Home for the Holidays Part 2

A month later I'll finish the post. I said I had a few things to post maybe, but I think I'll only post two.

Well, three, because I forgot to mention one thing. Found out a girl in my church back home got a missionary to fall in love with her, so he went home and then the missionaries were pulled out of the area. That's funny. Prior to me arriving in my mission there were a couple missionaries who had been caught swimming with girls at their apartment. Actually, on my mission I replaced an elder who basically had a girlfriend and supposedly made out with her. 19 year old boys, lol, I feel sorry for them with all the people who yell at them.

There's a "young man" back home who has talked with me about some of his separate views about the church, especially about gays and Prop 8. I don't wish to go into too many details on that but it is refreshing to see youth growing up in the church who just don't agree with hateful bigoted views that many other members may have. Either under the guise of trying to cure gayness or stop them from having meaningful homosexual relationships to outright hate crimes committed by members.

The last thing was the missionaries. They seem like some pretty cool guys. I feel sorry for them for being in the middle of nowhere, but good for them to have fun. One of them is a little rebellious, said he made a zone leader cry. Lolz. They both complained about how their 'higher-ups' were pushing numbers so much. That they needed to go door-knocking more to talk to more people. Having been on a mission, and having had an above-average number of baptisms, I still don't understand the obsession missionaries have with door-knocking. It really is an activity that should not be done.


Anyways, as I'm giving pointers to missionaries, the two of them talked about their half-rate apostasy, which is probably more serious behind closed doors. It was entertaining, and we had a lot of laughs. Shared a couple stories, complained about zone leaders, talked about the cold northern winters. Then they had to go and I decided I wanted to test the waters a little with them.

I brought them to my room and showed them one of my framed papyrus scrolls. I have a few but one of the smaller ones is an Egyptian alphabet with the phonetic sounds labeled under them. As a very subtle hint I showed them a couple things, feigned ignorance as to my intentions, and talked about Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Then I told them, in a moment of honesty, that I didn't really go to church and for where I was in life it wasn't really for me. They got quiet and listened, probably searching for the Spirit to tell them what to say. But I told them that they sounded like they were having fun and enjoying their missions but that for me there are really no people from my mission that I can just go talk to. It was all about the church and the mission for me. So since I've moved on I have little to no connection anymore and that's a little saddening. Said they should have fun, do whatever they want work-wise but make sure to have fun and build relationships with people so that they don't ever have happen what happened with me.

One of the missionaries had this look in his eye like he was piecing together the stories, the papyrus, and my conversation with them, the more rebellious one simply listened. I'd like to think that maybe I planted a seed, not so much of doubt, but showing them that it's okay to not be so crazy-obedient on the mission and that someone who has 'moved on' is still a human being. To be honest I don't really know what my overall intentions were. They probably hate me. lolz.