I think I was given that little card at the end of my mission to keep.  Things like that, combined with the reminders that number of baptisms aren't important, sent a mixed message about what our purpose was.

I hope you never felt that your status as a missionary, as a member, or as a human depended on how many people you led to the waters of baptism.

Teaching the 19-yr-olds a Lesson

While on the mission, I filled two small journals. I wasn't great at writing daily (it kind of depended on my companion - I did it daily for a while b/c one comp heavily influenced me to do so. I also flossed twice daily for a few months due to another comp's good influence!) Well, now I cannot locate the first journal. It would have been from Oct 2000 through Jan 2002. The journal I do still have covers Jan 2002 through the end of my mission in May 2002.

PRIVACY POLICY: when quoting journal entries, I will change or mask the names when it seems to be something that requires privacy or whenever else I want. If it's something that would just be a fond memory to the person involved, I will leave the names in. I know this means we're relying on my judgment here. I guess you'll just have to trust me. ;)

Here is a funny entry from 8 April 2002. I actually don't remember this story, but it displays the playful nature that I carried throughout my mission. It's one of the milder pranks I participated in.

8 April 2002 - pday. We ate breakfast with the Banuelos (juevos rancheros), went shopping, wrote letters... not enough time. I only wrote a small page like this, front & back, for A---- & my parents. The time went way fast, and at 5:00 we had dinner w/ the Chavez - there are many Chavez families - this is the 1st counselor & his wife. Then, at 6:30, we taught a first to María Torres. Her mom, Sara, didn't stay out to listen, but we hope to give her a first on Wednesday. At 8:00, our appt said to come back in 1/2 hour. We went to the church to get Holbrook's new bike (her's stolen in Selma on bike rack @ church), and the bike was outside still on the bike rack. We couldn't believe they'd done that, so we gave them a lesson: we took it off & hid it in the bushes. We went in, called our appt @ 8:30 - they said he just left. :( Leader's meeting was still going on, so we asked the junior comps if they knew where the ZLs had put the bike. They thought it was on the car. It wasn't, so we assured them the ZL's probably brought it in so it wouldn't get stolen. When the ZL's came out, we asked about the bike, they saw it was gone... Daines kept saying, "Come on, don't do this to me..." Finally we pulled it out of the bushes and told them to be more careful! :)

As you can see, the life of a 21-yr-old sister missionary includes occasionally babysitting the 19-yr-old "Elders" (ironic title for those young lads, isn't it?) or teaching them valuable lessons via well-loved teaching methods like tricking them.

Material

Maybe if you're lucky, I'll share some entries from my mission journal and some pics from my photo albums!

Introduction

The idea for this blog started from a conversation on my Facebook wall. I posted this on my status one day:

Thoughts on being a mormon missionary: It kind of sets you up for the thrill of rebellion. The rules are set so strict that even simply crossing the street (if that street happens to be your area boundaries - or even better, your mission boundaries) gets your heart really pumping. Stay outside past 9:30, or out of your bed past 10:30, and you're a rebel. Getting a hug from an attractive member of the opposite sex, or even just stepping inside their apartment, sends you reeling in Twilight-esque "forbidden love" emotions. And the extremity of the rules, especially with a black/white focus on 100% obedience, simply set you up for failure. Fun conversations today with some of my prison mates (er, missionary buddies) got me thinking about the negative effects of that 18-month choice I made.

There are 22 comments on it. A couple of the first two were from people who are still very active in the LDS church, and they both used the word "opposite" in their comments. One said "I believe missions can have very opposite effects." The other said "...not my experience at all. In fact, just the opposite." The word opposite seems to really emphasize my point about a black/white focus. After those, I posted the following comment:

Hey, just to clarify: I'm not saying that I hated the mission when I was there. I could have left if I felt that way, and I certainly didn't. I felt like I should be there and I felt like I was doing good. But one thing that isn't often given space for discussion, or even given space for thought inside one's own head, is the possible negative psychological effects of serving a mission. For every thing you do, there are likely negatives and positives. I'm just reflecting on the negative effects that I recognize, so that I can acknowledge them, then hopefully let them go and grow from them

I thought it might be helpful to have a blog where those of us who served in "the Lord's Vineyard" (the California Fresno Mission) can share our stories and our perspectives. I hope that these stories can be different than the "faith-promoting stories" typically heard at church and different than typical "mormon bashing". I hope they can be an honest reflection of both the positives and negatives of serving an LDS mission. I'm choosing to focus on my own stories as well as the stories of missionaries I knew and served with. Hopefully, several people will share their stories with me to post here as well. Even for those who choose not to share stories, I hope that this blog will provide a safe space for you to reflect on your experiences in the mission field and their impact on your lives.

Oh - and "Tales From The Vineyard"? It is reminiscent of Tales from the Crypt. I thought of it early this morning while still half asleep after having another missionary dream last night. Hopefully this blog won't be quite as creepy as the original.