First Impressions...

I remember the first day of my mission vividly. In hindsight, there was nothing about that day which could not have been predicted by any average thoughtful person who anticipated what someone in similar circumstances might experience. But for someone like myself, who was totally without any experiences even remotely like those thrust upon me and into which I was totally immersed, and therefore, without any reference from the past to fall back on or from which I might get my bearings, find some context, or from which I might glean a little insight, it was truly a shocking experience.


The day started out like any other...my alarm went off and I began to cast off the dreams of the previous night. As my focus began to sharpen and I began to slowly regain consciousness, I knew this day would be different from any other day I had ever experienced up to that point in my life. This was the day my mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would really begin. In just a few short hours, I would be standing in Honduras. It was a day I was excited to begin.

I remember as I prayed that morning how I pled with the Lord asking Him to guide me in my labors through His spirit and by His matchless power. I promised Him that I would always try to remember Him and His son in all I did and that I would dedicate my strength and talents, meager though they were, to His service. I also asked Him to help me understand and love the people I was called to serve. I felt inspired in the things I said and knew God heard me that day as I prayed. That morning I was filled with the hope and promise of a day where I had truly felt God's spirit and was secure in His approval. It was a day I anticipated with the nervous excitement commensurate with an undertaking of this magnitude.

For two months, I had been living and learning at a place called the MTC (Missionary Training Center). It is a school of sorts for missionaries which teaches them how to teach others the Gospel of Jesus Christ and about the cultures and languages of the people they will be serving while on their missions. It was an incredible experience and one in which prophets and apostles participated, lending their spiritual strength and wisdom to young inexperienced boys and girls who loved the Lord but were inexperienced and lacking in wisdom and spiritual knowledge. Yup, Mormons have prophets and apostles just like the primitive church of Jesus Christ (see Why Prophets for some context).

I remember being in one devotional where we sang The Spirit of God Like a Fire Is Burning to invite God's spirit into our meeting. This is a hymn written specifically for the dedication of the Kirtland temple, the first temple built by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, located in Kirtland Ohio, and as such, is a sacred hymn for me and my religion. As we sang this hymn I remember feeling the spirit so strongly that I actually looked around to see if I could see angels. I was convinced that our choir, impressively large as it was that day, must have had help from the choirs above to sound that good and that sweet on that day. But I saw none. It was still, nevertheless, an intensely spiritual experience.

I had many other experiences where I felt God's spirit strongly during my stay at the MTC, but after two months there, I was anxious to leave and really begin my mission among the people I'd been called to serve.

The first stop of the first day of my mission was the Salt Lake City airport. My family met me there to see me one last time before I flew out of the country. It would be the last time we would see each other for a long time and the experience was emotional as my parents told me how much they loved me and that they were proud of me. Even some of my brothers and sisters looked a little like they would miss me...one sister in particular. I knew I'd miss them, but had already prepared for and mitigated the impact that homesickness might have by going away to school the year before. The main reason I went out of state for my first year of college was to prepare for this very day and so I was confident in myself and though I'd miss my family, I wasn't too worried about getting seriously homesick. I'd already worked that out at another place and in another time. The intensity of emotion I felt at that time did, however, surprise me.

But because I had prepared for this day and even that very event and was confident in what I was doing, the sadness of saying goodbye to people I loved didn't dampen my spirits in the least. This was for me, in my estimation, my first manly act. It was something I was doing which was big and hard and would require a great deal of effort on my part. But most of all, it was something I was doing for others and not myself. One of the marks of a true man, in my opinion, is his ability to help, serve and protect others. This was the day that I began that journey for myself.

I remember waving goodbye to my family as I boarded the plane. I felt very grown up and very shy and timid all at the same time...a strange mix of emotions, but perhaps not uncommon.

Even the plane ride was exciting for me. I come from a family of very modest means and traveling by plane was not something we experienced often, or in some cases, at all.

We touched down in Houston and changed planes for the final leg of our trip. I was traveling with a couple of other missionaries also bound for Honduras, so we stayed together and helped each other make the connecting flight. I remember as we boarded the new airline that this time things were noticeably different. This time there was no English spoken at all. All of the announcements were in Spanish. All of the interactions with the flight attendants initially were in Spanish. All of the pre-flight instructions were in Spanish. And, all of the conversations carried on around me were, you guessed it, also in Spanish.

You might imagine that this wouldn't be that big of a problem. After all, I'd just spent two months learning Spanish in the MTC and had even taken a couple of Spanish courses in High School. The problem was that the Spanish that was spoken to me in those contexts was Spanish spoken by people who, firstly, spoke Spanish as a second language and therefore had not truly mastered the language or the accent this implies themselves, and secondly, because it was a learning environment, the instructors spoke very deliberately and slowly, enunciating each word emphatically. The Spanish I was hearing now was Spanish that was rapidly fluent and full of colloquialisms and vocabulary I had never experienced. It truly sounded totally foreign to me and despite my Spanish instruction, I didn't understand anything around me that I was hearing.

The flight attendants, reading from the looks on our faces our obvious inability to speak their language spoke with us in broken English as we made our way toward Honduras.

I had been to classes where I was warned about culture shock and that it was real and disorienting, but had dismissed that counsel believing that I was different and somehow more rational and intentional than most people and that culture shock, while a problem for many, would be no problem for me. Boy, was I naïve.

I see some of the same false confidence coupled with a genuine lack of experience in some of my own children and now can accurately anticipate some of the things which will challenge them which at this point they can't even begin to anticipate. I can see them resisting the wisdom and counsel of others just as I had done when I was their age. It's painful and funny to watch all at the same time, but there is little that can be done to save them from themselves. Some things to some people simply must be learned by experience alone and can not be garnered from the experience of others because of pride and inexperience. Such was I at this time.

I remember arriving at the airport  in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and having all of my belongings opened up and as I watched the customs agents rifling through my unmentionables,  I was afraid to protest or even interact with anyone there. I remember casting my eyes around me and seeing several young men, perhaps even younger than myself dressed in army fatigues holding automatic weapons. It was, for me, a sight which was at that time a little frightening, and something I had never seen in my sheltered little slice of America.

Everyone looked tired, frustrated and unhappy to be there as though they were forced into a situation they were powerless to control and with which they were intensely dissatisfied. Not exactly the warm and triumphant welcome I imagined in my mind as I anticipated this day.

The mission president had sent a couple of missionaries to meet us at the airport and as we drove through the streets of Tegucigalpa on our way to the mission president's home, we were assaulted with sights, sounds, and smells which were truly foreign and which we had never before seen or heard or smelled. We later learned that the missionaries who had picked us up at the airport intentionally drove us through the roughest, dirtiest parts of the city to see if they could rattle the new missionaries and get a reaction out of them. It was a sort of game to them and provided them a good laugh at our expense as they looked for and read the expressions of shock and fear on our faces. I remember thinking that as we traveled through the streets that someone would get hurt because no one kept to the sidewalks. People were constantly streaming across the busy streets seemingly oblivious to the traffic as they made their way to the other side. People were everywhere...we were in the central open air market. I can't even begin to describe the smells we experienced that first day in the country. The smell of the open air market is a mix of dirt and sweat and rotting fruits and vegetables and ripe meat hung out in the open with the hot sun beating down on it and flies crawling all over it. The flies were everywhere and landed on everything. Filthy water pooled in the gutters brought there by the last rain storm.

I remember noting how many guns I saw that day. There seemed to be someone posted on every street with a machine gun in hand either milling about or standing stoically at the entrance to a building. I later learned that these men were posted at banks, bus stations, post offices, airports and government buildings or other strategic locations. I wondered at that time if they were there to intimidate people into keeping the law or as a show of force. On that day, I was duly intimidated. I later learned about the problems Honduras had experienced from terrorists and that this was a reaction to that threat and meant to help the people in those locations feel more secure, not intimidated, but on that day, I was intimidated.

The contrast I felt when arriving at the mission president's home was one of great comfort and familiarity. He lived in one of the nicer sections of Tegucigalpa. Not among the rich, but nice. I felt the anxieties of the day melt away as we arrived and were warmly greeted by a man I'd come to respect and admire as I served with him in Honduras. We were given warm food, treated to a warm shower, and shown to a warm bed. It was very comforting and exactly what I needed after my initial exposure to a country very different from my own.

The next day we were up very early, were given some advice and counsel by the mission president and were met by our first companions. Missionaries in our church always have companions. My companion then escorted me back to our apartment in a small barrio or district called San Miguel and the shock I experienced the day before deepened as I saw naked children running in the streets which that day were muddy because Honduras was just coming out of the rainy season but still got the occasional afternoon shower. Mostly the streets were very dusty as the busses relentlessly ran up and down the streets turning the dirt into a very fine grained dust which stuck to and dusted everything in the vicinity of the streets. There were open sewers and throngs of people everywhere.

My companion, although from America, insisted on speaking Spanish. He said that it was something I needed to learn and the sooner the better. He was a good companion, but did nothing that day to alleviate the shock of being in a foreign country for the first time.

Our apartment was smack in the middle of San Miguel and was nice when compared to the homes of most people. We had electricity and running water (not heated, but actual plumbing at least) and a tile floor. After arriving, my companion announced that it was lunch time and after helping me stow my things away in a closet, we headed off to my first truly Honduran meal. The family who prepared our meals at lunch time was very gracious and kind. I learned to love them very much. But the meal they served me that day, while a delicacy in Honduras was, again, a little shocking to me. We were served chicken soup and one of the great honors they showed me that day was that one of the feet of the chicken was placed in my bowl before serving it to me. The only other person to have a foot in their bowl was the man of the house and because this part of the chicken is considered a delicacy, it was their way of honoring and warmly welcoming me into their home for the first time. Because I'd never seen a chicken foot in my soup before, I failed this test of etiquette miserably and Don Juan, the man of the house graciously said he would take the foot if I didn't want it. He could of been greatly offended by my reaction to their hospitality that day but wisely realized that this had been a couple of hard days for me and laughed it off with the rest of his family.

After returning to our apartment, a rain storm had begun and started to pick up its pace and I remember as I looked out the window that people were pouring out of their houses into the street in their underwear each with a bar of soap in hand and they all began openly washing themselves in public. That was the last straw and I remember thinking indignantly that this was inappropriate...that baths were meant to occur behind closed doors and not in public. The thought, What a dirty people crossed my mind as I continued to witness the spectacle before me.

As that thought crossed my mind, I immediately knew that I had offended the Lord who loved this people with all His heart. He had sent me here to serve them, not to judge them, and that day, the Lord began to answer the prayer I had offered the morning before. In that moment I knew that God loved these people and that my judgement had been rash and colored by the experiences and feelings of the last two days. As I felt God's spirit retire from me in part, it didn't fail me completely and my thoughts were led to the fact that many of these people who lived in such appalling poverty didn't have a choice to be clean. They lived in a very dirty place with open sewers and without indoor plumbing or in many cases even electricity. Most lived in homes with dirt floors. They ran out into the street because the rain afforded them an opportunity to be clean and I had totally misjudged them.

In the couple of weeks which followed I was taught by both my companion and the Lord what a kind, generous, and gracious people I was privileged to work among. They were so humble. I remember the first time we visited a family while they were eating. We, as we always were at times like that, invited to join them. My companion taught me that we should never decline such an invitation as it would make those extending the invitation feel that their gift had been rejected, but that we should eat as little as possible while still showing our gratitude to them so that as much food as possible would be spared for the rest of their family.

This point was forcefully driven home one day when a family brought their little daughter to the chapel and asked me and my companion to help them with the funeral services and burial. It broke my heart as I gazed upon her body which was nothing more than skin and bones. She had starved to death. When we visited their home we found two more children in the final stages of starvation and immediately purchased oranges, rice, and beans for that night and brought more food in the morning. For several weeks it was our joy and privilege to visit this family and attend to their needs.

When we first arrived their two sons sat in the shadows clutching their distended bellies and moaned in starvation's firm and painful grip. It took a couple of months, but after some time, although they were still mal-nourished and skinny, they were running about and laughing and leading me and my companion into the bush on adventures they had conjured up to please and delight us. They were just like any of the other children we saw running around in the streets of San Miguel. It was an amazing and gratifying transformation.

The most ironic part of this story is that this family were members of our church, but had fallen into inactivity so long ago that no one in that area knew who they were or that they even existed, let alone that they were members of our church. They lived on land owned by our church which was set aside to grow crops to feed the poor. All ironies aside, we made sure that this would never happen to them again and made everyone aware of them and where they lived. They started attending church again and were all nurtured back to health physically first, but spiritually as well.

This is one of the most bitter-sweet memories of my mission. It brings tears to my eyes whenever I think of it.