8/1/91 - Mission call

Twenty years and one month ago today, a letter was signed by a machine replicating the signature of Ezra Taft Benson, calling me to serve in the Dominican Republic Santo Domingo East Mission.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around how much time has passed since then. More time has passed between that mission call and today than passed between my birth and my mission call. My God, I'm middle-aged.

I don't feel it because I don't have kids. I probably have mission companions who are within just a couple years of sending their first sons on missions.

Or let's put this another way: Almost as much time has passed between my mission and now as had passed for my father between the time he served his mission and I served mine.

That's weird to think about because, of course, my father served his mission before I was born, and anything that happened before I was born is ancient history. But 1991—that feels like just a decade ago.

A real decade ago, 2001-2003, I "relived" my mission over that two-year period by rereading every day the journal entry I had written exactly ten years previously. (I kept a voluminous missionary journal. Which no one will ever see if I have anything to say about it.) Then, every Sunday, 2000s me would write a letter to 1990s me commenting on what had happened to 1990s me during that past week—offering advice, consolation, etc.

Weird as it might sound, I found it a fruitful spiritual discipline. It helped me see how I had changed over those ten years. It helped me get clear about what I valued from my past Mormon experience and what I was glad I had left behind.

I've decided that I want to do a similar kind of extended observance of the 20th anniversary of my mission. But this time around, I don't want it to be so much about me. I want this to be an occasion to reconnect with the Dominican Republic. Hell, maybe I'll even move past the computer screen and try to reconnect with some actual people. That should be feasible with missionary companions at least, even if it's tougher with Dominicans.

This will be a fast Sunday discipline. Once a month, I'll blog about where I was and who I was with 20 years ago. And with the continuing democratization of technology, it's easier now than it was 10 years ago to do things like find satellite images, and even YouTube videos, of the places I lived 20 years ago. So you'll be getting that kind of thing.

It should be as interesting to readers as missionary slide shows have ever been. (Which is to say: it won't be.) But let's be frank, this blog has always been a pretty selfish endeavor—I do this mostly for me—so that won't be new.

Why reconnect with the past like this? Because my mission remains the spiritual highpoint of my life. Or to use a different metaphor (at the risk of getting rococco or New Agey or something), my mission is a well of spiritual energies that I've drawn from in the past and would like to draw on again. It was the time in my life when I was most intensely focused on other people and their needs. It was the closest I ever came, and ever will come, to full-time ministry. It was the time in my life when the LDS Church came closest to working for me—when I came closest to experiencing the kind of Christ-infused community that the church can be at its best. It was the time in my life when my testimony was formed—when I became convinced that the Spirit works through Mormonism.

So I keep looking back to my mission. But I don't want the next two years to be so much about looking back as looking back out. Back out at the Dominican Republic, not as it is in my memories, but as it is now. Back out at the people I knew then, who have gone on living outside my memories, with their own transformations and challenges and joys.

That's the idea, anyway. It will be what it will be. Whatever it ends up being, I ask God to consecrate this performance for the welfare of my soul.