Better Than Essays and Textbooks

Heavenly Father likes me tremendously.

I was nothing short of skeptical when I opened my mission call. We are called by a prophet to serve in a particular place for a particular reason, and I firmly believe in a goodness-of-fit between a missionary and his or her designated spot of vineyard...but the correlation between Jenny and Oklahoma seemed dubious at first.

How could I have known then that Oklahoma was full of skeptics and seekers of a most inquisitive sort? How could I have suspected that my insatiable desire for learning would find a playground for growth?

I covet the Hugh B. Browns and Susan Easton Blacks of the world. When Sister Beck tells women to become scriptorians, I ache to know and become more. I cried the day that I graduated from college because I thought that my learning was ebbing from a steady stream of academia to a dismal drip. How could I possibly attain the quest for lifelong learning without course curriculum, professors, and research projects?

Enter Oklahoma.

Nothing is so challenging as having to defend one's religion with both scriptural evidence and personal faith. When the dangerously religious (and somewhat comical) self-made preacher tells us that he wants to become a high priest in the Mormon church, I must know what it means in a biblical sense to be a high priest. When a straight-faced female engineer tells us that the temple veil was ripped in twain and asks me to prove the necessity of modern temples, I've got to have biblical backing for my testimony. When a Baptist referral warmly welcomes us into an intellectual lion's den disguised as a friendly discussion, I have to know when I am backed up to the wall of faith so I can then wield the sword of testimony.

Sincere seekers are harder still. A young man admits that he hasn't prayed about Joseph Smith because he doesn't want to--his grandfather is a preacher, and he doesn't want to legitimate a claim that would undermine his granddad's authority. A prayerful woman asks why we need a prophet if we have access to personal revelation. A middle-aged gentleman hesitantly describes that he is "experiencing some resistance about this notion of a 'chosen' people."

How do I respond to such earnest questions? What do I learn from these sincere seekers of truth?

Let it suffice to say that my study of the scriptures has never been such a thrill. My mental capacity for remembering passages is increasing under the force of necessity. Questions breed questions, and I find myself in a happy tangled mess of budding truths. In short, Oklahoma presents me with the possibility of knowing and becoming precisely what I have been praying to become.

I might have a chance at becoming an amateur scriptorian after all.

And so I conclude-God must like me quite a lot to have called me to Oklahoma.

Stumbling Stones and Stepping Blocks

We can hold our questions against God, or we can let them bring us close to Him.

Consider Jordan Mecham.* He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but he hasn't been to church in many years. He had questions he told us-serious questions. We asked for a list. He presented a page of crude YouTube-informed misinformation.

Jordan wields a question like a sword, to thwart any truths that might disturb his easy lifestyle or convict his past. We can answer Jordan all day long, and our answers will never suffice. He doesn't want an answer, so he'll never have an answer. He is mad at God for this mess on earth, but he'll never ask God what's really going on down here.

Ching* is a different story. When we introduced the Plan of  Salvation to our Vietnamese pathologist friend, she had never even heard of Jesus Christ. She listened intently, then leaned forward and said, "But what is the meaning? I've lived my whole life without hearing of this, and I'm happy. What difference does it make?"

Ching is like a great funnel, just waiting to receive truth and sift through it until she finds a nugget of wisdom worth keeping. Her questions are serious. She asks about gay marriage. She asks about the Atonement.  She wants to know how these things will influence her life.

But just as with Jordan, we can answer her questions all day long and our answers will never suffice. There's a language barrier and an intelligence gap. We're just twenty-something-year-old girls hefting around really tremendous truths. But Ching will ask God. She will have her answers because she wants an answer.

The difference between Ching and Jordan is what they do with their questions. "Ask, and it shall be given unto you; knock, and it will be opened," pleads God. Every time we teach a lesson, we beg our investigators to seek answers from God. Don't take our word for it. "I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true. And if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things." (Moroni 9:4-5)

A question may be a stumbling stone or a stepping block. It all depends on what we choose to do with it.

*Names have been changed.

mis-sion-ary, noun

A missionary is someone who leaves their family for a short time, so that others may be with their families for eternity.

Sister Stewart and Sister Goodfellow at the Cottens' home.

Elastagirl

If I were to describe my greatest pre-mission weakness, I could sum it up in a word:

Inflexibility

I love a plan. Entropy makes me crazy. Messy people make me crazy. "Go with the flow" really means "a terrible day." I live to plan for tomorrow and next week and two months down the road.

I thought that mission life would be highly suited to my love for plans. Missionaries use day planners after all, right?

Ha!

Missionaries don't live by planners, we live by faith.

The missionary planner has two columns: "Daily Plan" and "Backup Plan." Truthfully, we could use one more column: "Backup, backup plan." Sometimes four appointments drop in a day. Sometimes the temperature is 67* and sunny on Wednesday, and 32* with freezing rain on Thursday. Sometimes your area splits and you have to share your car with incoming Elders (How, pray tell, does one "share a car"? In the January chill, I am tempted to say that "sharing a car" means designating the car to the sisters and the bikes to the elders.)

So you might have a car, and you might not. You can't trust the weather. You definitely can't depend on your appointments, because people are busy, sick, or disinterested, and will more than likely drop.

Where, then, can my inflexible, plan-loving soul turn?

I teach people every day to have faith, to repent, to covenant with God, to receive the Holy Ghost, and to endure to the end. But in a moment of stress, I am tempted to put my faith in my planner. To ignore the Holy Ghost in favor of routine. To give up when the going gets rough. To pine for the comforts of home. To forget the covenants of God. To mope and fall into apathy.

God, in His genius, demands more of me. He asks me to repent of my greatest pre-mission fault. I can't be a happy, effective missionary and yet cling tenaciously to my inflexible pet weakness. God asks me to go from Rigid Jenny to Elastagirl (Excuse the Pixar reference. I promise that I am a devoted missionary, even when I make movie analogies.)

As a companionship, we plan and plan and plan, and then we smile and revise our plans when they fall through. We laugh. We talk about the things that we are grateful for. We write sill songs about dropped appointments on the ukulele. Our prayers wax more sincere.

In short, we live what we preach. You can't not, really. It hurts too much to go it alone.
And so we trust in God.

I'll take Him over a day planner any day.

Three Lies

I entertained three lies this week. Through the Atonement I cast them out.

I didn't know how much they hurt or how untrue they were until the end of the day when I knelt to pray. Satan said:

You're not enough.

You don't have sufficient resources.

People can't change.

All day long I thought about how inadequate I was for the rigors of missionary work. How deficient my skills. How shy my mouth. How tight my budget  How thinly-lined my coat. How limited my time. How unkind the people. How unreceptive to the gospel. How unwilling to change.

And at the end of the day, God told me to stop. He invited me to let go of the hurt of the three hateful lies. And so did.

I am enough.

I have enough and to spare.

People can and will change.

This is what the Atonement means, and this is what I choose to believe.

Stream of Consciousness

Teaching in a tattoo parlor. This was enlightening. I walked in, stared at the reclining black chair in the corner, and paused. "Are you...a barber?" I offered. Just trying to be conversational. I didn't even notice the brazen photos on the wall or the bottles of ink stacked in boxes around the room.

But the ex-convict tattoo-artist is having us back for a second lesson later this week. He promised to read the Book of Mormon. I am tempted to be hopeful.

Dogs. Ugh. Must every Oklahoman own a minimum of three motley canines? They shed fur, they smell foul, and they break all personal barriers. But people don't like you unless you like their dogs. And so I'm learning. I pretend that they don't stink, and I let them sit on my lap. I try not to back up when they bark at the door. I use lint removers daily. And who knows but that I might actually like them one day?

After all, ours is a gospel that preaches a change of heart.

Cohabitation. It's a textbook term. The reality isn't as tidy as a textbook. Sometimes they love each other, sometimes they don't. They have high ideals, but marriage and a happy family didn't play out like they imagined they would. They talk about the issue long before we broach the topic. I suppose the conscience convicts us long before the lessons do. What is to be done for it? What can we, innocent 20-something year old girls, say about the drunk boyfriend and the forever partner? 

Whew. We're not counselors. But we have truth, and that makes us bold. As confident single women raised on principles and virtue and principle, we teach them truth. Repentance. Old-fashioned chastity. Faithfulness. Obedience to God. Is it enough? I believe it is.

The Book of Mormon. I've never read it like this before. Suddenly I feel the songwriters sorrow in Nephi's psalm. I'm captivated by King Benjamin's organized presentation of doctrine. I feel the exultation of the soul who receives  I know a little better what it means to rely on the Spirit.

Thanks, dear Heavenly Father, for letting me be a missionary.

Undone

It makes me tingle with annoyance when church members dismiss Isaiah. Call me odd, but Isaiah is my favorite scriptural author.

It does not seem to me inconsequential that my mission president counseled me using Isaiac verse during our first interview upon arrival in Oklahoma.

Please understand that the first hours and days of in-field service are crazy. Painful. Scary. Frankly overwhelming. I didn't know what to do with myself on the plane or in the mission home. I described my apprehensions (as professionally and un-emotionally as possible) to President Taylor, and this is what he said.

When Isaiah was first beckoned to do the Lord's work, his response was sheer despair. "I am undone!" he cried (2 Ne 16:5).

On the evening of December 18th as a brand new missionary, I could relate.

Three verses later, his response takes on a courageous bent. Now he says, "Here am I; send me" (verse 8). This latter reaction is the one that I had anticipated of myself while I was in the MTC. Before my mission, I was sure that I would be a "here am I; send me" sort of missionary. How could I, Sister Jenny Stewart, be anything else? It's easy to imagine such things before the day of sacrifice. But faced with doors to knock, members to meet, strangers to talk to, lessons to teach...my vision failed. I floundered. That first night in Oklahoma, sitting in the warmth of the mission home, I knew that I was undone.

What brought Isaiah from "undone" to "send me?" Metaphorically, an angel took a piece of coal from the temple altar and placed it on his lips. Please understand that this was a symbol of the application of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

It is only through the Atonement that we can move from a state of undoneness to a faithful "here am I" stance.

This is true. It is only through the Atonement of Jesus Christ that I find strength for the work. Every day is hard. The wind in Oklahoma is bitter when temperatures drop. People can be mean. Appointments drop like flies on a hot day. You might spend hours on the phone trying to find members to attend teaching appointments, and still you might fail. Some days you'll get teary-eyed every time you think about your nieces and nephews back home. But the Atonement of Jesus Christ covers it all.

I don't just teach about the doctrine of Christ; I believe it. It is the ennabling power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ that makes me love this messy, hard work. Perhaps a mission is the perfect place to learn about the Atonement because the work is completely impossible without it.

In truth, I am grateful. Grateful for a divinely-tailored trainer. Sister Goodfellow studied anthropology and visited Jerusalem; she gets me like few people do. She is also compassionate, diligent, and a powerful teacher.

I'm grateful for unbelievably generous members. They feed us dinner every night, and every night I come away in awe at the faith of our members.

I'm grateful for Oklahomans. "Salt of the earth," everyone said. It's true. I love praying with Baptists on the doorstep. I love their really kind rejections. I even sort of love our incredibly stubborn less-actives and their silly reasons for not coming back to church.

I'm grateful for Christmas packages of an angelic nature (thank you!!!) and a cozy apartment (albeit infested with roaches) and lots of time to study and learn and become something more than I am. I am grateful to be a missionary.

Dear God, here am I; send me!