I will go ahead and label this post "Part 1" since there were many things that happened to me on my mission that I, um, just didn't write home about. Not because I had done anything wrong, but there were just the little things that happened that I never told them because I really didn't want to make my parents worry about me. I have no idea how many of these stories I have. I did tell my parents some of my big stories, like being bitten by a dog, breaking my rib, or being robbed on the street, but there were all the other little stories that I didn't bother to write them about.
In my fourth area in the city of Eldorado I had one companion, Elder Caballero, who I was with for one transfer (before I was "emergency transferred" out of the area during a normal transfer, but that is another story. Wait, I don't think I ever told my parents about that one... I told them about my first emergency transfer that brought me to Eldorado, but I don't think I ever told them about why I had to leave Eldorado...oops. Anyway back to my normal story.) So, Elder Caballero was a very outspoken Paraguayan who always made it clear what he thought about things. In Paraguay they speak both Spanish and Guarani so he was obviously fluent in both. I on the other hand only knew how to say 5 or 6 words in Guarani, and two of them were "jagua piru" which means "skinny dog", so in other words, I knew nothing in Guarani. In the city of Eldorado about a third of the people were Paraguayans, and thus there were a lot of people who spoke Guarani.
One day after returning from a mission conference in Posadas, we were getting off the bus and my companion bumped into a woman as he was walking down the aisle of the bus. He turned towards her and said, "Excuse me." and then moved on and didn't think any more about what had happened. We were walking down the street about 2 hours later when a man approached us. All of the talking that happened next happened in Guarani so I didn't understand a word of it, but I could understand the man's tone. My companion explained afterwards what he had said.
We almost walked right past each other on the street but at the last moment the man turned and planted himself in front of my companion. He pointed his finger at my companion's chest and asked him if he was the one who had disrespected the woman on the bus. My companion was at first confused, but the man said that he remembered seeing my companion step on the woman's foot on the bus earlier. My companion said he was unaware of the fact that he had stepped on her foot but he said he was sorry about it. The man was not placated and continued to accuse him harshly with his finger now pointed directly at my companions face.
It was at this point that I noticed the ring on the man's finger. It was, shall we say, bone white and had a swastika carved into it. There was something about the man that was very unsettling. He continued to accuse my companion of "disrespecting" the woman and my companion continued to apologize profusely. The man was insisting that my companion would have to do something to satisfy her "wounded honor", and the general implication was that it would somehow involve a knife. My companion, Elder Caballero, who I had seen stand up to toughs on the street, listened to him talk big and would let nothing diminish his honor was obviously disturbed by the man's accusations and was trying to apologize and placate the man as best he could.
Eventually the man was satisfied with what ever my companion told him and with a parting warning he walked off. After the man left Elder Caballero explained to me what the man had said. My companion also told be about how in Paraguay someone's honor is a very serious thing, and to violate someone's honor could provoke serious consequences. My companion knew people who had been knifed over wounded honor (for example, my companion's full last name was Caballero-Ruiz Dias, but he only went by Caballero since another family in Paraguay had a blood feud with the Ruiz Dias family). So for my companion when the man accused him of dishonoring the woman on the bus, this was a very serious thing, especially considering the man's, um, shall we say, choice in jewelry. We were both a little shaken by the experience.
We explained what happened to our branch president. He was concerned but there was nothing he could do. We told our zone leader and mentioned it to the Elders in the mission office, they filed it away behind all the robbings, and kidnappings that happened in my mission (we averaged about one companionship per year was kidnapped/held hostage and robbed per year, which doesn't include all the street muggings at knife/gun point which happened every two or three months or so...something else I never mentioned to my parents...). Since there really wasn't much we could do we just chose to ignore it. Fortunately we never saw that man again.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Stories from My Mission: "She is in the twilight of her day of grace."
This story is perhaps a little more sensitive than most. Do not judge any of the people involved too harshly. The true nature of this story can only be understood if you have a truly eternal perspective of the nature of our existence, and of eternal progression. Also realize that what I write here is only a small part of what happened, thus be mindful of that when deciding whether the actions of everyone involved were justified or not. Some times I wonder about whether or not some of my actions were correct or not.
I will not say where or when this happened and I will try to keep it as anonymous as possible.
Sometime after arriving in my new area I met the family, which consisted of the mother, two daughters and a son. The two younger children, a boy and a girl, were already members of the Church but I only recall seeing them attend church a few times while I was in the area. I never found out anything about the father. The home situation was shall we say, less than ideal. The mother had health and mental issues which meant that she could not work very much, the eldest daughter had previously worked as a prostitute and had been forced to stop working due to her getting pregnant (and had been unwilling to get an abortion).
From what I could gather the family had been meeting off and on with the missionaries for about 5 or 6 years. The two youngest children had been baptized about a year before I got to the area, but the oldest daughter had not been baptized due to her profession, and the mother, well, that is the point of this story.
With my first companion we made a few visits to the family, but it was not until my second companion was in the area that things started to change. We were meeting more with the oldest daughter, partly because she was coming to the realization that her choice of profession was not a very good one and was making an honest effort to change, partly for her own sake but also because she realized that she didn't want her own child to grow up like her and viewed the Church as the best way of protecting her unborn child.
Every time we visited the mother would insist on telling us that she knew the Book of Mormon was the word of God and that Joseph Smith was his prophet, but when ever we asked her to come to church he answers would be evasive and inconsistent. We encouraged, prodded, cajoled, joked, exhorted and commanded, but she never came to church. Try as we might we couldn't get her to make the effort to come to sacrament meeting. She kept telling us that she knew she needed to get baptized and she even informed us that if she could get baptized then there were some things about her life that could get fixed.
There never was any indication that there were any major sins (i.e. prostitution, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, murder etc.) that prevented the mother from getting baptized so we were a bit baffled as to why she would never come to church. There always seemed to be some excuse (i.e. it rained, it was hot/cold, she was sick, her legs hurt, they had to go visit their cousin etc.).
During all of this I felt the need to keep visiting them. It was not a strong feeling or an impulsive feeling, just a gentle feeling that I should keep stopping by. All this came to a head when my third companion got to the area. Of my three companions in the area my second companion had the greatest rapport with the family. My third companion, not so much. After just a few weeks my companion was getting impatient with them and began making comments about how we shouldn't waste any more time visiting them. But I had seen how desperately the mother and daughter had wanted to change their lives and I just wanted to be there when they finally decided to take the first step.
I visited the family a few times with my new companion but I he was getting more and more impatient with them and with me. Things fell apart one night when we went to visit them and my companion insisted that we have some members there with us (getting members to help us out was not the easiest thing on my mission). This meant that we were late getting there and when we did arrive something about the family was very off. The eldest daughter was upset with us because we were late and yelled at us (with two Aaronic priesthood boys aged 14 and 16 who were with us, the only ones we could find on short notice).
After the yelling stopped the mother came out and was visibly upset with us, and while she spoke to us from her front porch she became more and more incoherent at some point she went back into her house, but didn't get very far when she was overcome by some type of epileptic seizure. I saw her start to seize up and I sprang into action. I dashed through the front door and with the help of her oldest daughter we got her sitting in a chair. Her convulsions were not very violent, but she was unable to speak. My companion, who had wanted nothing to do with the family, stayed outside even refusing to set foot in the house, even when I asked him to come help me give her a blessing. Because my companion was refusing to come in and I was unsure what to do I went ahead and placed my hands on her head and gave her a blessing.
I don't know what I was expecting, perhaps something miraculous, but instead she got worse. Again with the help of her daughter we were able to carry her into her room and lay her down on her bed. After a while her condition improved and she motioned to us to get a Book of Mormon that she kept on her bedside table. She took it and held it close to her chest and when she did that she seemed to calm down a bit more. After a while she was able to speak again and told me that when she gets bad she uses the Book of Mormon to calm her fits. She said that only the word of God could cure her of her ailment.
After making sure that she would be fine I exited the house and rejoined my companion, who had been standing outside, along with the two young men who were looking very awkward. As we walked away I told the two boys that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to talk about what had happened. I told them that it was OK to tell their parents but no one else. My companion didn't say anything until we got home. I don't remember what he said exactly but one thing he said was that he would never return to visit that house. This put me in a predicament because I suddenly felt a stronger need to visit them again to resolve some things that came up. Not knowing what to do I contacted my zone leader to see what he had to say. He agreed to come to the area so that he and I could visit with the family so that he could make an assessment of the situation.
Approximately a week later my zone leader came to our area and I went with him to visit the family. He spoke to the mother and all the children. He asked about their desires to get baptized, or whether those who were baptized would come to church. There were no dramatics or apparent problems. He couldn't figure out why the mother wouldn't come to church, the eldest daughter on the other hand was about 7 months pregnant at that point and had a hard time making it all the way to church. After meeting with them he said that he didn't find anything majorly wrong with them, except for the fact that the mother who had spent 6 years meeting with the missionaries had never come to church, despite her insistence on knowing that it was true, and that it would help her.
Shortly after this the mother did make the trek all the way to church, but only after the meetings were all done and the only person there was the branch president and his one counselor. She came asking the branch president for a blessing and he obliged. Because I was not present at the time what happened next was told to me by the branch president. In the middle of giving her a blessing she entered into one of her fits. The branch president said that when this happened he felt something wrong with her, beyond the obvious medical or mental issues, and was given to know by the Spirit that she was possessed by an evil spirit. So right then and there he exorcised the evil spirit from her. She calmed down significantly after he did that.
After this happened he met with me and we discussed everything that had happened. After much discussion he decided to go with me, and me alone because my companion refused to go, to visit the family because both he and I felt it necessary. It was in this meeting that the branch president told me something about the mother that I had not known previously. Before meeting the missionaries and coming in contact with the Church the mother, but not any of her children, had attended a certain Assembly of God church in the city. This particular denomination was known by the missionaries, due to the number of run-ins that we had with its members and pastors. There seemed to be at least one of this particular strand of Pentecostal church in every area that I lived in and no one seemed to every have anything good to say about them.
While this church was affiliated with the Assemblies of God movement that started in the US in the early 1900's, the particular sub-denomination that the mother attended was of a variety that had started independently in Brazil. They were known for being more extreme in their displays of "being filled with the spirit" and "speaking in tongues" than all the other Assemblies of God churches. The branch president told me that he had heard very bad things about that church and that most of the people who had spent any amount of time there end up being very messed up. That is apparently what happened to the mother, and somewhere along the way she had become possessed.
Shortly after this I went with the branch president to visit the family so that he could make an assessment about how the two children who were members of the Church were doing and to get an idea of what the eldest daughter was like, and to meet with the mother again. We both knew that we needed to go. So I left my companion with another priesthood holder (he was still upset that I was going to visit the family) and went with the branch president to meet the family.
I had been thinking a great deal about what had been going on and I was wondering why I felt the need to keep visiting the family. While meeting the family with the branch president was uneventful as we left we were talking about the situation and wondering what to do. That is when I received the key insight about the whole situation and shared it with the branch president. I didn't have the proper words to say it in Spanish so I had to first ask the branch president for the proper word. What I told him was, "She is in the twilight of her day of grace." When I said this he turned and looked back at their house as we walked away and paused, nodded and expressed regret that we had to see this.
What we both realized is that the mother had been given many, many opportunities to accept the truth. But she had made conscious decisions that resulted in many of her problems. Because she continued to refuse to come to church, despite all her experiences, she was quickly approaching the end of her day of grace when she would have no more opportunities to accept Jesus Christ. Not in this life or the next. This was her last chance, and the reason why I was prompted to be there (along with the branch president after my companion refused to go) was to bear witness of the twilight of her day of grace. She never did come to church. He two youngest did start coming again after I left, but she never did.
I will not say where or when this happened and I will try to keep it as anonymous as possible.
Sometime after arriving in my new area I met the family, which consisted of the mother, two daughters and a son. The two younger children, a boy and a girl, were already members of the Church but I only recall seeing them attend church a few times while I was in the area. I never found out anything about the father. The home situation was shall we say, less than ideal. The mother had health and mental issues which meant that she could not work very much, the eldest daughter had previously worked as a prostitute and had been forced to stop working due to her getting pregnant (and had been unwilling to get an abortion).
From what I could gather the family had been meeting off and on with the missionaries for about 5 or 6 years. The two youngest children had been baptized about a year before I got to the area, but the oldest daughter had not been baptized due to her profession, and the mother, well, that is the point of this story.
With my first companion we made a few visits to the family, but it was not until my second companion was in the area that things started to change. We were meeting more with the oldest daughter, partly because she was coming to the realization that her choice of profession was not a very good one and was making an honest effort to change, partly for her own sake but also because she realized that she didn't want her own child to grow up like her and viewed the Church as the best way of protecting her unborn child.
Every time we visited the mother would insist on telling us that she knew the Book of Mormon was the word of God and that Joseph Smith was his prophet, but when ever we asked her to come to church he answers would be evasive and inconsistent. We encouraged, prodded, cajoled, joked, exhorted and commanded, but she never came to church. Try as we might we couldn't get her to make the effort to come to sacrament meeting. She kept telling us that she knew she needed to get baptized and she even informed us that if she could get baptized then there were some things about her life that could get fixed.
There never was any indication that there were any major sins (i.e. prostitution, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, murder etc.) that prevented the mother from getting baptized so we were a bit baffled as to why she would never come to church. There always seemed to be some excuse (i.e. it rained, it was hot/cold, she was sick, her legs hurt, they had to go visit their cousin etc.).
During all of this I felt the need to keep visiting them. It was not a strong feeling or an impulsive feeling, just a gentle feeling that I should keep stopping by. All this came to a head when my third companion got to the area. Of my three companions in the area my second companion had the greatest rapport with the family. My third companion, not so much. After just a few weeks my companion was getting impatient with them and began making comments about how we shouldn't waste any more time visiting them. But I had seen how desperately the mother and daughter had wanted to change their lives and I just wanted to be there when they finally decided to take the first step.
I visited the family a few times with my new companion but I he was getting more and more impatient with them and with me. Things fell apart one night when we went to visit them and my companion insisted that we have some members there with us (getting members to help us out was not the easiest thing on my mission). This meant that we were late getting there and when we did arrive something about the family was very off. The eldest daughter was upset with us because we were late and yelled at us (with two Aaronic priesthood boys aged 14 and 16 who were with us, the only ones we could find on short notice).
After the yelling stopped the mother came out and was visibly upset with us, and while she spoke to us from her front porch she became more and more incoherent at some point she went back into her house, but didn't get very far when she was overcome by some type of epileptic seizure. I saw her start to seize up and I sprang into action. I dashed through the front door and with the help of her oldest daughter we got her sitting in a chair. Her convulsions were not very violent, but she was unable to speak. My companion, who had wanted nothing to do with the family, stayed outside even refusing to set foot in the house, even when I asked him to come help me give her a blessing. Because my companion was refusing to come in and I was unsure what to do I went ahead and placed my hands on her head and gave her a blessing.
I don't know what I was expecting, perhaps something miraculous, but instead she got worse. Again with the help of her daughter we were able to carry her into her room and lay her down on her bed. After a while her condition improved and she motioned to us to get a Book of Mormon that she kept on her bedside table. She took it and held it close to her chest and when she did that she seemed to calm down a bit more. After a while she was able to speak again and told me that when she gets bad she uses the Book of Mormon to calm her fits. She said that only the word of God could cure her of her ailment.
After making sure that she would be fine I exited the house and rejoined my companion, who had been standing outside, along with the two young men who were looking very awkward. As we walked away I told the two boys that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to talk about what had happened. I told them that it was OK to tell their parents but no one else. My companion didn't say anything until we got home. I don't remember what he said exactly but one thing he said was that he would never return to visit that house. This put me in a predicament because I suddenly felt a stronger need to visit them again to resolve some things that came up. Not knowing what to do I contacted my zone leader to see what he had to say. He agreed to come to the area so that he and I could visit with the family so that he could make an assessment of the situation.
Approximately a week later my zone leader came to our area and I went with him to visit the family. He spoke to the mother and all the children. He asked about their desires to get baptized, or whether those who were baptized would come to church. There were no dramatics or apparent problems. He couldn't figure out why the mother wouldn't come to church, the eldest daughter on the other hand was about 7 months pregnant at that point and had a hard time making it all the way to church. After meeting with them he said that he didn't find anything majorly wrong with them, except for the fact that the mother who had spent 6 years meeting with the missionaries had never come to church, despite her insistence on knowing that it was true, and that it would help her.
Shortly after this the mother did make the trek all the way to church, but only after the meetings were all done and the only person there was the branch president and his one counselor. She came asking the branch president for a blessing and he obliged. Because I was not present at the time what happened next was told to me by the branch president. In the middle of giving her a blessing she entered into one of her fits. The branch president said that when this happened he felt something wrong with her, beyond the obvious medical or mental issues, and was given to know by the Spirit that she was possessed by an evil spirit. So right then and there he exorcised the evil spirit from her. She calmed down significantly after he did that.
After this happened he met with me and we discussed everything that had happened. After much discussion he decided to go with me, and me alone because my companion refused to go, to visit the family because both he and I felt it necessary. It was in this meeting that the branch president told me something about the mother that I had not known previously. Before meeting the missionaries and coming in contact with the Church the mother, but not any of her children, had attended a certain Assembly of God church in the city. This particular denomination was known by the missionaries, due to the number of run-ins that we had with its members and pastors. There seemed to be at least one of this particular strand of Pentecostal church in every area that I lived in and no one seemed to every have anything good to say about them.
While this church was affiliated with the Assemblies of God movement that started in the US in the early 1900's, the particular sub-denomination that the mother attended was of a variety that had started independently in Brazil. They were known for being more extreme in their displays of "being filled with the spirit" and "speaking in tongues" than all the other Assemblies of God churches. The branch president told me that he had heard very bad things about that church and that most of the people who had spent any amount of time there end up being very messed up. That is apparently what happened to the mother, and somewhere along the way she had become possessed.
Shortly after this I went with the branch president to visit the family so that he could make an assessment about how the two children who were members of the Church were doing and to get an idea of what the eldest daughter was like, and to meet with the mother again. We both knew that we needed to go. So I left my companion with another priesthood holder (he was still upset that I was going to visit the family) and went with the branch president to meet the family.
I had been thinking a great deal about what had been going on and I was wondering why I felt the need to keep visiting the family. While meeting the family with the branch president was uneventful as we left we were talking about the situation and wondering what to do. That is when I received the key insight about the whole situation and shared it with the branch president. I didn't have the proper words to say it in Spanish so I had to first ask the branch president for the proper word. What I told him was, "She is in the twilight of her day of grace." When I said this he turned and looked back at their house as we walked away and paused, nodded and expressed regret that we had to see this.
What we both realized is that the mother had been given many, many opportunities to accept the truth. But she had made conscious decisions that resulted in many of her problems. Because she continued to refuse to come to church, despite all her experiences, she was quickly approaching the end of her day of grace when she would have no more opportunities to accept Jesus Christ. Not in this life or the next. This was her last chance, and the reason why I was prompted to be there (along with the branch president after my companion refused to go) was to bear witness of the twilight of her day of grace. She never did come to church. He two youngest did start coming again after I left, but she never did.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Stories from My Mission: The Spirit of Discernment
This story is perhaps a little different from the others that I have so far shared. It is a little more personal and deals with the spirit of discernment. The spirit of discernment is one of the spiritual gifts listed in D&C 46 (actually more properly the discerning of spirits) which in my experience is the ability to discern the disposition and unspoken thoughts of any spirit, both embodied and disembodied spirits. It is a rare and powerful gift that should not be taken lightly.
This story took place in the city of Barranqueras, my last area of my mission. It was perhaps my second or third week in the area since I was just getting to know everything but I was not yet familiar with all of our investigators. There was one particular family that we had visited maybe once or twice, always very late in the evening when it was very dark out. In order to get to their house we would walk down the levee that kept the Río Paraná from flooding the city, and then just past the local soda pop bottling plant we would drop down into a very dark neighborhood (the same one where I later met and taught the local crime boss).
My companion had been teaching this family for some time before I got to the area, and when I arrived we had had one or two visits with a minimal amount of teaching. We then had a period of time where we could not find them at home because of illness and other things, until one day we managed to set a date to visit with them and have a real charla (missionary lesson). We arrived at their house at about 8:00 at night. The husband was finishing up something in the back room and said that he would be right out. We chatted with the wife and their kids for a few minutes while we were waiting for the husband to join us.
My companion was excited about this family since they were a complete family (with the parents actually, legally married, which was a rare thing in Argentina). They seemed like great people and I was happy that we had a complete family to teach. For my companion I think it was a point of pride that he had found and had spent so much time carefully teaching this family and that they were receptive to our message. He was hoping to extend to them that evening the offer to get baptized and was hoping for the best. I did not know them very well so I couldn't say one way or the other how they would react to the offer.
While we were waiting I remember sitting there at their kitchen table letting my companion do most of the talking not focusing much on anything. That is when I began to feel different. It felt almost like Déjà vu but without the feeling like I was remembering anything. It was more like I knew what was about to happen, and my sitting there listening to the conversation was like listening to and watching a replay of an event that I had already seen. I remember distinctly the husband coming into the kitchen and hesitating at the door way for a moment and then returning to check that he had actually turned off their washing machine in the back room before coming and sitting down with us.
As I sat there and looked at him I began to see what was about to happen. We chatted for a few minutes before my companion began the charla. I knew that it would not get far and indeed it was only three or four minutes before the discussion changed into something else. The husband was not vocally expressing any doubts and my companion still had great confidence that they wanted to get baptized. Even though I did not know them very well I could discern that they would not get baptized, and there was nothing that I could do about it. As my companion continued to talk and teach them it came to my turn to teach. At this point the feeling I had been having became even more intense to the point that I could discern everything in the room with perfect clarity. I still recall every detail of the room as it has been burned into my memory.
As I sat there with this intense feeling washing over me the conversation came into such sharp focus that in an instant I was able to discern the entirety of the conversation from the point that I began to speak to the point that we left the house. I knew everything that would be said before it was said. I knew the reactions of each person, including my companion. When it was my turn to teach I began by asking the husband what he thought about what we had been teaching him. He answered with a rather non-committal answer.
From this point on it was like I was merely reading a well rehearsed script rather than speaking to them. I knew the questions I would ask, and the answers that they would give. I knew their reactions, the reaction of my companion, what he would say to them and how they would respond. It was literally like watching a movie where I had already read the script. There were no surprises. There was no uncertainty. It happened just as I had seen it, down to the very last word.
In response to a further question the husband informed us that he was not really interested in continuing with our discussions. My companion made a plea to get him to change his mind. When my companion had exhausted all his options he looked at me. I continued with the script that I had already seen in my mind. To every question and comment the husband responded exactly word for word how I had seen it, and politely, but firmly turned us down. The wife also expressed her doubts but noted that she enjoyed discussing the scriptures with us. After a time we had nothing left to discuss so we said our goodbyes and we stepped out into the night.
I had only seen to the point where we left the house and that is where the spirit left me. It was a powerful and energizing feeling, but also one that took a lot of my stamina. As my companion and I walked along in silence, I marveling at the incredible and unique experience that I had just had, and my companion rather shocked and saddened by the rapid and unexpected change in their willingness to hear our message. After a while I felt that I should say something to my companion since he was on the verge of tears. Here was a family that he had invested so much time, effort and emotion in and they had just told him that they didn't want to hear our message any more. It must have been quite hard on my companion, and made harder by the fact that it was unexpected for him.
For me nothing that happened that night was unexpected. As we walked I tried to figure out if my companion had felt the same thing that I had felt. I asked him if he had any idea that we were about to get shut out. He said that he had no idea, that it was the most unexpected thing for him. I asked him if he had tried to notice or see anything (i.e. discern anything) when he look at the family. He looked at me like I wasn't making sense and asked if I wasn't as surprised as he was. I told him about my experience and about how I could clearly discern everything that was going to be said before it was said.
His reaction, at the time, surprised me. He got angry with me demanded to know how I could be so uncaring about what just happened. I didn't know how to explain to him that I did care about what had happened, but that it did not come a surprise. I again tried to tell him about my experience and how I had clearly experience the gift of discernment, but he would have none of it. He reacted with anger and accused me of being arrogant and unfeeling. I was just flabbergasted.
Now as I look back on the event I realize that the reason why my companion had not felt anything was because he had closed himself off from the idea that this family that he cared so much for were unwilling to listen to him. The Spirit could not get through to him to tell him what he needed to know so in the critical moment it revealed to me what was to happen so that I could be a part of it and witness the event, and give testimony of it because my companion would not. It was something that needed to happen, even though I have no idea why, and the Spirit needed me to know what was going to happen so that I could testify of what had happened. I pray that that was not the final chance for that husband and wife to accept the gospel.
I did go back another time with a different companion but there was never any more interest to talk about the gospel and our doctrine. The wife was kind and respectful but they had made their choice.
This story took place in the city of Barranqueras, my last area of my mission. It was perhaps my second or third week in the area since I was just getting to know everything but I was not yet familiar with all of our investigators. There was one particular family that we had visited maybe once or twice, always very late in the evening when it was very dark out. In order to get to their house we would walk down the levee that kept the Río Paraná from flooding the city, and then just past the local soda pop bottling plant we would drop down into a very dark neighborhood (the same one where I later met and taught the local crime boss).
My companion had been teaching this family for some time before I got to the area, and when I arrived we had had one or two visits with a minimal amount of teaching. We then had a period of time where we could not find them at home because of illness and other things, until one day we managed to set a date to visit with them and have a real charla (missionary lesson). We arrived at their house at about 8:00 at night. The husband was finishing up something in the back room and said that he would be right out. We chatted with the wife and their kids for a few minutes while we were waiting for the husband to join us.
My companion was excited about this family since they were a complete family (with the parents actually, legally married, which was a rare thing in Argentina). They seemed like great people and I was happy that we had a complete family to teach. For my companion I think it was a point of pride that he had found and had spent so much time carefully teaching this family and that they were receptive to our message. He was hoping to extend to them that evening the offer to get baptized and was hoping for the best. I did not know them very well so I couldn't say one way or the other how they would react to the offer.
While we were waiting I remember sitting there at their kitchen table letting my companion do most of the talking not focusing much on anything. That is when I began to feel different. It felt almost like Déjà vu but without the feeling like I was remembering anything. It was more like I knew what was about to happen, and my sitting there listening to the conversation was like listening to and watching a replay of an event that I had already seen. I remember distinctly the husband coming into the kitchen and hesitating at the door way for a moment and then returning to check that he had actually turned off their washing machine in the back room before coming and sitting down with us.
As I sat there and looked at him I began to see what was about to happen. We chatted for a few minutes before my companion began the charla. I knew that it would not get far and indeed it was only three or four minutes before the discussion changed into something else. The husband was not vocally expressing any doubts and my companion still had great confidence that they wanted to get baptized. Even though I did not know them very well I could discern that they would not get baptized, and there was nothing that I could do about it. As my companion continued to talk and teach them it came to my turn to teach. At this point the feeling I had been having became even more intense to the point that I could discern everything in the room with perfect clarity. I still recall every detail of the room as it has been burned into my memory.
As I sat there with this intense feeling washing over me the conversation came into such sharp focus that in an instant I was able to discern the entirety of the conversation from the point that I began to speak to the point that we left the house. I knew everything that would be said before it was said. I knew the reactions of each person, including my companion. When it was my turn to teach I began by asking the husband what he thought about what we had been teaching him. He answered with a rather non-committal answer.
From this point on it was like I was merely reading a well rehearsed script rather than speaking to them. I knew the questions I would ask, and the answers that they would give. I knew their reactions, the reaction of my companion, what he would say to them and how they would respond. It was literally like watching a movie where I had already read the script. There were no surprises. There was no uncertainty. It happened just as I had seen it, down to the very last word.
In response to a further question the husband informed us that he was not really interested in continuing with our discussions. My companion made a plea to get him to change his mind. When my companion had exhausted all his options he looked at me. I continued with the script that I had already seen in my mind. To every question and comment the husband responded exactly word for word how I had seen it, and politely, but firmly turned us down. The wife also expressed her doubts but noted that she enjoyed discussing the scriptures with us. After a time we had nothing left to discuss so we said our goodbyes and we stepped out into the night.
I had only seen to the point where we left the house and that is where the spirit left me. It was a powerful and energizing feeling, but also one that took a lot of my stamina. As my companion and I walked along in silence, I marveling at the incredible and unique experience that I had just had, and my companion rather shocked and saddened by the rapid and unexpected change in their willingness to hear our message. After a while I felt that I should say something to my companion since he was on the verge of tears. Here was a family that he had invested so much time, effort and emotion in and they had just told him that they didn't want to hear our message any more. It must have been quite hard on my companion, and made harder by the fact that it was unexpected for him.
For me nothing that happened that night was unexpected. As we walked I tried to figure out if my companion had felt the same thing that I had felt. I asked him if he had any idea that we were about to get shut out. He said that he had no idea, that it was the most unexpected thing for him. I asked him if he had tried to notice or see anything (i.e. discern anything) when he look at the family. He looked at me like I wasn't making sense and asked if I wasn't as surprised as he was. I told him about my experience and about how I could clearly discern everything that was going to be said before it was said.
His reaction, at the time, surprised me. He got angry with me demanded to know how I could be so uncaring about what just happened. I didn't know how to explain to him that I did care about what had happened, but that it did not come a surprise. I again tried to tell him about my experience and how I had clearly experience the gift of discernment, but he would have none of it. He reacted with anger and accused me of being arrogant and unfeeling. I was just flabbergasted.
Now as I look back on the event I realize that the reason why my companion had not felt anything was because he had closed himself off from the idea that this family that he cared so much for were unwilling to listen to him. The Spirit could not get through to him to tell him what he needed to know so in the critical moment it revealed to me what was to happen so that I could be a part of it and witness the event, and give testimony of it because my companion would not. It was something that needed to happen, even though I have no idea why, and the Spirit needed me to know what was going to happen so that I could testify of what had happened. I pray that that was not the final chance for that husband and wife to accept the gospel.
I did go back another time with a different companion but there was never any more interest to talk about the gospel and our doctrine. The wife was kind and respectful but they had made their choice.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Book Review: Four Cultures of the West by John W. O'Malley
When I first heard about this book I thought it sounded interesting. The basic premise is that there are four separate and distinct cultures that cooperate and compete with each other in Western Civilization. He likens these four cultures to four streams (like the Gulf Stream or a jet stream) that are embedded in our larger culture. They twist and wind their way through our history and shape the way we view and interact with the world. I admit that I approached the book with a slightly critical attitude, intending to give it a thorough consideration. So when reading the book I had a perpetual thought of, "Is this right, or is he just trying to squeeze history into his own private interpretation?"
Because I had this attitude for much of the book when I finally got to the Epilogue I had a rather interesting realization. I realized that he was right, and because of how he had written the book, and how he approached the subject matter he could not be proven wrong, because any attempt to prove him wrong would by its very nature prove him right. I will explain this a little more after I give a summary of the four cultures that he is talking about.
The four cultures are: 1. The Prophetic 2. The Academic 3. The Rhetorical 4. The Artistic.
These are not the names that he necessarily assigns to them, though in the case of cultures one and two he does refer to them frequently as "the prophetic" and "the academic". The other two cultures are never given succinct names. I did take exception to his use of the term "prophetic" for culture one. A better term I think would be "The Proclamatory" but that term doesn't have the same zing to it as "The Prophetic" though I think "proclamatory" is closer to what he intends to encapsulate culture one. But there is no need to get hung up on definitions since he does spend several hundred pages explaining the four cultures. I will now give a brief breakdown of how he describes the four cultures.
1. The Prophetic: (The culture of proclamation and reform.) This culture deals with right and wrong, not with proof and argument. That is key to understanding this culture. The reason why he calls it prophetic is due to the nature of the prophecies in the Old Testament where the prophets proclaimed the wrongs and the sins of the people and told them to repent. There was no argument or persuasion. There was simple statement of impending judgement. The modern archetype of this culture can be found in Martin Luther. It should be noted that O'Malley does not place any one person in a single culture and stresses that someone as complex as Martin Luther cannot be subsumed under a single culture. But the most distinct elements of Martin Luther's work can be thought of as typical of culture one.
2. The Academic: (The culture of proof, logic, argument, professions (legal, technical etc.) and academia.) This culture deals with proof through argument and the proliferation of technical definitions and fields of study. It is the driving force behind both modern science and law. Since the end of World War II this culture has become the dominate culture in Western Civilization. It dominates in our schools, our jobs, our economy and our politics. This culture contains the idea that right and wrong can be argued and proven through presentation of evidence. It is the dry boring culture of academia where it is more important to be technically precise than it is to be interesting.
3. The Rhetorical: (The culture of poetry, persuasion, and the common good.) If culture two is the culture of proof and argument, then culture three is the culture of persuasion and cooperation. In culture three the members do not strive so much to prove a point, as in culture two, or to declare someone in the wrong, as in culture one, but to persuade all involved to come to a consensus. This is properly the culture of the consummate politician, well versed, well spoken, well mannered, well bred and well read. Those who partake of culture three are more interested in packing an overabundance of meaning into a poetic statement than giving a technical definition. If culture two tries to fine tune the meaning of terms then culture three prefers to proliferate meanings in a single term. The ideal education of culture three is the "Classical" education where the students learn to read the classics of Greek and Latin literature (and later the classics of more modern literature). The education of culture three involves rhetoric, grammar and a grounding in literature and philosophy. Up until the beginning of the 20th century to have an education meant to have a classical education in the style of culture three.
4. The Artistic: (The culture of art, museums, pageantry and show.) This culture is inherently non-verbal, but still very important. It is the culture of music, dance, sculpture, art, pageantry and processions. If there is a set pageantry that requires the motion of those involved to be a certain way then that is a demonstration of this culture. Major examples of this culture can be found in the show and pageantry that can be found in major weddings, coronation ceremonies, parades and catholic mass. The mere fact that art museums exist demonstrate the existence and distinct nature of culture four. Up until a few hundred years ago the concept of having a designated building to hold art, where people went to view art, was unheard of. Art was usually found in churches, in schools, in the houses of rich people or in public places. The concept of collecting, preserving and displaying art in its own "artistic" space is a result of the growth of culture four. The fact that you do not find the concept of an art museum unusual indicates that you at least accept the existence of culture four, even if you were not aware of the existence of culture four.
These four cultures do not work in a vacuum and neither does O'Malley imply that they are the only elements of our society, but rather they are like the Gulf Stream, a major movement embedded in the larger ocean of our society. There are other currents and cross currents but these four cultures constitute a major part of our society. They sometimes work together and sometimes against each other. At times they move without interaction and at other times they are in direct competition.
If culture one strives to make people holy, culture two strives to make well tuned professionals, culture three strives to make well rounded individuals who can work well with others, and culture four strives to make people emotive and expressive.
When I finally got to the Epilogue I was still a little unconvinced, not because O'Malley did not make his case properly, but because the subject matter is very complex and I was still keeping a skeptical attitude. But when I read his Epilogue I had a sudden epiphany. O'Malley was right, and could not be proven wrong. The reason for this is because, as he begins his Epilogue,
So why should you care about this? This all seems rather academic you may say, but if we understand these different cultures then we can begin to understand the society we live in. I will give a couple examples of how these different cultures manifest themselves in a very real way in our society today.
A few months ago the governor of the state where I live went onto a live radio show to talk about his plan for the state. One of the things he mentioned was the inefficiencies in the education system in the state. Specifically he said that there were some majors or fields of studies that were basically worthless since they would not help anyone get a job and pay off their student debt. Specifically he took issue with certain liberal arts (emphasis on the liberal) and suggested that if people wanted to study those things then they should do so at a private university, not at a public university, where those types of things are a waste of time. The backlash was rather harsh from some segments, most without argument (culture one on display) and motivated by political considerations. There were some people who wrote letters to the editor of various newspapers who insisted quite strenuously that the purpose of a liberal arts education was not so that they could get a job, but rather so that they could be a more well rounded and "educated" individual. They were not looking for job training in their degree but rather to gain an "education", something that cannot be quantified by a paycheck.
What we had here was a clash of cultures. The governor, taking the position from culture two, insisted that education had its purpose in training individuals to do a specific task so that they could get a job and achieve that which is most valuable to culture two, the quantification of human life, in this case in the quantification of a large(r) paycheck. But this clashed with culture three which holds that education is not for specific training but to enlarge a person so that they have a greater more well rounded understanding, even if none of it is quantifiably practical. Thus there were two cultures divided by a common language and they fundamentally failed to communicate. Ultimately both sides concluded that the other daft and had taken all leave of reason because obviously they have no idea what the word "education" means.
So where else do we see these four cultures? Here is a list of a few possibilities:
Because I had this attitude for much of the book when I finally got to the Epilogue I had a rather interesting realization. I realized that he was right, and because of how he had written the book, and how he approached the subject matter he could not be proven wrong, because any attempt to prove him wrong would by its very nature prove him right. I will explain this a little more after I give a summary of the four cultures that he is talking about.
The four cultures are: 1. The Prophetic 2. The Academic 3. The Rhetorical 4. The Artistic.
These are not the names that he necessarily assigns to them, though in the case of cultures one and two he does refer to them frequently as "the prophetic" and "the academic". The other two cultures are never given succinct names. I did take exception to his use of the term "prophetic" for culture one. A better term I think would be "The Proclamatory" but that term doesn't have the same zing to it as "The Prophetic" though I think "proclamatory" is closer to what he intends to encapsulate culture one. But there is no need to get hung up on definitions since he does spend several hundred pages explaining the four cultures. I will now give a brief breakdown of how he describes the four cultures.
1. The Prophetic: (The culture of proclamation and reform.) This culture deals with right and wrong, not with proof and argument. That is key to understanding this culture. The reason why he calls it prophetic is due to the nature of the prophecies in the Old Testament where the prophets proclaimed the wrongs and the sins of the people and told them to repent. There was no argument or persuasion. There was simple statement of impending judgement. The modern archetype of this culture can be found in Martin Luther. It should be noted that O'Malley does not place any one person in a single culture and stresses that someone as complex as Martin Luther cannot be subsumed under a single culture. But the most distinct elements of Martin Luther's work can be thought of as typical of culture one.
2. The Academic: (The culture of proof, logic, argument, professions (legal, technical etc.) and academia.) This culture deals with proof through argument and the proliferation of technical definitions and fields of study. It is the driving force behind both modern science and law. Since the end of World War II this culture has become the dominate culture in Western Civilization. It dominates in our schools, our jobs, our economy and our politics. This culture contains the idea that right and wrong can be argued and proven through presentation of evidence. It is the dry boring culture of academia where it is more important to be technically precise than it is to be interesting.
3. The Rhetorical: (The culture of poetry, persuasion, and the common good.) If culture two is the culture of proof and argument, then culture three is the culture of persuasion and cooperation. In culture three the members do not strive so much to prove a point, as in culture two, or to declare someone in the wrong, as in culture one, but to persuade all involved to come to a consensus. This is properly the culture of the consummate politician, well versed, well spoken, well mannered, well bred and well read. Those who partake of culture three are more interested in packing an overabundance of meaning into a poetic statement than giving a technical definition. If culture two tries to fine tune the meaning of terms then culture three prefers to proliferate meanings in a single term. The ideal education of culture three is the "Classical" education where the students learn to read the classics of Greek and Latin literature (and later the classics of more modern literature). The education of culture three involves rhetoric, grammar and a grounding in literature and philosophy. Up until the beginning of the 20th century to have an education meant to have a classical education in the style of culture three.
4. The Artistic: (The culture of art, museums, pageantry and show.) This culture is inherently non-verbal, but still very important. It is the culture of music, dance, sculpture, art, pageantry and processions. If there is a set pageantry that requires the motion of those involved to be a certain way then that is a demonstration of this culture. Major examples of this culture can be found in the show and pageantry that can be found in major weddings, coronation ceremonies, parades and catholic mass. The mere fact that art museums exist demonstrate the existence and distinct nature of culture four. Up until a few hundred years ago the concept of having a designated building to hold art, where people went to view art, was unheard of. Art was usually found in churches, in schools, in the houses of rich people or in public places. The concept of collecting, preserving and displaying art in its own "artistic" space is a result of the growth of culture four. The fact that you do not find the concept of an art museum unusual indicates that you at least accept the existence of culture four, even if you were not aware of the existence of culture four.
These four cultures do not work in a vacuum and neither does O'Malley imply that they are the only elements of our society, but rather they are like the Gulf Stream, a major movement embedded in the larger ocean of our society. There are other currents and cross currents but these four cultures constitute a major part of our society. They sometimes work together and sometimes against each other. At times they move without interaction and at other times they are in direct competition.
If culture one strives to make people holy, culture two strives to make well tuned professionals, culture three strives to make well rounded individuals who can work well with others, and culture four strives to make people emotive and expressive.
When I finally got to the Epilogue I was still a little unconvinced, not because O'Malley did not make his case properly, but because the subject matter is very complex and I was still keeping a skeptical attitude. But when I read his Epilogue I had a sudden epiphany. O'Malley was right, and could not be proven wrong. The reason for this is because, as he begins his Epilogue,
"The genre in which I have tried to write this book is the epideictic genre of culture three. The genre has as it purpose the heightening of appreciation. With that end in view I have held up for you the accomplishments of my four cultures." (p. 235)It was at this point that I realized that he was never trying to "prove" anything, because that was a symptom of culture two, which he was astutely avoiding when writing his book. And furthermore if anyone took it upon themselves to prove him wrong then by the very attempt they would prove him right, because by so doing they are exhibiting the characteristics of culture two. If someone proclaims him wrong with no argument then they are exhibiting the characteristics of culture one. Thus any attempt to prove him wrong automatically proves him right. And this is because he was not proving anything other than making a simple statement and observation for us to see no different than saying that the Mississippi River flows south, and the Gulf Stream flows northeast. So the entire time I was taking a skeptical attitude but by so doing I was proving him right.
So why should you care about this? This all seems rather academic you may say, but if we understand these different cultures then we can begin to understand the society we live in. I will give a couple examples of how these different cultures manifest themselves in a very real way in our society today.
A few months ago the governor of the state where I live went onto a live radio show to talk about his plan for the state. One of the things he mentioned was the inefficiencies in the education system in the state. Specifically he said that there were some majors or fields of studies that were basically worthless since they would not help anyone get a job and pay off their student debt. Specifically he took issue with certain liberal arts (emphasis on the liberal) and suggested that if people wanted to study those things then they should do so at a private university, not at a public university, where those types of things are a waste of time. The backlash was rather harsh from some segments, most without argument (culture one on display) and motivated by political considerations. There were some people who wrote letters to the editor of various newspapers who insisted quite strenuously that the purpose of a liberal arts education was not so that they could get a job, but rather so that they could be a more well rounded and "educated" individual. They were not looking for job training in their degree but rather to gain an "education", something that cannot be quantified by a paycheck.
What we had here was a clash of cultures. The governor, taking the position from culture two, insisted that education had its purpose in training individuals to do a specific task so that they could get a job and achieve that which is most valuable to culture two, the quantification of human life, in this case in the quantification of a large(r) paycheck. But this clashed with culture three which holds that education is not for specific training but to enlarge a person so that they have a greater more well rounded understanding, even if none of it is quantifiably practical. Thus there were two cultures divided by a common language and they fundamentally failed to communicate. Ultimately both sides concluded that the other daft and had taken all leave of reason because obviously they have no idea what the word "education" means.
So where else do we see these four cultures? Here is a list of a few possibilities:
- Street protests (culture one)
- Art museums (culture four)
- Promotion of Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) research and education (culture two)
- Home schooling parents who want to give their children a "good" and "classical" education (one and three respectively)
- Anti-GMO, anti-government, anti-global warming, pro-GMO, pro-government, pro-global warming fights, disputes, internet comments and Facebook posts (culture one)
- Expressing dismay that children don't read good literature, and read trash like Twilight (mixture of one and three)
- People saying that whenever there is a political dispute we just "need to sit down and talk about it rationally and 'have a dialogue'" (culture three)
- The people who think the people from the previous list item are crazy and willing to compromise with the devil (culture one)
The thing to remember is that each of the four cultures have a different set of values and things that they consider to be "the good" (though "the good" is more indicative of culture three). Because each culture measures value differently there are disagreements over the things that our society should place emphasis on and what should be encouraged and what should not. It should be emphasized that not all aspects of our society fall into these four cultures, just as not all parts of the ocean are in a current, but they are major players in our society and determine how many of our current political and social conflicts and triumphs work and come about. As a final note I should point out that while these cultures may determine the form and function of disputes and cooperative efforts alike in our society, they do not determine the content. These cultures are about form not content.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Don't forget what it means to be Christlike
As I was sitting in church today one of the speakers mentioned how she was continuously working on being more Christlike. As she said it my mind immediately began to turn and to think about the term "Christlike" in an analytic way (it's just the way my mind works). I thought about how it is a very nebulous term that is at the same time very specific and intuitive while being fraught with difficulties and misunderstandings. I recalled how I had heard people use it in such a way that it was basically reduced to a platitude, i.e. their interpretation was so wide just about anything could be considered Christlike.
My train of thought wandered back and forth considering all the ways that I had heard people refer to being Christlike. I remembered people telling me (not me personally, but to my Sunday School class or Seminary class) years ago when I was a teenager, "Jesus spent all his time going about and talking to people and helping them, so that's what you need to be like, and that is being Christlike." Effectively what I heard was "Jesus was a big time extrovert, like me, so if you want to be Christlike then you need to be an extrovert, like me!" (For some reason extroverts tend to think that everyone should be an extrovert like them. I'm sure that there are many introverts who also think that everyone should be introverts, but because they are introverts they don't tend to go around telling people about it.)
At one point during my train of thought I decided to write a blog post about what I was thinking. My initial thought was to title the post something like, "When being Christlike becomes meaningless" but then I quickly realized that I would probable spend most of my post explaining that I am not implying that we should not be Christlike, but that we should not use the term "Christlike" in a way that it removes all meaning. That's when I decided to change my approach and settled on the current title.
The term "Christlike" is rather simple in its meaning but complex in its application. If you look up the word in a dictionary you might get something like this, "resembling or showing the spirit of Jesus Christ". Unfortunately too many references to being Christlike focus more on personality than on specific acts of kindness or forgiveness. Sometimes we spend too much time saying that we need to be Christlike but fail to identify specific examples of how we might be Christlike. Perhaps if we realize that we are getting caught up in the trivial we should reorient our approach and think more on our relationship with Christ because after we have recommitted ourselves to Christ and his atonement, then being Christlike comes more easily and the attributes of living a Christlike life will flow easily to us. First come the Christ and then be Christlike. It is something that we must do again and again. It is not a one time event, but a continual process.
If at any point we feel that "being Christlike" has become a trite saying that is said because it needs to be said we must first come unto Christ and that will remind us what it means to be Christlike. A good place to start is to return to what has been called the Constitution of a Perfect Life, the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. The key is to remember that I should not become a platitude to say that we are working on being Christlike.
My train of thought wandered back and forth considering all the ways that I had heard people refer to being Christlike. I remembered people telling me (not me personally, but to my Sunday School class or Seminary class) years ago when I was a teenager, "Jesus spent all his time going about and talking to people and helping them, so that's what you need to be like, and that is being Christlike." Effectively what I heard was "Jesus was a big time extrovert, like me, so if you want to be Christlike then you need to be an extrovert, like me!" (For some reason extroverts tend to think that everyone should be an extrovert like them. I'm sure that there are many introverts who also think that everyone should be introverts, but because they are introverts they don't tend to go around telling people about it.)
At one point during my train of thought I decided to write a blog post about what I was thinking. My initial thought was to title the post something like, "When being Christlike becomes meaningless" but then I quickly realized that I would probable spend most of my post explaining that I am not implying that we should not be Christlike, but that we should not use the term "Christlike" in a way that it removes all meaning. That's when I decided to change my approach and settled on the current title.
The term "Christlike" is rather simple in its meaning but complex in its application. If you look up the word in a dictionary you might get something like this, "resembling or showing the spirit of Jesus Christ". Unfortunately too many references to being Christlike focus more on personality than on specific acts of kindness or forgiveness. Sometimes we spend too much time saying that we need to be Christlike but fail to identify specific examples of how we might be Christlike. Perhaps if we realize that we are getting caught up in the trivial we should reorient our approach and think more on our relationship with Christ because after we have recommitted ourselves to Christ and his atonement, then being Christlike comes more easily and the attributes of living a Christlike life will flow easily to us. First come the Christ and then be Christlike. It is something that we must do again and again. It is not a one time event, but a continual process.
If at any point we feel that "being Christlike" has become a trite saying that is said because it needs to be said we must first come unto Christ and that will remind us what it means to be Christlike. A good place to start is to return to what has been called the Constitution of a Perfect Life, the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. The key is to remember that I should not become a platitude to say that we are working on being Christlike.
This comes from a talk given by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland back in 2006.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Stories from My Mission: Ethnic Tensions in Argentina
Normally when you think about ethnic tensions and strife Argentina is not a place that you would associate with that kind of thing, mostly because there is very little ethnic tension in Argentina. The fact that there is so little tension makes it that much more surprising when you run into it. One of the (mostly) unspoken points of pride among Argentines is that they are not racist ("Como los norteamericanos" [Like the Americans] as they would say). They like to view themselves as not partaking in the gross sin of racism (again, "Unlike those Americans, who are the worst racists in the world") unlike some or most of their neighbors. But even though they pride themselves in being non-racist I have found them to be no different from everyone else in the world.
One of the reasons why there is so little ethnic tension in Argentina is because the people there are so homogeneous. It is estimated that 93%-96% of the population is of European origin. That is, pure European origin, not mixed native and European (Mestizo), which only makes up 3%-6% of the population. This is very odd for a Latin American country because, for example, Mexico is about 60% Mestizo and 30% native, and Paraguay is about 95% Mestizo. Furthermore the most prominent country of origin for Argentines is Italy, which makes up approximately 60% of the population, followed by Spain (30%). This high amount of Italian heritage has greatly influenced everything from cuisine to language.
Thus the homogeneity among Argentines is the reason why there is so little ethnic tension in Argentina, despite what a few Argentines have told me, who insisted that Argentines are just naturally more resistant to racism (it's sort of like arguing that Eskimos are more naturally resistant to heat stroke). Despite this I found that many Argentines actually do deal with ethnic tensions, but it is not just as visible as it is in other places. I will give a couple of examples that I was able see in person.
In my second area of my mission, Sáenz Peña, there is a small barrio (neighborhood) on the edge of the city where several Toba live. The Toba are a tribe of natives that lived in the area of the Gran Chaco when the Spanish conquistadors showed up. The relationship between the Spanish and the Toba was about average, meaning the Spanish took their land, moved them to very poor plots of land, exploited their labor, and generally mistreated them.Since then the relationship between the Toba and the Europeans has not been about average (meaning not very good, which is average for the relationship between natives and Europeans). There have been some very serious problems but it is nothing that anyone talks about anymore.
So there was a barrio, called barrio Toba, where all the Toba lived in Sáenz Peña. The Toba there mostly kept to themselves, and everyone else kept away from them. When I say everyone kept away from the Toba, I mean there was a buffer zone of 50-100 meters surrounding barrio Toba where no one would build, as you can see in the image from Google Earth below. I have marked barrio Toba in the image with a red outline. You can see the (unofficial) buffer zone to the north and to the west, with the edge of the city to the east.
The most direct route would have taken us through barrio Toba.
But he insisted on taking a route that almost doubled the distance, just so we wouldn't have to go through barrio Toba. Below is the route we took.
When I asked him why we couldn't just take the direct route his only reply was, "We just shouldn't go in there."
In that area there was one man who was a member of the Church who was also a Toba. He would come to church occasionally, and when I was with my American companions we would occasionally go visit him. At the time the branch (local Church congregation) was having a hard time getting things organized. They were trying to get home teaching started. At one point I suggested to the branch president that this Toba brother should have home teachers assigned to him. The branch president was a bit evasive in his answer and when I pressed him what it came down to was no one was willing to visit him. (I should note that the branch president was not unwilling to do it, he was just stating a reality. He had many problems he had to deal with in the branch and adding the ethnic tension between the Toba and everyone else to the mix was just a little much for him.)
I mentioned this to a member of the branch who was also a counselor in the district presidency (kind of like a stake presidency). He sort of blew it off by saying, "Of course, he's a Toba. We don't talk to them." (As a note, he said this rather sarcastically implying that he did not approve of the way everyone else treated the Toba. This member was one of the few people who was willing to go into barrio Toba and talk to them. There were a few others, but not many.)
The few times that I did go into barrio Toba we were always met with children peeking out from doors and windows and all the adults hiding from us. Some times I wish I spent more time there and worked on getting the Toba to trust me.
There were other minor things that I came across that reminded me about the ethnic tensions just below the surface. The Argentines didn't really get along with Chileans, or the Bolivians (and they just sort of ignored the Uruguayans), but it was never as pronounced as it was with the Toba. Overall the ethnic tensions were practically nonexistent but that probably had to do more with the extreme homogeneity of the country and not so much something special about the Argentines.
One of the reasons why there is so little ethnic tension in Argentina is because the people there are so homogeneous. It is estimated that 93%-96% of the population is of European origin. That is, pure European origin, not mixed native and European (Mestizo), which only makes up 3%-6% of the population. This is very odd for a Latin American country because, for example, Mexico is about 60% Mestizo and 30% native, and Paraguay is about 95% Mestizo. Furthermore the most prominent country of origin for Argentines is Italy, which makes up approximately 60% of the population, followed by Spain (30%). This high amount of Italian heritage has greatly influenced everything from cuisine to language.
Thus the homogeneity among Argentines is the reason why there is so little ethnic tension in Argentina, despite what a few Argentines have told me, who insisted that Argentines are just naturally more resistant to racism (it's sort of like arguing that Eskimos are more naturally resistant to heat stroke). Despite this I found that many Argentines actually do deal with ethnic tensions, but it is not just as visible as it is in other places. I will give a couple of examples that I was able see in person.
In my second area of my mission, Sáenz Peña, there is a small barrio (neighborhood) on the edge of the city where several Toba live. The Toba are a tribe of natives that lived in the area of the Gran Chaco when the Spanish conquistadors showed up. The relationship between the Spanish and the Toba was about average, meaning the Spanish took their land, moved them to very poor plots of land, exploited their labor, and generally mistreated them.Since then the relationship between the Toba and the Europeans has not been about average (meaning not very good, which is average for the relationship between natives and Europeans). There have been some very serious problems but it is nothing that anyone talks about anymore.
So there was a barrio, called barrio Toba, where all the Toba lived in Sáenz Peña. The Toba there mostly kept to themselves, and everyone else kept away from them. When I say everyone kept away from the Toba, I mean there was a buffer zone of 50-100 meters surrounding barrio Toba where no one would build, as you can see in the image from Google Earth below. I have marked barrio Toba in the image with a red outline. You can see the (unofficial) buffer zone to the north and to the west, with the edge of the city to the east.
 |
| Barrio Toba in Sáenz Peña outlined in red. |
To the south there are a few houses, but the people that lived there were the poorest of the poor. When I got to Sáenz Peña the barrio directly to the south of barrio Toba didn't even have a name, which is unusual in Argentina. A few months before I got there the city had some devastating floods and the people who had nothing left after the flood were given small plots of land in the poorest part of the city, right next to barrio Toba. The city did not provide power, water or sewers, or even a school for the people in the poor barrio. They just sent a road grader though to make the roads and told people to move in. In many cases the deal was 4000 for 150 pesos, that is 4000 bricks for 150 pesos. You buy the bricks and someone brings them on a horse drawn cart and dumps them on your plot. You then have to build the house yourself using nothing but mud (and straw!) for mortar. It was a very primitive life and disease was rampant. So the only people who would even live close to the Toba were the poorest of the poor who lived in the worst of conditions.
While I was in the area I worked with one missionary, who was Argentine, who tended to try to avoid the Toba at all cost. This avoidance was at times painfully obvious. I remember once we were visiting someone who lived in the poor barrio just south of barrio Toba and when we were done visiting we had to head north to find our next appointment. My companion, the Argentine, insisted on walking around barrio Toba rather than go through it. Below I have marked on the satellite image where we were and where we had to go. We were at point A and we had to get to point B.
In that area there was one man who was a member of the Church who was also a Toba. He would come to church occasionally, and when I was with my American companions we would occasionally go visit him. At the time the branch (local Church congregation) was having a hard time getting things organized. They were trying to get home teaching started. At one point I suggested to the branch president that this Toba brother should have home teachers assigned to him. The branch president was a bit evasive in his answer and when I pressed him what it came down to was no one was willing to visit him. (I should note that the branch president was not unwilling to do it, he was just stating a reality. He had many problems he had to deal with in the branch and adding the ethnic tension between the Toba and everyone else to the mix was just a little much for him.)
I mentioned this to a member of the branch who was also a counselor in the district presidency (kind of like a stake presidency). He sort of blew it off by saying, "Of course, he's a Toba. We don't talk to them." (As a note, he said this rather sarcastically implying that he did not approve of the way everyone else treated the Toba. This member was one of the few people who was willing to go into barrio Toba and talk to them. There were a few others, but not many.)
The few times that I did go into barrio Toba we were always met with children peeking out from doors and windows and all the adults hiding from us. Some times I wish I spent more time there and worked on getting the Toba to trust me.
There were other minor things that I came across that reminded me about the ethnic tensions just below the surface. The Argentines didn't really get along with Chileans, or the Bolivians (and they just sort of ignored the Uruguayans), but it was never as pronounced as it was with the Toba. Overall the ethnic tensions were practically nonexistent but that probably had to do more with the extreme homogeneity of the country and not so much something special about the Argentines.
Friday, May 3, 2013
Stories from My Mission: Sandra Gets Baptized
This story comes from the second area of my mission in the city of Sáenz Peña. Whenever a missionary arrives in an area the standard procedure is for the missionary who already knows the area to give a "data dump" on the incoming missionary. This includes things like the names of people that are currently meeting with the missionaries, members we are working with, important information about the area etc. Thus on my first day in the area I sat down with my companion Elder Keyes and went through the standard procedure. There were a few people they had been teaching and I wrote their names down on my weekly agenda that I carried around with me.
Then I asked if there was any one who was ready to be baptized. Elder Keyes looked at me and said, "Yes...well sort of. There is one woman named Sandra who is going to get baptized."
"Oh?" I asked, "When is she getting baptized?"
"She doesn't have a date yet."
(me) "... how many charlas [discussions] has she had?"
"Just one...well sort of...but she is going to get baptized."
"Did you ask her if she wanted to get baptized?"
"No, but I just know that she is going to get baptized."
"Has she come to church yet?"
"No."
"When was the last time you talked to her?"
"We saw her about three weeks ago."
"And that was the last time you gave her a charla?"
"No. That was four weeks ago."
(me) "..."
"How many times have you talked to her?"
"Once or twice. But she is going to get baptized."
"How do you know that?"
"She's a great person and I just know that she is going to get baptized."
There was something sincere about the way that Elder Keyes said it that made me know it too. Even though I had never met her I knew that Sandra would get baptized. Under any normal circumstances Sandra would have been considered to be a dead investigator (i.e. not progressing in the discussions, not showing willingness to meet with us, not reading, coming to church etc.). But there was just something about Elder Keyes and the way he said it that made me believe it too (for anyone who knows Elder Keyes they know that he is a very sincere, kind person, and he really does know what he is talking about). So I put her name down on the back of my agenda as a future possibility.
Over the next few weeks when I was working with Elder Keyes occasionally we would walk past Sandra's house, but we never seemed to have time to stop and talk to her. But eventually we did have an opportunity to stop, and she wasn't home. So we tried again. And again. And again. Eventually we found her two kids at home (aged 11 and 13). We talked to them briefly. We asked if their mother was around and they told us that she was working, she had just gotten a new job on the other side of the city and it took a lot of time to travel and to work. They seemed nice and asked when we could come back and talk about the church again. We said we would come back when we could.
Eventually we finally caught Sandra at home and were able to talk to her a little bit, but she didn't have a lot of time. She was getting ready to go to some school thing with her kids. We set a time to come back and meet with her but when we came she wasn't there.
After six weeks with Elder Keyes, it was time for him to go home. I saw him off and promised him that I would take care of the people that he cared about so much.
My new companion came into the area and like normal we sat down and I told him about all the people we were teaching. My new companion, Elder Pereyda, was Argentine and very opinionated. I gave him all the standard information, but when I came to Sandra things got a little interesting. The conversation was roughly like the one I had with Elder Keyes, except with Elder Pereyda interjecting comments about how this was stupid, a waste of time, he wasn't going to write her name down because it was obvious that she wasn't an investigator (remember it had been 10 weeks since her first and only charla, and about 4 weeks since our last contact with her). My new companion was "efficient" and wasn't going to waste his time with someone who had no prospects of progressing.
I sincerely told him that Sandra was going to get baptized, because Elder Keyes had told me so, and I believed him. Elder Pereyda just thought I was daft.
Over the next few weeks the issue of Sandra was a minor bit of contention between the two of us. It was never spoken but it was there every time we talked about our list of investigators. I even pointed out Sandra's house to him as we were walking by and told him that if we were unable to teach her before I left the area then he could go there and have a guaranteed baptism. He wasn't much amused with that. I could tell that he was just waiting to "cut her off" so that he didn't have to deal with the thought hanging over our companionship. Because of this I always steered him away from meeting with Sandra because I knew that if he went to meet her with his attitude then a disaster would happen.
This went on for about 3 weeks until one day I got a call saying that I needed to go into Resistencia, where the mission office was located, so that I could get my official Argentine ID (Documento Nacional de Identidad, or DNI). The trip would take a full day so I would have to spend the night in Resistencia. I was to be traveling with the companion of the zone leader who also had to go get his DNI, which meant that our zone leader would be staying with Elder Pereyda.
As I was getting ready to leave (as in I had by bag and was walking out the door with the zone leader's companion) Elder Pereyda looked at me and asked if there was anything that he and the zone leader could do while we were gone (I knew the area better and I knew who all the people were that we had been talking to, he was still learning the area). I looked at him and the zone leader, Elder Cook, and in a moment of inspiration said, "You could visit Sandra." Elder Pereyda got a gleam in his eye that said, "Now's my chance. This is going to be a charla franca [frank discussion, usually when we tell the person that we will never visit them again]." He wanted to get Sandra off the list, even if he had never written her name down on his own list, he knew that she was still on my list.
Elder Cook saw the exchanges of "looks" and knew that something was up. He asked if Sandra was some kind of problem. I told him no, she was going to get baptized, which started the whole discussion again of, "How many charlas has she had?" and all that. But in the middle of it I just walked out the door to go catch the bus to Resistencia and left Elder Pereyda to explain to Elder Cook (I'm sure the explanation was full of sarcasm) all about Sandra, the mystery "investigator" who had only one discussion, had never come to church, and had talked to the missionaries a grand total of 5 minutes in the past 10 weeks. I'm sure Elder Cook was primed and skeptical when they left to go find Sandra that evening.
The next evening, after my trip to Resistencia, I finally returned to the house where we were staying. Elder Pereyda and Cook were there and were ready with a story of their own that they couldn't wait to tell. After I left them the day before they planned a few things and went to take care of some things that the zone leader, Elder Cook, needed to take care of. When they were done with that it was getting pretty late and dark so they had time for one final visit before they went home. That is when they decided to visit Sandra.
She happened to be home, available and with time to talk. They decided to skip most of the formalities and after a brief chat they dived right into a discussion of the basic message of the gospel (i.e. Book of Mormon, the restoration, prophets). At this point Elder Pereyda asked the blunt question, "Do you want us to keep coming by and visiting you?" To which she said, "Yes." That took Elder Pereyda back a little. Then Elder Cook asked her if she was willing to commit to baptism and to becoming a member of the church. Her response about killed Elder Pereyda. She answered with a simple, "Sí."
The almost didn't know how to respond to that. But they collected themselves and then set about setting a date for her to get baptized. They spent about two hours talking with her and making sure that she really was ready and willing to get baptized (she was). Over the next two weeks we met with her some more and taught her the rest of the charlas. She came to church and finally three weeks after that night she got baptized. I wished Elder Keyes could have been there.
Shortly after that Elder Pereyda got transferred out of the area (which is unusual but there were things that I had to do in the area that only God knew about). My new companion was Elder Palazuelos. We visited with Sandra some more to have was were known as "new member discussions". Even though her children were there for a few of our visits they didn't seem to be too interested (they had a cousin and an aunt and uncle who were very active members of another church who were trying to get them to join that church).
After six weeks with Elder Palazuelos I finally got transferred to a new area. A few weeks after the transfer I had the opportunity to talk to Elder Palazuelos. I asked about Sandra. He said that she had gotten sick and needed surgery and had a hard time coming to church. The transition to coming to church is always a difficult thing for recent converts and missionaries are always hoping that the people who they baptized keep coming and remain active in the church. But Elder Palazuelos said that one Sunday Sandra's two children, with out prompting, showed up at church and asked the missionaries to be baptized. They had see a change in their mother and wanted to be part of that. So on their own (aged 11 and 13) they just came and wanted to be baptized.
Some day I hope to be able to find out what happened to Sandra and her children, and find out if they are still going to church, because God was looking out for them and was making sure that we, the missionaries, were ready for when they were.
Then I asked if there was any one who was ready to be baptized. Elder Keyes looked at me and said, "Yes...well sort of. There is one woman named Sandra who is going to get baptized."
"Oh?" I asked, "When is she getting baptized?"
"She doesn't have a date yet."
(me) "... how many charlas [discussions] has she had?"
"Just one...well sort of...but she is going to get baptized."
"Did you ask her if she wanted to get baptized?"
"No, but I just know that she is going to get baptized."
"Has she come to church yet?"
"No."
"When was the last time you talked to her?"
"We saw her about three weeks ago."
"And that was the last time you gave her a charla?"
"No. That was four weeks ago."
(me) "..."
"How many times have you talked to her?"
"Once or twice. But she is going to get baptized."
"How do you know that?"
"She's a great person and I just know that she is going to get baptized."
There was something sincere about the way that Elder Keyes said it that made me know it too. Even though I had never met her I knew that Sandra would get baptized. Under any normal circumstances Sandra would have been considered to be a dead investigator (i.e. not progressing in the discussions, not showing willingness to meet with us, not reading, coming to church etc.). But there was just something about Elder Keyes and the way he said it that made me believe it too (for anyone who knows Elder Keyes they know that he is a very sincere, kind person, and he really does know what he is talking about). So I put her name down on the back of my agenda as a future possibility.
Over the next few weeks when I was working with Elder Keyes occasionally we would walk past Sandra's house, but we never seemed to have time to stop and talk to her. But eventually we did have an opportunity to stop, and she wasn't home. So we tried again. And again. And again. Eventually we found her two kids at home (aged 11 and 13). We talked to them briefly. We asked if their mother was around and they told us that she was working, she had just gotten a new job on the other side of the city and it took a lot of time to travel and to work. They seemed nice and asked when we could come back and talk about the church again. We said we would come back when we could.
Eventually we finally caught Sandra at home and were able to talk to her a little bit, but she didn't have a lot of time. She was getting ready to go to some school thing with her kids. We set a time to come back and meet with her but when we came she wasn't there.
After six weeks with Elder Keyes, it was time for him to go home. I saw him off and promised him that I would take care of the people that he cared about so much.
My new companion came into the area and like normal we sat down and I told him about all the people we were teaching. My new companion, Elder Pereyda, was Argentine and very opinionated. I gave him all the standard information, but when I came to Sandra things got a little interesting. The conversation was roughly like the one I had with Elder Keyes, except with Elder Pereyda interjecting comments about how this was stupid, a waste of time, he wasn't going to write her name down because it was obvious that she wasn't an investigator (remember it had been 10 weeks since her first and only charla, and about 4 weeks since our last contact with her). My new companion was "efficient" and wasn't going to waste his time with someone who had no prospects of progressing.
I sincerely told him that Sandra was going to get baptized, because Elder Keyes had told me so, and I believed him. Elder Pereyda just thought I was daft.
Over the next few weeks the issue of Sandra was a minor bit of contention between the two of us. It was never spoken but it was there every time we talked about our list of investigators. I even pointed out Sandra's house to him as we were walking by and told him that if we were unable to teach her before I left the area then he could go there and have a guaranteed baptism. He wasn't much amused with that. I could tell that he was just waiting to "cut her off" so that he didn't have to deal with the thought hanging over our companionship. Because of this I always steered him away from meeting with Sandra because I knew that if he went to meet her with his attitude then a disaster would happen.
This went on for about 3 weeks until one day I got a call saying that I needed to go into Resistencia, where the mission office was located, so that I could get my official Argentine ID (Documento Nacional de Identidad, or DNI). The trip would take a full day so I would have to spend the night in Resistencia. I was to be traveling with the companion of the zone leader who also had to go get his DNI, which meant that our zone leader would be staying with Elder Pereyda.
As I was getting ready to leave (as in I had by bag and was walking out the door with the zone leader's companion) Elder Pereyda looked at me and asked if there was anything that he and the zone leader could do while we were gone (I knew the area better and I knew who all the people were that we had been talking to, he was still learning the area). I looked at him and the zone leader, Elder Cook, and in a moment of inspiration said, "You could visit Sandra." Elder Pereyda got a gleam in his eye that said, "Now's my chance. This is going to be a charla franca [frank discussion, usually when we tell the person that we will never visit them again]." He wanted to get Sandra off the list, even if he had never written her name down on his own list, he knew that she was still on my list.
Elder Cook saw the exchanges of "looks" and knew that something was up. He asked if Sandra was some kind of problem. I told him no, she was going to get baptized, which started the whole discussion again of, "How many charlas has she had?" and all that. But in the middle of it I just walked out the door to go catch the bus to Resistencia and left Elder Pereyda to explain to Elder Cook (I'm sure the explanation was full of sarcasm) all about Sandra, the mystery "investigator" who had only one discussion, had never come to church, and had talked to the missionaries a grand total of 5 minutes in the past 10 weeks. I'm sure Elder Cook was primed and skeptical when they left to go find Sandra that evening.
The next evening, after my trip to Resistencia, I finally returned to the house where we were staying. Elder Pereyda and Cook were there and were ready with a story of their own that they couldn't wait to tell. After I left them the day before they planned a few things and went to take care of some things that the zone leader, Elder Cook, needed to take care of. When they were done with that it was getting pretty late and dark so they had time for one final visit before they went home. That is when they decided to visit Sandra.
She happened to be home, available and with time to talk. They decided to skip most of the formalities and after a brief chat they dived right into a discussion of the basic message of the gospel (i.e. Book of Mormon, the restoration, prophets). At this point Elder Pereyda asked the blunt question, "Do you want us to keep coming by and visiting you?" To which she said, "Yes." That took Elder Pereyda back a little. Then Elder Cook asked her if she was willing to commit to baptism and to becoming a member of the church. Her response about killed Elder Pereyda. She answered with a simple, "Sí."
The almost didn't know how to respond to that. But they collected themselves and then set about setting a date for her to get baptized. They spent about two hours talking with her and making sure that she really was ready and willing to get baptized (she was). Over the next two weeks we met with her some more and taught her the rest of the charlas. She came to church and finally three weeks after that night she got baptized. I wished Elder Keyes could have been there.
Shortly after that Elder Pereyda got transferred out of the area (which is unusual but there were things that I had to do in the area that only God knew about). My new companion was Elder Palazuelos. We visited with Sandra some more to have was were known as "new member discussions". Even though her children were there for a few of our visits they didn't seem to be too interested (they had a cousin and an aunt and uncle who were very active members of another church who were trying to get them to join that church).
After six weeks with Elder Palazuelos I finally got transferred to a new area. A few weeks after the transfer I had the opportunity to talk to Elder Palazuelos. I asked about Sandra. He said that she had gotten sick and needed surgery and had a hard time coming to church. The transition to coming to church is always a difficult thing for recent converts and missionaries are always hoping that the people who they baptized keep coming and remain active in the church. But Elder Palazuelos said that one Sunday Sandra's two children, with out prompting, showed up at church and asked the missionaries to be baptized. They had see a change in their mother and wanted to be part of that. So on their own (aged 11 and 13) they just came and wanted to be baptized.
Some day I hope to be able to find out what happened to Sandra and her children, and find out if they are still going to church, because God was looking out for them and was making sure that we, the missionaries, were ready for when they were.
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