Missionary

Last times in your life don’t always let you know they are the last. You talk to a friend on a phone, and decades have passed and you haven’t spoken again. Not because you didn’t want to. Way just led on to way, and your paths did not cross. Life absorbed you.

Then there’s the last time all the children are living home together and fill your kitchen table. You didn’t know the easy laughter around a pot of soup was the last, but, one by one, off they go, and nobody told you that you’d had your last dinner together, just this circle of yours.

Yet, missions are more specific about last days. We knew for many months that we would fly away from Puerto Rico on November 1st. We knew that the day would come when we would be released and take off our missionary badges. The days marched quickly, then ran from us, as we crammed too much stuff in our suitcases, scrubbed the house, and stopped going to the grocery store so we could use up the last of what was in the fridge and cupboard in what was surely a most unusual set of dinners.

Then things got poignant as we thought of last things and all we’d miss on our mission. We will miss the clouds of Puerto Rico, those massive and majestic white billows that stack and whirl around the island, gifts from the sea, that look like that ideal cloud you’ve been carrying in your mind finally materializing before you.

We will miss the calls of the pair of macaws that flew over our house every morning at 6:20. We will wonder why we no longer hear coqui frogs singing just outside our window. We will notice that the temple is no longer 117 steps from our front door.

But by far, most of all, we will miss the people, the deep connection we felt for so many in such a relatively short time. Heaven is a place animated by those who love. It is the prevailing emotion in the very air, and so what we felt for our friends and the missionaries was that kind of love. A taste of heaven love. Since, according to mission rules, I could hug the sisters and Scot could hug the elders, we did, and often. We told so many young missionaries we loved them, and so many of them responded the same. What connected us so deeply is that we all loved the Savior.

So, yes, we will leave the car keys on the counter, lock up our little concrete house (with the dolphin mailbox) with one last look to memorize just how it looked, take an uber to the airport, and to all appearances our mission will have ended. But it will never end because it has marked us and transformed us and awakened us, and we will always be wearing invisible missionary badges in the fleshy tablets of our hearts.

When we first wrote our stake president and told him we would need to be released Nov.2, he said, “My six months goes fast.” We laughed and said that we had actually been gone 2 x 6 months. It was just a bit heart-stopping to be released and Scot and I both teared up. He assured us that was common, and that when he went to release one sister missionary, she hid in her room bawling and wouldn’t come out for a while.

It’s impossible to describe just what changed in us in the mission, but I will say a little.

On Mt Sinai

To give some context, I will take you to an experience I had when we were in the thick of raising our very large family. I had begun to notice that it had been a very long time since I had felt the Spirit. My life was so rushed and list-oriented as I ran from pressure to pressure that I felt barren inside, a wind-swept desert. I felt like a dried leaf blowing along a gutter, too tired and swept along by demands to feel anything.

For a book we were working on, we traveled to the Middle East to take a series of photographs, and I remember praying as we flew along in the plane to our destination. I pled with the Lord to bless me with his Spirit. I told him how tired I was and that I was trying really hard, but that grounding and goodness I always felt in Him was missing for me just then. I knew I was just worn and weary, but I told Him how very much I needed the refreshment of His Spirit.

Oh, how I longed for the Lord.

Then the day came when Scot and I were going to hike Mt. Sinai. To climb this sacred, red mountain in the middle of a rocky desert, you start at 1 or 2 am. The goal is to arrive on top to view the sunrise, and we hoped to take photographs of that first light. Each night, there are pilgrims from all over the world who make this night climb, hurrying to the top, and the unspoken rule is that you hike by starlight. You ask your eyes to adjust and leave your flashlights in your pack.

The Milky Way was a visible arc across the sky as we hiked, and the stars were a bright bowl above us, as clear as I had ever seen them. We had ascended three miles, and the sky was just beginning to get lighter as we hiked the last, breathless 750 uneven steps to the top. Once we had ascended, Scot began taking photographs, working his way from one place to another finding the right angle, the fall of light to capture the images.

That left me with some time on my own, and I sat with my legs dangling over a rock face and read the Book of Moses. Perhaps it was my pleading, perhaps it was my place—the stars I’d seen and the vistas beyond, but suddenly the words spilled into my head in the mightiest way. I read:

And he saw God face to face, and he talked with him, and the glory of God was upon Moses; therefore Moses could endure his presence.

And God spake unto Moses, saying, “Behold, I am the Lord God Almighty, and Endless is my name; for I am without beginning of days or end of years; and is not this endless?

What a God this was whose workmanship knew no end, whose words never ceased. I wondered, why had he introduced Himself in this powerful way to Moses so that there was no question about his scope and glorious being? Almighty and Endless.

The fourth verse gave me the answer in six short words, “And, behold, thou art my son.” God was telling Moses who He is so that Moses would see who he is. See me, this almighty, powerful being who dwells in eternal burnings before you? You are my son. This is who you really are. This is who you really may be. All the wealth and splendor of Egypt that Moses had left behind? It was nothing. Moses, you are the son of the Almighty and Endless.

Again and then again in this chapter as Moses sees worlds without number and inhabitants without number, God talks to him and calls him the endearing, “my son.”

In that moment, while I read, I felt the Lord saying personally to me, “Maurine, thou art my daughter,” and all of the barrenness and weariness was suddenly burned from my system. I felt showered upon with love and spirit and affection and strength and vision. I was filled.

All that longing I had for the Lord was filled now with the strongest sense of belonging. I could feel the covenant connection in the Spirit that cascaded through my system. I felt claimed by God, owned by Him, bound to Him, protected in Him. He was my future and my past and the very ground of my being right now in the present.

I shall be your God, and thou shalt be my people, is the very essence of the covenant. Connection and relationship are the essence of the covenant. I am God Almighty and thou art my daughter, thou art my son is the very essence of the covenant. He is my Father and this is not a metaphor. It isn’t said symbolically. He has stamped his soul upon mine.

Until I can begin in the tiniest way to know who He is, I don’t know who I am.

What We Saw on our Mission

What we learned on our mission is that this sense of longing to belong is universal. The pleading I had on the plane for the Lord is universal. The gnawing I feel without Him is a gnawing eating at everybody.

People don’t always know that they long for God. Their bodies don’t remember, but their spirits do. Most everyone, whether they acknowledge it or not, whether they see it or not, is carrying wounds of separation from their Heavenly Parents. We feel that there is something missing in our lives. We feel that somehow we are not really home here. Everyone one of us carries this sense of loss inside of us.

Of course, this is true for those who have been deeply wounded in life, but even those who have not are plagued in the same way.

It is as if we want someone to wake us up out of a dream.
It is as if life is less than we supposed and we can’t figure out why.
It is as if we lost something somewhere and can’t find it.
It is as if someone needs to refresh and then restart our hearts.
It is that we are angry or sad or disappointed and cut off, but what are we cut off from?

This is the wound of separation, and as much as anything, this was the work of our mission.

As one writer said, “I’ve been less than half myself for more than half my life.”

We would feel like shouting the good news to everyone. “You are not alone in the universe. You are not a blob of random cells to be driven along by material forces or an accidental slug riding on the waters. You are divine. You are royal. You are loved.”

Lead Out in Missionary Work with Family History

Everyone feels so desperately to be connected. This is innate, born with us. And that innate need to be connected to God is also mirrored in our innate need to be connected to our family. That, of course, includes our present family here with us on earth, and also those generations before us whose spirits and genes have made us, us. We feel them somehow still pulsing in our spirits. Their joys, their griefs and woes, are carried with us in the echo chambers of our being and in our very DNA.

President Henry B. Eyring observed that God has given us more than “a casual interest’ in our ancestors. What we saw again and again in Puerto Rico, is that when we asked people about their family, they were so easy to talk to. When we asked them if they wanted to see their family tree going back in time, they jumped at the chance. People who may not have spoken to us with any other question, were much more likely to talk to us if we asked them questions like these:

Has your family always been from Puerto Rico?

Where did your grandfather live?

What do you do as family traditions for the holidays? When did that start?

Does your grandmother have a favorite recipe that you all still eat?

It was easy at that point to ask if they knew who their grandparents were. Did they have any knowledge of their great grandparents? With our cell phones in hand, we could quickly turn to FamilySearch, ask for the name of a grandmother or grandfather who had passed on, put in the information and within a few minutes show them their entire family line. Our precious Sister Atcity explained one of those experiences in this brief video.

They were amazed. Their jaws dropped open. They said they had goosepimples. A few asked questions like this, “What is my grandfather doing in your phone?”

We were able to pull on this family history quickly because the family tree in Puerto Rico is so thoroughly filled out—perhaps even better than the family trees of Utah. Joe Price and his team of student interns at BYU have been working on this family tree for many years, and it is constantly exploding with new information.

When we showed people their family lines, they inevitably wanted to know more, to let the missionaries come and visit. At the festivals and marketplaces where we put our beautifully-developed family history booths, people would come up to the table, look at our sample fan charts, showing extensive family lines, and say, “I want one of these.”

Just days before we left Puerto Rico, we visited a neighbor to say goodbye. We had spent many hours teaching her the gospel, and her response was that she planned to be a member someday. Someday, but what day? It was a bit disappointing. But before we left, we sat down with her and worked on her family tree one more time. We had done this with her many months earlier, but with the research being done at BYU, now her family lines went deeper and broader. When we showed her, she was so thrilled, “You have given me a Christmas gift with this. You have given me a thousand Christmas gifts.” Like so many we had seen before, she had the chills.

Near the same time, we went to lunch with a new convert in our ward, who we had been able to teach a little and Scot had baptized. We asked him how his holy habits were coming along—in other words was he praying and reading the scriptures each day. He said he was trying very hard, and he would wake up and think of one of the saints he could channel so he could pray to them for him.

Oh no, we said. That is not necessary. You can pray directly to God, your Father through His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ. That is the wonder and power of the Restoration of the fulness of His true Gospel. He wants to talk to you. He wants to hear from you. One of the things that is clear from Joseph Smith’s First Vision in the Sacred Grove was that the heavens are open again. The barriers have been breached. The gates are swung wide. You have a Father who longs to talk to you.

What a wonder this gospel is where our longing for belonging is so deeply satisfied.

Soon before we left, we were saying goodbye to one of our favorite people, Tito. He and his life partner, Brenda, were in our ward, but he had never embraced the gospel. He said he wasn’t ready. We taught his week after week in our new members and friends class at Church. We helped him find his ancestors. We encouraged him. We love him and Brenda. He whispered to us as we left, “You have been my North Star since you came into me life. I am now on the right path and I am ready.”  We got word, that the very day of this writing, December 1, Tito was baptized! Our connection to him is eternal and we could not be more humbled, nor could we rejoice more.

In Puerto Rico, long before we left, we began to be friends on Facebook with all the young missionaries, and then as they left, we added them to a chat group so that we could talk to each other once in a while. Sometimes, in their last interview, the young elders and sisters said they were afraid to go home, because they didn’t want to lose the burning testimony they had developed in the full-time service of the Lord. They didn’t want to forget. We hoped to make ourselves accessible to help them. Twenty-five of them came to our homecoming (some of them pictured below).

That idea came to us because our daughter, who served in Zambia and Malawi, spent the last weeks of her mission creating 100 hand-written letters to those who she had met or taught or knew or loved. These were letters of encouragement and support and invitations to stay in touch. One of her converts called on Christmas day, when you could only call home twice a year. Of all the people who could have chosen to talk to, it was her.

So, we have flown away from Puerto Rico, and now been home enough days that the mission seems like a dream. We both cried when our stake president released us, but we’ve learned that we are still carrying the name of Christ in the fleshy tablets of our hearts. We are carrying new friendships that seem like they were meant to be. And we have found that the Puerto Rican flag looks right at home in our kitchen.