We are creatures of habit and settling into a routine here in Salt Lake City. I saw my friend Nathan only once this week on my way to BJJ on Monday. He recognized me and wanted to know more about me. Wendy met him that same day calling a couple to repentance while they were on their way up a set of stairs in a residential neighbourhood we pass through on our way to a grocery store. Wendy said she saw him at the corner this morning at about 8AM. I didn't see him on my way to the gym and he was gone when we went by again at 9AM after our Monday morning devotional. I pray for him regularly that he might get the help he needs to be made whole.
Our work at the Church History Library remains interesting as we piece together a timeline of implementation of self-reliance programming milestones in Mexico. This past week I came across a letter indicating the date a regional scouting committee was organized, the first in Mexico, formalizing scouting as the activity arm of the Aaronic priesthood quorums. The relationship to self-reliance is the value scouting puts on a scout being wise in the use of resources. In 2001 Brother Ashton (aka Baloo) and I (aka Akela from the Jungle Book) started a scout cub pack in the Champlain Ward when we lived in the National Capital Region and both had sons that were "cub scout" age (our David and Levi - first and third from the right in the photo below, and Brother Ashton's stepson son, Austin, fourth from the right and Freddie King, first from the left). Sister Schlachter sewed the neckerchiefs that were part of our uniforms. They were patterned after a troop Brother Ashton led in the Yukon - we didn't have a budget but we found plenty of no or little cost fun and learning to keep our "pack "and us busy (DYB = do your best - POW is Prince of Wales, the building where we met).
Fast forward to 2013 and our scouting program had grown to include Venturers - teenagers (including our son Matthew, seated on the couch, second from the left in the photo below). We participated in the City of Ottawa's scouting "couch rally" and won the event! They received a list of clues for city landmarks and they needed to snap a picture of the troop on the couch they dragged around with them within a certain time limit. They received points if they got the landmark correct and extra points for every bystander they could convince to be in the photo - missionary-like boldness. It didn't take much encouragement but it did take some encouragement at first for them to invite strangers to strike a pose with us. This was one of the first photos they took (It is reflection in a window on Welling Street in Ottawa, across from the Supreme Court building). As the day progressed they were very successful in getting people to pose with them. A tie dye shirt (that they made during an activity) and a red-and-white necktie made up their uniforms. I was the Group Commissioner and so my uniform choice wasn't so flexible.
The challenge with scouting for everyone was the prohibitive cost of registration (between $60 and $110 per participant depending on the year) on top of which we needed funding to run the program. I was serving as the Bishop of our congregation when our ward counsel succeeded in a finding a solution that everyone could agree upon and committed to implement. Much to our disappointment, that same year our stake (i.e., an ecclesiastic unit consisting of a number of congregations) decided to no longer support scouting. Like so many things in our lives, establishing a scouting program might have seemed like the goal, but it wasn't - it was providing these boys with life experiences to support the teachings of the prophets to help them become loving brethren, husbands and fathers willing to faithfully serve in their communities. For our ward council, what we achieved was unity while respecting very different perspectives. I look forward to finding out how the scouting programs evolved in Mexico. After more than a century of involvement internationally, the Church formally withdrew from scouting in 2018.
On Friday we went to serve in the Ogden temple with a sister missionary from Mexico that works in our Latin America group - she was our ideal guide, shepherding us to and from the temple using the Utah Valley's public transit system and then to the Rancho Market in Salt Lake City - a large Latin American grocery store. It was very much like being in Aurrera o Chaudreille - large supermarket chains in Mexico. We bought a few things but went shopping again the next day (our preparation day) at Winco which better suited our week-by-week small quantity needs. Winco is a 6.5 km walk one way - we must have passed at least a dozen tattoo businesses en route but a highlight of the walk was a pizza place where a fellow was
tossing dough. I was tempted to give it try when I got home. We also came across this "No Cruising" sign which I found amusing. I mused about how they would ever enforce something like this. In Bow Island, the little town that I still call home, cruising the four blocks of Main Street in our parents' trucks to see and be seen was one of the few things available for youth to do on Friday and Saturday nights. I wish I had been involved in the scouting program, it might have saved me some of the trauma I experienced as a youth that I am still working my way through.
Saturday afternoon we went to a display at the Family History Museum to see an exhibition showcasing 45 of
Minerva Teichert’s paintings. They are beautiful. The one that made me smile depicted pioneers dancing. Sister Schlachter and I led the organization of a tri-stake pioneer trek that took place in 2013 to give youth of our church an opportunity to pull handcarts and live in the great outdoors near Petawawa, Ontario for a week. It took a lot of people and three years to organize. Somehow after a gruelling day of pulling all their belongings along the trails, like the pioneers depicted in the painting, our youth still had joy and
energy to dance (link is to a video of our youth doing the Virginia Reel). I am grateful for the faith and sacrifices the pioneers made to travel to and settle in the valley in which we now find ourselves and to build the church that has helped bring me closer to Jesus Christ.
Sister Schlachter and I were invited to participate as speakers in our sacrament meeting on Sunday, our assigned topic was prayer and receiving answers to prayer. I spoke about my accepting the invitation to come unto Christ. Key milestones in my decision were decisive answers to prayers to God.
Not unlike Nephi in the Book of Mormon, I too was born of goodly parents, albeit of a different faith than I now profess. They were concerned for my welfare and happiness and taught me to recite prayers from a young age before meals and with our congregation during our Sunday worship meetings. When I reached the age of accountability (i.e., 8 years of age), I confessed my sins to the authority of our church and at his direction recited a certain number of these prayers as penance to make things right. I don't recall focusing on the words of the recitations, rather it was something that kept my lips busy while my mind poured my heart out to God. I can still recite them as they are imprinted in my mind. I accepted my sinfulness without question until my early 20's when I started asking myself: "To what end? Who am I? Why am I on Earth? What is the purpose of life?"
This was before the days of the internet. In our community, there were no answers readily available, not even bad answers. In my search, I regret that I delved into places I ought not to have gone. In the midst of this confusion I met a young man who, like us now, was waiting for a visa to get to his assigned mission but in the Cook Islands. We wrote and exchanged cassette tapes for the two years that he served and he invited me to read the Book of Mormon. I committed to do so after I read the Bible - which up to that point I had never done. I read it from cover to cover and was shocked to find that I didn't know God. I then read the Book of Mormon and found that its focus was the same God as in the Bible. When my friend returned from his mission I met with the missionaries to learn more. They taught me how to pray in my own words and I offered the first prayer in my life out loud - I cannot adequately express the joy I felt as I knelt with the missionaries and prayed. I had found the answers to my questions. I joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints a week before my 28th birthday.
My only regret is that I didn't find the Church sooner - but like my experience with our congregation's deliberations on scouting that spanned over a decade, I probably wouldn't have been ready to accept its teachings and precepts before I did. I am a much different person than I was 35 years ago when I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and intentionally embarked on the covenant path to become more like Jesus Christ. I don't claim to know a whole lot more than I did then but I know enough and what I know brings me peace as I continue to strive to be a better husband, father and missionary and to "think celestial".
I saw this jack-o-lantern in our parking lot on Sunday afternoon (photo below). It reminds me of a
2007 talk by Elder Dallin H. Oaks, who counselled us that we have to forego some good things in order to choose others that are better or best because they help us develop faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and strengthen our families. I really enjoy the excitement of young children dressed up for Halloween coming to our door on October 31 each year and the fellowship of a good game of golf, the same can be said of the lifting, karate, and BJJ I do. They are all good but the question I ask myself is what would be better or best with respect to developing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and strengthening our family.
Being a senior missionary is a full-time job. As a result, I have had to cut down the time I devote to strenuous physical activity since we left Lethbridge from about 4 hours a day to about an hour a day on average for a seven-day period. I can feel when I haven't done enough to maintain my mental health. My lived experience is that serving others face to face is as effective, even better or best. Our service in the Church History Library is service but a solitary, intellectual affair. I very much look forward to our work in Mexico when we get there.
An intern in the Latin America group worked in Mitt Romney's office when he was running for President of the United States - apparently a treat he loved was "Hostess Twinkies". They don't sell them in Canada and I hadn't had one in decades. I forked over CAN$3.76 for two of them - 280 calories on my way back from BJJ tonight. They were "good" but for the price, "better" would have been one of Sue Hamer's doughnuts in Ottawa and best a raw, unpeeled carrot from our garden in Lethbridge.
We didn't get an invitation to go to the Mexican Consulate for our visa this week so we will be here for another couple of weeks at least. It's going to be great!
Comments
Post a Comment