Missionary

We have sent our sons and daughters on missions and when they left, they were earnest, eager, optimistic and so very young. We wept because we knew we would not see that iteration of them again. Gone would be that child who belonged totally to us. When they returned, they would be matured and confident—much more than the young, trembling ones we sent away. Eliot, who went to Ukraine, would look for difficult-to-find potatoes on P-Day so they could avoid hunger and he went tracting on sidewalks built up with several layers of ice because they weren’t cleared when it snowed. The missionaries counted how many times they fell each day on to the treacherous ice. Michaela, who promised she would only drink purified water in Malawi, found that on the long, thirsty afternoons looking for people to teach, she had no choice but to drink the brown water offered her.

Oh yes, our children grew up on their missions and found they could do tough things. Yet, I never supposed that something would be challenging for me. I have traveled the world extensively and loved the cultures I have been temporarily immersed in, lived through a night in a hotel in the jungles of Guatemala whose fee of $1.16 per night was entirely too much. I’ve boated on the Arabian Sea with a whale shark for a companion. Besides all that, I am a very seasoned grown-up, not an 18-year-old who just graduated from high school. What could be hard for me?

I will tell you in just a minute, but first a look at a big event of this week.

A Pole Story 

We awoke Thursday morning to a dark house with no power. We assumed, of course that it was just a temporary brown-out, like the ones that motivate most home owners in Puerto Rico to have their own generator on site. Nobody wants to grope around in the dark or lose the $400 worth of food in their refrigerators.

Yet, our story was far more dramatic than that. All we had to do was walk out our front door to see it. A garbage truck driver had hit one of the poles along the side of the road carrying power lines. The crash was so hard, it sent that pole tumbling down, and seven more, attached to each other by electrical wires came crashing down too, like a bunch of dominoes in a row, live electrical wires flying.

We were surprised we had not heard this crash because though our house is concrete, we hear jungle sounds every night through our window, the loudspeakers of cars that once in awhile rock our world as they come lingering by, the impassioned voices through megaphones in a park behind us talking politics or religion—but we did not hear our pole coming down.

Last week we had to abandon our little house (our casita bonita) because there was no hot water and the toilets were broken. The hot water got fixed, and we moved back in, but the toilets were still broken. Now again, we had to abandon our house for three days until the poles stood upright and well-founded again.

The temple, which is only steps from our house, also lost power and was on a generator for four days.

We prayed not only for light, but for one garbage truck driver who must surely lose his job, and for the safety of all the men and women working on the poles to restore them so quickly. It seemed so ironic that San Juan was alive with light of every color, light that danced and blinked, but when we came back to our street only a couple of houses in that electronic sector were utterly dark. Ours looked pathetic and dark and forgotten at the end of the street, so close to a pole that had gone down.

Now for the second week in Puerto Rico, we were out of our house, this time staying at the mission home.

As a friend said, “For six weeks, Puerto Rico will kick you around, and if you can take it, then it will open its arms and embrace you.” Later I said to her, “Six weeks is still a long way off. She said, “Did I say six weeks? I meant six months.”

By this, she wasn’t talking of the people who are loving and lovely. I already think the people are so fine, but the details of daily living? I just hope nothing takes us out of the home next week.

My Quest, Our Miracle

So now, I confess what is hard about a mission for me. I like to work fast, make things happen, stick to a schedule, see what I’ve done at the end of the day and feel good about it. My brain is wired for efficiency and planning. This is a fairly common American trait—and it works– in a limited way.

If I accomplish a lot at home, I want to do much more on a mission, because every minute matters so much. Right? Now, I am dedicating full-time to the Lord, and I want to show Him how I adore and honor Him by doing my best.

Yet, doing my best looks different here. I have a new frontier of learning and responding and expanding to figure out. I am like a child when asked to step into this new world. I must be helped to do everything. I am to accept that God has a work for me to do, and it is His work, not mine. Scot and I have many assignments in the mission, but they will not keep us busy full time. Those free moments when we can find and teach people are in His hands. Young missionaries sometimes knock on doors, looking for people to teach. If we are to support members, help less actives, and also find people to teach, only the Lord can open those doors—and open our eyes to see well.

We must become intent observers to see who needs us.

We are handed a blank book—and only the Lord can show us the story that He is writing there. I can’t find those people that God already knows are ready for His message. Yet He knows them perfectly and will bring them to us if we follow His spirit.

As Scot reminded me a couple of days ago, “Maurine, you have to live with a looser line to let the Lord do his work.”

I thought of Nephi and his quest to get the plates. He and his brothers had tried the expected ways to get them from Laban.. They had asked  nicely, they had brought their treasures to him, hoping to buy the plates. They had done the things they knew how and still Laban didn’t budge, but sought to slay them for their wealth. Then Nephi went back to Jerusalem by night. Those ancient cities were dark at night when the olivve lights had flickered out–and there was Nephi. He had no map or “Find my friends” to tell him where Laban might be just then. He had no specific plan laid out. When he got to a corner he did not know ahead of time whether to turn right or left, but he shares this insight, “And I was led by the Spirit not knowing beforehand the things which I should do.”

This is the perfect description of a missionary as we go through the world trying to launch a conversation about the gospel with that person we don’t know, but is prepared and waiting. Before all else, we have to pray with all our hearts for guidance–and then trust.

So this was my great question: Would the Lord really lead us to where He wanted us to be? Would He move people into our lives as we made room for them? Can we get our agenda out of the way so He can do His work?

Those questions were on my mind as we were heading to Elder and Sister Larsen’s house to pick up a generator. Scot was unusually quiet, and I asked him why. He said he was concerned about the solo he was to sing at the stake Christmas party on Saturday night. It was Friday. Though he had tried all week to get an arrangement of “O Come, O Come Emanuel”, none were working. The young accompanist was, well, young and worried. What’s more, a man had volunteered his wife, Marilyn, to sing and they lived somewhere quite far away. Who was this Marilyn anyway? She apparently lived something like 40 minutes away. A solo would be so much easier to pull off.

When we arrived to get the generator, we learned that Sister Larsen was a pianist and would be happy to accompany the song. Then, when we left, I said to Scot, “You know I think Ikea is very close to here.” We had been wanting to go to Ikea to get a lamp. I said it too late, so we just missed the turn, and had to do a long U-turn to get back to the road. Finally, we found the entrance and stopped at the lunch counter. While we were eating, a woman walked up to the counter and Scot leaned over to me and said, “That woman is a Latter-day Saint.”

“How do you know?” I asked him.

He answered, “I can see the light in her face.” A minute later, her friend with little children arrived. Confirmed. She was a Latter-day Saint.

Seeing our missionary badges, she turned around and asked where we were from. We said we were the Proctors from Alpine, Utah and she said she was from Lehi, one town over from us. Then was the kicker. All at once she said, “I think I am singing with you on Saturday night. I’m Marilyn.” Right there at one of the Ikea tables Scot and Marilyn did a run-through of “O Come, O Come Emanuel,” and they sounded great.

Now San Juan, itself has nearly 400,000 people. We feel it every day in the traffic that jams and jerks. Yet Marilyn lives beyond San Juan, somewhere to the west of us, and with all those people that file through stores and make traffic snarls, what are the chances that we would meet Marilyn in Ikea? That she and we would be at the same spot at the same time? If we were in charge, we could never pull that off, but the Lord knows how to do things and it is right down to the very detail.

I don’t think the divine orchestration involved in having us run into Marilyn at the same time was just for the song. The song was beautifully performed. Yet, I think it was especially for me—that I could see that the Lord really did know how to do His work, and I should stop getting in the way of that. I should take a deep breath and trust.

That trust is paying off, and we will tell about that in articles about our mission to come. Yet, I can sense when the Lord is creating a miracle for us and when He introduces us to someone who wants to know Him. I can see that our conversations aren’t random, but blessed.

I am seeing that for someone to learn about the gospel is often a long process. Patience is required of a missionary. I am learning that some people just want to know if they can trust you. Love is required of a missionary.

That love isn’t my love, it is His. As the Savior said about those who preach His word, “I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:88). As a missionary, I am covered, I am led, and I am filled with His love for His children. What a privilege.

Becoming Family History Missionaries

Our particular assignment in our mission is to work with President Paul Horstmeier on using family history as an approach for missionaries to capture the hearts and minds of people. The missionaries are finding great success by talking with people about their family—and Puerto Ricans love their families. The missionaries ask questions like, “Do you know what your last name means?” or “Tell me about your grandfather,” all the way to, “Shall we put your name and your parent’s name here on the records of family search, and see if we can find more ancestors?”

Extensive work has been done on Puerto Rican family lines and it is fairly easy to land on lines that are well documented for many generations.  Imagine the thrill of a person who has suddenly received this gift. It is the opportunity to tell them why we in the gospel do family history and what eternal family means to us, and that our families can be sealed together in the temple so we have each other forever.

One set of missionary companions came up with the very innovative idea of going to a shopping center on black Friday and helping people carry their bags to their cars. Then they asked them a family history question and if the person would like to know more. These companions found 30 people who wanted to know more in a short period of time.

It is a bit like magic. The truth is the light is in all, even if some of us have temporarily forgotten it.

We are in the middle of designing a booth that will be taken to fairs and gatherings all over Puerto Rico for market days or big events where people gather. It will merely invite others to come and tell us about their family and get more names. This was a powerful tool when it was used in San Juan’s giant mall Plaza Las Americas during the temple open house last year. FamilySearch set up a booth, and it drew a crowd. One friend called those days at that booth, the best missionary experience he had in 40 years.

The wards in our stake are beginning to have family history nights, and we went to one of them this week.

Venir a Cristo

Finally, a word about another initiative that is working in our mission. It is a social media outreach on Facebook called Venir a Cristo (Come unto Christ). We have two social media teams working on creating stories and then they are posted on this Facebook page. The young missionaries who create these posts do so well, and we are very proud of them. We drive all over this island to capture different missionaries and settings, hoping that people will like and share these posts. They receive many comments and the missionaries follow up on those who have asked questions via phone and text.

We filmed one video this week at Plaza Aguas Buenas, which was shining bright for Christmas with lights everywhere. Unfortunately, for us, we followed our GPS and it took us a strange way. We could tell it was over a mountain, but no other way appeared. So, we drove along the way with the road getting darker and smaller and more curvy with every turn. Finally, we ended up at a gate with nowhere further to go. Our tires were slipping on the extremely steep road, nothing felt like progress and we were relieved when the very wealthy home owner, with lots of gated land on a mountain top, asked us with a French accent if we were lost. He told us how to get down the mountain and we were quite relieved.

Stake Christmas Party

We end with the now famous Christmas duet with Scot and Marilyn. They were wonderful, but our idea of a Christmas carol is quite different than the Puerto Ricans. Their Christmas songs require at the very least a bombas drum, a tambourine, maracas and lots of people who sing songs built on high energy repetition. In short, they are fun and your foot just has to tap along.

The Puerto Rican Latter-day Saints gave a whooping, clapping approval to “O Come, O Come Emanuel” They loved the message. I hope this week, when we take homemade cookies to our neighbors, that they like our slower songs that we carol to them as well.

It gives me great joy that we can love them and they can love us across our different cultures. I’d love tambourines for Christmas.