Mission - Chapter 1

Today marks the three year mark of me being off my mission, so I’m going to post my mission story in sections over the next 11 days(hopefully, I lost my draft for 3 of them). I'll write a chapter per companion. I think that'll be 11 chapters. So first off the MTC.

The MTC was a whole different bear compared to the MTC. I'll go ahead and give you a run-down of the district. First you have me, Elder Naive. Heading into the MTC, I was thinking, this is it, everyone hear are missionaries going out to do the Lord's work, and I'm going to do everything possible to continue that work to the best of my abilities. I'm out for the right reasons, I've prepared for this, and I’m going to be as obedient as possible while doing the Lord’s work.

My companion, Elder Normal. Pretty normal guy, really, that's all I can really say about him. We got along well, but we didn't really have anything in common, so our conversations were fairly limited, but just normal. Always slept through morning study.

Our companionship in the same room, we'll start with Elder Laid-Back. I never got to know this guy really well. Easy to get along with, but not really sure his reasons for a mission or how he did on his mission, considering he went to a different mission.

His companion, Elder Five-year. He had dated a girl for five years and she wouldn't marry him unless he served a mission. From what I could tell, that was his only reason for being there; at least that's what his attitude showed.

The other room for our district was insanity all the way around. Elder Serious. He was a recent convert and was able to serve a mission at age 27. Very serious minded, but also, very socially awkward. A really terrible match to his companion...

Elder Jokey. He was always joking around and never took anything all that serious. Most people enjoyed being around him and he liked to be the center of attention.

The last companionship was Elder Psycho and Elder Crazy. Elder Psycho was exactly that. Also, quite socially inept and all over the place. His companion, Elder Crazy wasn't near as crazy, and got along well with everyone. He usually hung out with Elder Jokey and made jokes all the time.

We had sisters in our district as well, but I didn't get to know them very well, not like some of the other Elder's in our group.

So anyway, we get there and first thing first is meeting the Branch President and going through interviews. Well, as I already mentioned my naivety, and my over-optimism going into the MTC, they put me as the district leader, which in reality was pretty funny, because I didn't become a senior companion until 4 months from coming home.

MTC was pretty typical for the most part, and I'll only highlight a couple of parts. We happened to be in the MTC the same time that General Conference was going on. My sleeping habits being the way they are, I hadn't been able to stay awake through one of them yet, and wasn't too concerned with the fact, and just talked about it casually with the other people in the district till one sister from our district decided to chew me out for sleeping through it. Kind of surprised me.

Nobody had ever told me what to do during a 2 hour district meeting. Luckily, I only had one of those to run. So I decide to help everyone memorize the first discussion for lack of anything better to think of. Elder Five-year wouldn't participate; he felt it wasn't necessary to memorize the discussions, or to do anything else for that matter. Sometime during that, Elder Psycho was called out of the district meeting. Given the nature of Elder Psycho, we thought that he had done something bad, as he was prone to do that. He came back in tears. So here I am, in the MTC for one week, and running my first district meeting, and something traumatic has happened to one of the Elder's in my district and somehow, I'm supposed to take care of this. I just continue with things as they are, and tried to think of what to do. Eventually he burst out and tells us all that his younger brother had just died, but he had made the decision to stay out in the field. At that point, there wasn't any reason to continue district meeting, and we went to our rooms, where Elder Crazy and I gave him a blessing. This is perhaps one of the closest bonding experiences of our district. Unfortunately, things like that usually only happen when there's a crisis.

As it's getting close to the end, things start to unravel a little bit. The close quarters start to grate on the companionships. Mainly between Elder Serious and Jokey, and Elder Psycho and Crazy. Elder Jokey always had his jokes, which unfortunately tended to be cutting and making fun of Elder Serious and Psycho, and Elder Crazy and Normal would fuel his tendency, and let's face it, Elder Serious and Psycho made themselves pretty easy targets. Both were just so socially awkward that it made for some pretty bad times.

This isn't to say it was totally bad. I remember once when Elder Serious was sick, and couldn't leave the room, so one Elder would usually stay behind. I stayed with him a few times and had some good conversations with him, which he expressed his appreciation to me for talking to him. Elder Jokey and Serious just clashed too much to have any good conversations. I'm glad that that is a trait I seem to have. I can get along with anybody, no matter how different their personality may be, especially when it comes to one on one conversation with people.

Well, things got the worst during the last week. All the time during MTC, they talk about 'quiet dignity' and at that point, things were getting more rowdy and rambunctious. Anyway, during the last week, they have you doing door approaches to people who decide come volunteer to be investigators. So my companion and I knock on this one door, and a college-aged girl happens to be the 'investigator'. Afterwards Elder Normal goes and spreads to all the Elders in the district that there's a really hot girl in this room and they all need to see her. Personally, I didn't care so much for her. I never find girl labeled 'hot' to be attractive. Anyway, everybody in my district is waiting outside this door for this hot girl to walk out. I was pretty disgusted by their immaturity, but let them decide what they should do for themselves. Elder Serious, on the other hand, was very offended that these guys are supposed to be Elders of Israel and here they are goggling after this girl. He talked to his companion, Elder Jokey, about it, which basically gave his companion more fodder for his jokes that always put people down. When Elder Serious approached me about, I told him basically to try to talk to him in a move loving tone, than the condescending tone that he had used the first time. He immediately followed my advice, which surprised me, and my respect for this socially backward guy rose quite a bit. For somebody to accept somebody else's suggestion so readily and to use it. He was certainly trying and making an effort to do the right things. Of course his companion would have none of it, held on to the fact that he's better than his companion and made fun of him even more out of his presence. I almost unloaded on this guy at moment when I heard him. I could barely contain my rage at that point. Instead of enlightening Elder Jokey, like I should have, course he may not have even respected my words either, I went to the AP and explained the situation, and came and had a little meeting about loving your companion or some weak message that didn't get the point across. I think this was the precursor to the rest of my mission, showing that instead of addressing the problems that needed addressing, I let them slide so as to avoid conflict.

That about sums up my MTC experience, still naive, still have the Spirit, and glad to be going to the mission field. We said goodbye to Elders Laidback, Five-year, and Normal, and our sisters, as they went to a different mission, and Elders Serious, Jokey, Psycho, and Crazy came with me to Vegas.