Introduction: Character and the Negotiation of the Spiritual Self In her TED talk about the evolutionary roots of storytelling, Lisa Cron says, “We don’t turn to story to escape reality. We turn to story to navigate reality” (11:13). We identify our own personal struggles and joys within the characters we read and create. We glean insight from their thoughts, actions, and relationships. We learn from their mistakes. Reflective of the human experience, characters in stories are often torn between the identity they inherit from their family and/or community, and the identity that originates from within — the innate self. Sometimes these identities align, but more often this convergence creates dissonance. The impossibly complex framework of identity is expressed through the sociological debates over nature vs. nurture, conformity vs. deviance, and individual vs. community accountability. On an individual level, this conflict resonates with readers because all of us are constantly working out our own beliefs and value systems — which inherited ideals we wish to honor and perpetuate, and which to abandon and replace. In his book Craft in the Real World, Matthew Salesses says that characterization hinges on the juxtaposition of the protagonist to the story’s other cast members. We don’t conceptualize characters in isolation; characterization is always relational. He says, “Just as any story begins with something out of the ordinary (a journey, a visit from a stranger), any character begins in differentiation” (70). Implied here is the idea that characters either choose to fall in line with cultural expectations by aligning themselves with their community’s values, worldviews, and choices, or they choose to push against them. Story happens at the intersection of what a character is expected to do, and what they actually do. My novel, Sister, joins countless works of Evjen 1 literature that seek to explore the implications of an individual discovering friction between their authentic selfhood and external expectations. Family sagas tend to illustrate this tension well. In 2023, Ann Napolitano and Ann Patchett both released novels that center on the transmission, and inevitable disruption, of family culture. In Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful, the Padovano family — consisting of husband and wife Rose and Charlie and their four daughters — fractures following Charlie’s death and the unexpected pregnancy of an unwed daughter. Readers follow the four sisters for decades, witnessing them struggle to reconcile the ties that bound them in childhood with decisions and realizations that pull them in different, often unintentionally wounding, directions. The pregnancy is the catalyst for a major storyline in which one sister, Sylvie, falls in love with the eldest sister Julia’s ex-husband. Though the relationship begins well after the divorce, and Sylvie firmly believes that who she is with William is her true self, Sylvie wrestles with guilt and the loyalty she feels towards Julia. Napolitano expresses this tension when she writes, “Sylvie’s love for him was as much a part of her as her own hands, her face. She never would have chosen to love William; she never would have chosen to sweep her sister’s husband into her own heart. It wasn’t a feeling she and William gave each other, though; they were their love” (338). Throughout the book, Sylvie deals with these often conflicting emotions of loyalty and authenticity, reinforcing this idea that who we become — the person we believe we are internally, intrinsically — is sometimes at odds with familial/cultural expectations. This catch-22 is exemplified here: “Who do I want to be now? Sylvie thought. Do I have a choice?” (287). Sylvie’s character arc is framed around the internal and external influences she ultimately chooses to define her identity — each coming with their own costs. Evjen 2 Similarly, in Tom Lake, Ann Patchett examines inner and inherited identity by creating two separate POVs for the main character, Lara. For all intents and purposes, Lara is two distinct characters in the novel — a mother observing the dynamics between her young adult daughters while isolating together on their family’s cherry farm during the Covid-19 pandemic, and a young single actress falling in love with a now-famous actor. The two feel so distinct that it is difficult for readers to reconcile them as the same person. However, I believe this illustrates an important point about the human experience: we are not static beings. While readers do not have full access to the stretch of time between who Lara was and the person she becomes, they can postulate experiences — some possibly mirroring events from their own lives — that might have caused her values to shift. This excerpt illustrates this idea beautifully: There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it. The painful things you were certain you’d never be able to let go? Now you’re not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-stopping joys, splintered and scattered and became something else. Memories are then replaced by different joys and larger sorrows, and unbelievably, those things get knocked aside as well, until one morning you’re picking cherries with your three grown daughters and your husband goes by on the Gator and you are positive that this is all you’ve ever wanted in the world. (116) Lara, in hindsight of her previous experiences as a young adult, commingled with her present experiences as a maturing mother of four, recognizes that identity is always evolving based on how we negotiate internal and external input. As certain aspects of her worldview shift, so too does her self-analysis. In her craft book Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott discusses this inherent multiplicity of character. “Think of the basket of each character’s life…The basket is an apt image because of Evjen 3 all the holes. How aware is each character of how flimsy the basket really is? How present are your people? Someone once said to me, ‘I am trying to learn to stay in the now — not the last now, not the next now, but the now now.’ What now do your characters dwell in?” (48). Our characters — just as we ourselves — have an incalculable number of “nows,” each influenced by the people, places, and ideas they come in contact with. For me, the most poignant moments in literature occur when a character recognizes something about their present that informs their past, and vice versa. It is satisfying to experience these “ah-ha” moments with our characters because they reassure us that paradigms are meant to shift, that life is about learning from our mistakes. The predominant focus in Hello Beautiful and Tom Lake are how families shape and are shaped by the personalities, interests, and emotions of the individuals who make up each family unit. In some cases, however, family culture is defined in relation to broader community systems, including political, economic, or social institutions. Sister is focused on family dynamics within the context of one of these community systems: religion. Sister is written from the perspectives of a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Sadie Banks, and her mother Rebecca, who converted to the faith thirty years prior. While their intrinsic personalities, interests, and emotions are important to the story, I’m most interested in exploring their relationship in conversation with their unique positionalities within their religion. In Sadie’s POV, we see her begin to question the faith of her childhood; in Rebecca’s POV, we get a hindsight view of the experiences and decisions that led to her joining the church in her early twenties in the 1970s. In real life and in literature, faith informs — and sometimes even defines — identity. With this project I seek to explore the idea that spiritual belief, like all other aspects of one’s Evjen 4 selfhood, rarely remains static throughout a lifetime. Likewise, an individual’s reasons for joining or leaving a religious community are as varied and complex as all other aspects of identity. My hope with Sister is that readers both in and outside of religious circles will be inspired to let go of the fear that can sometimes accompany engaging with someone who has an opposing worldview. I want the novel to reflect a truth that I have come to know: that curiosity has built far more bridges than the cats it has killed. ** Religion can be a controversial touchpoint in culture, especially in places with a dominant religion, such as Utah. According to a 2023 study in The Journal of Religion and Demography, 42% of Utahns self-identify as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of LatterDay Saints (Cragun et al. 168), contributing to its strong influence on Utah culture. Anecdotally, I grew up in a rural Utah community where the church and its corollaries defined my social life, the choices I made in adolescence, and the purpose I found in existence. While I am no longer actively practicing LDS orthodoxy, my parents, as well as many of my siblings and friends, remain devoted members. As someone who has experienced identity-making both in and outside a religious paradigm, and who remains connected to my inherited religion via relationships and cultural ties, I am fascinated by the idea I presented above: that a person can live a new life, become a new person, every time they renegotiate their intrinsic and extrinsic value systems. The observations I have made in my personal life about this process of constant evaluation parallel those I have read about in literature, both in fiction and nonfiction texts. All of this has influenced the fictional characters I have created, including both Sadie and Rebecca. Evjen 5 As I began researching texts discussing religion for this project, I noticed three different ways religion is treated in literature: 1) people finding a spiritual community or belief system, 2) people leaving a spiritual community or belief system, and 3) people replacing one spiritual community or belief system with another. This list is not exhaustive, nor are the lines between them cut and dry. For instance, one could argue that the absence of a belief system is, in fact, a belief system, nullifying the third category. And, of course, a major variable is the reader’s worldview and intention behind choosing the book in the first place — two people could read the same text and draw different, even contradicting, conclusions. However, I found this organization system helpful. After identifying these types of religious literature, I considered what I perceived as the authors’ intentions, and came to these highly-generalized conclusions: Literature that focuses exclusively on an individual joining a spiritual/religious community is more likely to have the intention to promote, celebrate, or validate membership in that faith community. Literature that focuses on an individual leaving a spiritual/religious community is more likely to take a critical approach, pointing readers to abuses, flaws, and/or fallacies perpetuated by that community. Literature that focuses on people replacing one belief system for another typically seeks to explore the fluidity of identity. The category perhaps least represented in the mainstream literary world is the first: stories about people joining a religion. Denominations with connections to publishers, including the LDS church to houses like Deseret Book, Covenant, and Cedar Fort, often target their readership based on church affiliation. Titles published by these companies, including My Name Evjen 6 Used to be Muhammad: One Man’s Journey from Muslim to Mormon by Tito Momen and More Than the Tattooed Mormon, are meant to support Mormon readers’ beliefs. A broader-reaching example of an individual coming to faith (or, in this case, back to faith) is C.S. Lewis’s autobiographical Surprised By Joy, which details his journey from Christianity to atheism and back to Christianity. Again, the text is meant to support faith. A conversion book perhaps more influential on my creation of Sister is Anne Lamott’s memoir, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, which discusses Lamott’s unconventional, and some might say irreverent, conversion to Christianity. Lamott’s battle with addiction was the catalyst for her faith journey. After a weekend of depression-fueled drinking and pill-taking following an abortion, Lamott explains how she felt a divine presence supporting her, comparing the experience to the “feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in.” She tries to resist, but feeling won’t leave her. “I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, ‘Fuck it: I quit.’ I took a long deep breath and said out loud, ‘All right. You can come in.’ So this was my beautiful moment of conversion” (50). Similarly, in Sister, Rebecca’s storyline will begin with difficult experiences in child- and young adulthood, revealed through a series of writings to her children, who were never told the details of her early life and conversion because she wanted to shield them from the pain of her past. Rebecca, just like Lamott, will unexpectedly find healing through Christianity. My intention is that readers, regardless of their own spiritual identity, will be inspired to consider the varying reasons people might choose a religious life, including familial stability, the potential to help individuals cope with and overcome trauma, and the possibility of gaining a new source of hope. While religion, and Christianity specifically, is often associated with conservative Evjen 7 ideology, it can also be subversive depending on the context. In Rebecca’s and Lamott’s cases, it is an act of resistance against inherited culture. This connects back to Salesses’s comment that “any character begins in differentiation” (70). The second category — people leaving a spiritual community — often appeals to readers seeking to negotiate competing value systems in our pluralistic society. Much like fantasy or science fiction, these books are tasked with what can best be described as worldbuilding. Readers must first understand the culture before they can appreciate the author’s/protagonist’s journey away from adherence — what they lose and what they gain from this separation. America has long been fascinated with Mormonism, which occupies a unique place in our collective consciousness as one of the few religions whose origins coincide with the rise of American culture. It is fringe enough to pique curiosity, yet still proximal. Most Americans are not LDS yet know something about the faith from popular media, community presence, Mormon neighbors or friends, etc. It makes sense that people would want to understand this belief system and how members navigate their beliefs amidst the often competing values embodied by other institutions in our society. One prominent example of this in literature is the immensely-popular memoir Educated by Tara Westover, in which Westover details her experiences growing up in a family that practiced LDS extremism to the extent that it interfered with her ability to obtain an education — a right that many consider to be a hallmark of American culture. Though she tries to balance both family expectations and her desire to pursue an academic life in young adulthood, this tension eventually comes to a head and she realizes she must choose one over the other. Regarding a difficult conversation with her father, she says: Evjen 8 Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. (304) Westover’s story is compelling and relatable to general readership, regardless of religious affiliation, because it exposes injustice, encourages the pursuit of knowledge, and validates the longing for self-definition — all tenets many Americans consider essential to a free society. Similarly, in Sister, Sadie considers herself to be politically liberal, yet feels pressure from certain relationships, church doctrines, and random interactions as a missionary to choose one identity or the other — her religious self, or her political self. As political autonomy is a value generally considered sacrosanct in American culture, this tension between two competing value systems will hopefully be relatable to readers. Readers may also find validation in books about leaving religion when they can identify with real or perceived institutional abuses they bring to light. Martha Beck, daughter of prominent Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley, sent shockwaves through the LDS community with Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith, as it allegates corruption in church leadership and sexual abuse perpetrated by her father (Stack). Regardless of whether or not her claims are factually true, others who have left the Mormon community or another insular religious group may find solidarity in Beck’s experiences in, and feelings towards, her ascribed culture. The following quote exemplifies the whistleblower quality of Beck’s memoir: Evjen 9 The only thing scarier than telling my secrets would be keeping them. When the “sensitive information” you carry is your own history, going mute to protect the system doesn’t keep you from being destroyed; it just means that you destroy yourself. “What profiteth it a man,” Jesus said, “if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” For a long time I felt as though my soul was lost, hidden even from my own understanding, to protect me from the consequences of openness in a culture that demanded my silence. Now that I know what it feels like to be whole, my worst fear is not death, but a return to that soulless existence. (191) Again, justice is an important tenet of our society, and Beck posits a reality in which her inherited culture and justice seem to be mutually exclusive. While exposing injustice is outside of my intentions with Sister, Beck’s memoir may serve as a validating artifact for those who have had similar experiences within organized religion. The broader themes of Leaving the Saints, however — ensuring one’s external affiliations align with their internal compass, not the other way around — is a major throughline in Sadie’s narrative arc. Outside of Mormonism, The Poisonwood Bible is another example, though fictional, of literature that explores parting ways with your inherited identity. The novel follows the Price family — father Nathan, mother Orleana, and daughters Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May — as they move from Georgia to the Congo in an attempt to convert the residents of the Kilanga village to their Baptist faith. The book is filled with foreshadowing and dramatic irony; readers know early on this will be a failed mission in more ways than one. While each member of the family has their own unique struggles, Leah’s story resonated most with my goals for Sister, and her character became an important inspiration point for my development of Sadie. At the beginning of the story, Leah desires, above all else, to earn her Evjen 10 rigid, callous father’s favor. She memorizes scriptures, follows the rules scrupulously, and is always willing to sacrifice for the Christian cause. Readers recognize that her inner moral compass does not always align with these external expectations, and we watch her struggle against these competing forces. Eventually, she meets her catalyst character, Anatole, who is the teacher at the Kilanga schoolhouse. His gentle coaxing leads her towards a more balanced approach to life. In a scene after the village suffers a devastating ant infestation, the two of them are discussing why bad things happen in the world. Leah sees this as a punishment from God, but Anatole counters this by saying, “Don’t blame God for what ants have to do…Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky” (308-9). This scene becomes a tipping point for Leah, giving her confidence to replace her problematic religious doctrines with her own conscience, which for her is dictated by rational thinking. While the novel as a whole fits neatly in category two — one family’s exodus from evangelical Christianity — Leah’s character arc better represents the third category: people replacing one spiritual belief for another. While she never joins another church, she becomes impassioned with the causes of freedom for the Congolese people and devotes her life to this new mission — still experiencing hardship, still sacrificing, yet struggling more organically and justifiably since readers know it aligns with her inner compass. Leah cannot fully become herself until she is honest about who she is and what she believes. Hers is a story of transformation. Perhaps this is why the third category — people replacing one spiritual identity with another — is widest-reaching in mainstream literature. It is universally resonant. Regardless of whether or not one’s spiritual identity is defined by an institution, this is a conflict all encounter. Circling back to the discussion at the beginning, identity — and its corollary in fiction, character Evjen 11 — evolves as we navigate the inherent tension of the internal and external pulls on our individual beliefs. Marilynne Robinson considers this often painful process of navigation in her novel Lila. The story follows the title character as she falls in love with and marries Reverend John Ames. The majority of the story is told through stream of consciousness, showcasing the ways Lila wrestles with her poor, migratory, and religionless upbringing juxtaposed the security of this marriage and John’s Christian beliefs. Readers watch her struggle with Christian tenets at once comforting and contradictory to her life experiences. Because of the love she has for the people who raised her, including a woman named Doll who saved her from an abusive household, she recognizes she can never fully buy into her husband’s worldview that would label these people “sinners,” yet she chooses to stay with her husband by allowing herself to accept the beliefs that are most helpful. Ultimately, she crafts her own reality that is neither fully defined by her past nor fully defined by her husband’s religion. Musing on her self-crafted view of the afterlife, Lila asserts, “In eternity people’s lives could be altogether what they were and had been, not just the worst things they ever did, or the best things either. So she decided that she should believe in it, or that she believed in it already. How else could she imagine seeing Doll again?” (259). Lila exemplifies the compassion readers find in many protagonists who go through a similar transformation. This quality makes sense: When an individual has spent a portion of their life certain of something, and then unlearns some of that certainty, they are more likely to adopt more nuanced perspectives and avoid hard-line arguments. As readers, we can glean the ability to define ourselves while respecting the differences of those in the communities we join and leave. I hope that Sister inspires this kind of empathy. Evjen 12 As stand-alone novels, Rebecca’s storyline might belong in the first category of religious texts and Sadie’s in the second, but taken as a whole I believe Sister fits best in the third. It is a story about self-assertion, transformative love, and the eternal dance between “I” and “we.” The choice to weave both narratives into one cohesive text is meant to disrupt readers’ perceptions about what it means to lead or leave a religious life, highlighting the courage it takes — on both ends of the spectrum — to seek out the communities and belief systems we truly align with, even when they differ from, or even challenge, our ascribed culture. In his essay, “On Authenticity,” Amitava Kumar quotes John Berger in saying, “Authenticity comes from a single faithfulness: that to the ambiguity of experience” (51). I hope Sister reflects these truths: 1) that life is never best represented by a black-and-white scale, 2) that we are always finding ourselves, and then finding ourselves again, and 3) that the nuances of how we formulate, differentiate, and renegotiate our beliefs are actually more unifying than divisive. The best literature, I believe, facilitates an understanding that we are shaped by outside forces — yet it is equally true that as individuals within a culture, we are constantly redefining our collective values. My intention with Sister is not to convince readers of a specific worldview, but to both engender empathy towards those who choose paths different from our own, and to provide a sincere exploration of the process of spiritual realignment. In both coming to and departing from their inherited spiritual identities, Rebecca and Sadie exhibit how granting ourselves the flexibility to negotiate, and renegotiate, our inner and outer realities is how we discover our authentic selves. Evjen 13 Works Cited Beck, Martha Nibley. Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith. Three Rivers Press, 2006. Cragun, Ryan T., Bethany Gull, and Rick Phillips. "Mormons are no longer a majority in Utah: Causes, consequences, and implications for the sociology of religion." Journal of Religion and Demography 10.1-2 (2023): 162-184. Cron, Lisa. “Wired for Story.” TED, May 2014Wired for story: Lisa Cron at TEDxFurmanU Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible. HarperCollins, 1999. Kumar, Amitava. “On Authenticity.” Letters to a Writer of Color, edited by Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro. Random House, 2023. Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Anchor Books, 1995. Lamott, Anne. Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. Anchor Books, 1999. Napolitano, Ann. Hello Beautiful. Random House, 2023. Patchett, Ann. Tom Lake. HarperCollins, 2023. Robinson, Marilynne. Lila. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Salesses, Matthew. Craft in the Real World. Catapult, 2021. Stack, Peggy Fletcher. “Rebel Mormon’s memoir ignites a furor.” Salt Lake Tribune, 5 Feb. 2005. archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=2555256&itype=NGPSID Westover, Tara. Educated. Random House, 2018. Evjen 14 Sister 1. “I love your shoes,” I asked the stranger sitting across the bus aisle. “Where did you get them?” I am nothing if not self-aware, so of course my insides were writhing at this pathetic attempt at conversation. I’d never quite figured out flirting, and that’s essentially what this was: flirting for souls. The poor girl looked at me like a caught rabbit. “Oh, um, Buckle, I think?” I didn’t actually care where she got them — I wasn’t chic enough for platform boots myself — but now that we’d made eye contact, it would be socially unacceptable for her to ignore me. Despite its inherent humiliations, the bus had its advantages. The few people around us feigned sleep or were hypnotized by phone screens. I empathized with my target, almost wishing — for both our sakes — that she’d slipped in headphones, pretended to read, called her dying grandma. Given me any excuse not to bother her. “Are you a student here?” I asked stupidly, fraudulently. Everyone on this bus was a University of Nebraska student. Except for me and Sister Miller. She nodded. “You?” And there it was: my opening. “Actually, I’m a missionary. Have you heard of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? Most people just call us Mormons.” I flashed her my black badge, pinned to the lapel of my brown tweed coat, to prove my legitimacy. The tense lines on her face melted into irritated recognition, like she’d just solved an annoying riddle. “My cousins are members.” Evjen 15 “Really? Somewhere around here?” She shook her head, offering no alternative, then slid toward the aisle, lifting the bag resting on her lap onto her left shoulder. Her stop, or at least the stop she was choosing to get off at, was clearly next. I had to act quickly. “Here, can I give you this?” She took the card I held out — a cardstock picture of Jesus entitling her to a free Book of Mormon, on which I had previously scrawled our cell phone number in ballpoint pen — but I could tell it was only because she couldn’t think of a polite way to refuse. Later today, she would surely relate the details of this encounter to her sorority sisters, her boyfriend, her mom. In turn, they would share their own Mormon missionary ambush stories, bond over their shared loathing. The bus slowed and stopped. The door slid open. “Nice to meet you,” I said too cheerily, which she returned with a forced smile before disappearing down the stairs. I caught the bus driver’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Was I imagining his death stare? The set jaw? He usually let our proselytizing slide — it wasn’t like we were preaching hellfire and damnation in the aisle or anything — but maybe someone had complained. It was time to get off. Pretend like we had somewhere to be. Miller was sitting in the seat in front of me. I tapped her shoulder. “Next stop?” ** “She seemed nice,” Miller said as we began our aimless walk down R Street. It was the second to last day of finals week and already campus was thinning out. “Maybe her cousins have been working on her.” “Yeah, her cousins,” I said with air quotes. “Twenty bucks she just made that up.” Evjen 16 “You never know, Banks. Remember what I told you about my first baptism? How we just met the guy randomly in a hospital elevator and he called us later that night?” We passed one of the fraternity houses, Alpha Phi something-something. The lawn was a mood board for frat culture: faded Romney-Ryan signs, a mammoth inflatable Santa, a deteriorating Husker football shrine made from tissue pomp that they’d built for homecoming several weeks before. “At least she took the card,” she continued when I didn’t respond. Yeah, and it’s just made friends with an empty Starbucks cup in the bottom of a garbage can. I chose not to say this out loud because of who Sister Miller was: faithful, eternally optimistic, genuinely happy. Which is to say, not me. I’d arrived in Lincoln in October during peak college energy levels, the point when everyone had settled into their classes, made friends, figured out the bare minimum of what needed to be done in said classes to hang out with said friends. Lincoln, it turned out, was the quintessential college town: tree-lined quads, classical architecture, sidewalks swarming with polo-shirted guys and half-dressed girls, everything plastered in bold serif red N’s. In other words, a lot like BYU, minus the color scheme and the amount of bare midriffs. We walked by a few hurried students who failed to suppress double takes as we passed. This wasn’t unusual, and I’d been out long enough to neither blame it on religious bigotry nor be flattered. We stuck out. It wasn’t just the fact that we were dressed like secretaries from the 1950s — dress shirts tucked into our calf-length skirts, footwear that fell stylistically somewhere between witch heels and combat boots — but the badges, the blue Book of Mormons we were instructed to keep in our hands at all times, the intentional smiles. It was obvious we weren’t typical college coeds. Evjen 17 “So, what’s happening today?” Miller said. “I know we planned last night but I still haven’t woken up yet.” I sifted through the leather shoulder bag my parents had gifted me the day before I entered the Missionary Training Center last August. Along with the White Handbook — an extensive document delineating all the mission rules — and our standard teaching materials, the bag was accumulating a fair amount of junk: Chapstick tubes, packets of gum and almonds, candy wrappers, old receipts. I made a mental note to clean it out next Preparation Day. Finally, I found my planner and opened it to December 13th. “Just the 11 a.m. with that girl Rosie we met near the library the other day. Then dinner tonight with the Tooneys.” “Ooh, that’s right. Can’t wait. Sister Tooney goes all out.” I couldn’t decide which was more pathetic: our empty schedule, or the fact that the most titillating question of the day was which member was feeding us dinner. “So, two hours of contacting, then?” Miller sighed, which gave me a hit of schadenfreude. “Guess so.” I looked around. “Who first? Guy over there on the bench?” “Good with me.” We approached him, securing our smiles. He was attractive, the kind of guy I would have noticed back home. Admittedly, was noticing now. Sweeping dark hair, intentionally disheveled. Angular Roman features. A subtle aura of rebelliousness. Like usual, I let Sister Miller take the lead. She was the senior companion, out fifteen months to my four, and actually knew what she was doing. Plus, she was prettier. “Hey!” she said to the guy as if they were old friends. “Can we share an important message with you?” Evjen 18 The guy looked up. I guessed he was about our age, maybe a year or two older. “I’ve got a philosophy final in ten minutes, but I’m all yours until then.” Something glinted in his eyes. Amusement? Intrigue? Scorn? Miller either didn’t notice or pretended not to. “Do you believe in Jesus Christ?” Personally, I favored an ease-in approach, but she’d always been a straight shooter. Or, at least, had been since we became companions almost six weeks ago. Maybe bluntness came with experience. “Guess it depends,” he said. “If you’re asking if I believe he was a real person, then yes, absolutely.” I glanced down at the book in his hands. Anna Karenina. As an undeclared humanities major myself, halfway through a variety of bachelor’s degrees with my haphazard collection of liberal arts classes, I knew this wasn’t going to end well. “Fair enough,” Miller said, undeterred. “What about Jesus as the son of God? Or, at least, do you believe that he could be?” “A compelling question,” he said with a smirk. “I’d say his credibility is right up there with Joseph Smith being a prophet who brought true Christianity back to the earth with a stack of teleporting gold plates and a top hat.” “Sounds like you’ve heard of us,” Miller said as if this were playful banter. My fight-or-flight neurons were prepping for a salvo, but you couldn’t just flee the scene in situations like these. Not without validating every stereotype people believed about us. It wasn’t like this was a rare occurrence. I just needed to get a tougher skin. “Yes, ma’am,” he said patronizingly. “Not sure if you’ve heard, but they teach kids about religious fanaticism and nineteenth-century doomsday cults in public schools these days.” His Evjen 19 sarcasm erased any lingering trace of my initial attraction. He was just a jerk who’d learned the word “solipsism” in some Intro to Philosophy class and now believed everyone on the planet — besides himself, of course — was brainwashed. “There’s no way you still meet people who haven’t heard of Mormons. I mean, come on. Mitt fucking Romney was the Republican candidate for president. Tough loss, by the way.” How original, I wanted to say. Actually, I wanted to punch him in the mouth. Like usual, Miller showed no sign of distress or resentment. “Totally get it,” she said. “This isn’t your thing. We’ll let you get ready for your test.” Something about him softened. He’d clearly expected, maybe even hoped for, more of a fight. Unfortunately for him, neither Miller nor I were the Bible-bashing type. “Look, I’m not a believer and never will be, but props for being so dedicated to something. That’s rare these days.” “Gotta share what you love, right?” Miller said. His smile seemed genuine. “I only ever see the guys out preaching. How’d you two get roped into this?” Miller looked at me, perhaps figuring it was a question even I couldn’t possibly fumble. “We volunteered,” I said. He nodded slowly, eyes narrowed as if processing this. “And of any place in the world, you chose to go to Lincoln, Nebraska?” I recoiled at the absurdity of the suggestion. “You don’t get to choose.” “So you drew the short straw.” A rueful little laugh escaped my throat. Miller took over. “It’s not like a random assignment,” she said. “We believe you get sent where you’re supposed to go.” Evjen 20 “Like fate.” “No,” she said. “Like a calling.” My own call letter had arrived on a rainy Wednesday the previous April. I had it sent to my parents’ house instead of my apartment at BYU, so as soon as I got the text from my mom (“guess what I found in the mailbox today???”) I hopped in my ailing Ford Focus and coaxed it up to Salt Lake City. She’d made enchiladas and a chocolate cake that said “Where in the World” on top, and had bought a box of those little toothpicks with flags on them that people could stick on top to represent their guesses for where I’d be sent. I relished the anticipation, the excited chatter. My decision to become a missionary had been swift and certain, and this moment was the culmination of months of interviews and scripture cramming and doctor’s appointments. I had a good crew of people there to support me: my siblings, sans my brother Max, who was working as a ski instructor in Jackson Hole; my paternal grandma, the only grand I had left; a few aunts and uncles who lived nearby. I’d also invited Mitzi, my best friend from high school, and a couple college roommates, but none of them could break away from classes or work. I tried to swallow my regret about texting Will to let him know it had arrived. Hated myself for thinking he might show up, for pretending I didn’t care either way. So exciting! He’d already replied. Let me know what it says :) As soon as everyone got settled in the living room, paper plates in hand, I sat on the armchair my mom had moved to the center of the room. I broke the seal. Pulled the thick packet from the white envelope. Evjen 21 “Sister Sadie Banks,” I read aloud. “You are hereby called to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the —” My eyes were reading quicker than my mouth. I felt myself deflate. “Omaha, Nebraska mission.” “Nebraska?” my grandma spat. All my other cousins who’d served missions had been sent to exotic places like Costa Rica or Lithuania or Madagascar. “But you’re so smart!” Angie and Caroline, my two older sisters — both pregnant with their second children — exchanged grimaces. Had Max been there, he would have called her out; it wasn’t like Grandma was senile or anything. The rest of us, though, were the passive-aggressive type, preferring to air our grievances through rolled eyes or slandering text messages. As if sensing the emergency, Pixie, the copper cocker spaniel we’d had since I was seven, hobbled to my side and nuzzled my leg. I reached down to pet her, grateful for her unintentional efforts to diffuse the awkwardness I knew no human in my family would ever address. “Think of all the church history!” Dad said, overselling it. “Will you be at the Winter Quarters Visitor Center?” I skimmed the letter again. “It just says proselyting.” “What about learning a language?” Angie said. “Does anyone in Nebraska speak Spanish?” Caroline shot her a look. “English-speaking,” I said. Though I never would have judged anyone else for receiving what I perceived as the drabbest of mission calls, that didn’t mean I hadn’t internalized the stereotypes. Such as, attractive girls are always assigned to visitor centers. Or only the most faithful are sent foreign. Or only the smartest get to learn a language. Evjen 22 But also in constant circulation was this axiom: If you were disappointed about your call, you weren’t going for the right reasons. “The heart of America,” Dad said. “Think of the corn,” Angie said. “Oceans of corn. All the corn you could ever dream of.” Caroline’s face lit up. “I think the singer from Imagine Dragons went there. Or was that Ontario?” She pulled out her phone. “No, I’m totally right, he went to Omaha. So you’re, like, basically almost famous.” I was saved from the barrage by my nephews, Micah and Jude, waddling into the living room holding steak knives. It was in the ensuing chaos — my sisters going full she-Hulk mode, rushing to peel their sons’ small, fat fingers from the handles; Grandma casually sharing a story about her childhood neighbor who lost an eye after running with needle nose pliers; the negligent brother-in-laws receiving their lashings — that I glanced over at my mom, who’d yet to say anything. And she wasn’t quiet by nature. Our eyes met. Two tears were slowly making their way down her cheeks. I won’t say the heavens parted, that I heard angels sing or anything, but the feeling that hit me took my breath away. If I could help just one person like my mother, my favorite human in the world, then it didn’t matter if it went to Nebraska, or Hong Kong, or the moon. It would be worth it. “Oh, Sadie,” she said. “I’m so excited for you, honey. Nevada!” “Nebraska, Mom.” “Nebraska. That’s what I meant.” Evjen 23 We busted up laughing, both of us recognizing the hilarious relevance of her lapsus linguae. My disappointment, if not totally eradicated, was eclipsed by another feeling: Things were going to be okay. I was fully absorbed in the memory as Miller pulled into the parking lot later that night, trying to will that feeling, the suffusive warmth, back into me. Four months, and I’d accomplished nothing. Baptized no one. Sure, I’d expected the slammed doors, the argumentative atheists, but didn’t realize how demoralizing it would be to fail again, and again, and again. To have it be par for the course. After cordially parting ways with that particular morning’s argumentative atheist, the rest of the day followed the same trajectory, with several iterations of “Can’t talk, I’m busy” and “Apologies, I’m just not interested,” plus a few more recreational quarrelers. Our only scheduled lesson didn’t show (surprise!) and Sister Tooney forgot she’d signed up to feed us so instead picked up a Little Caesars on her way home from work and dropped it off at the church. It was flavored cardboard by the time we got there. Worst of all, one of our very few investigators, Monica, called to tell us she didn’t want to get baptized anymore because her boyfriend’s mom told her Mormons “can’t dance or eat Halloween candy.” She hung up on us before we could convince her otherwise. Plus, we were fifteen minutes past curfew after hitting Highway 22 accident traffic. Which meant there would barely be enough time for praying, journaling, and filling out our planners for the next day — all required mission tasks — before lights out at 10:30. As Miller pulled into our assigned stall, our headlights illuminated the figure of our next door neighbor, Mrs. Nguyen, leaned up against the red brick wall, smoking a cigarette. She squinted and turned away as if offended by our arrival, though logically I knew it was probably Evjen 24 just an automatic response to the blinding light. Based on her mismatched clothes, wild hair, and the bird that was occasionally perched on her shoulder, she was an eccentric woman that could care less about public opinion, the type of person you couldn’t help but try to win over. We’d introduced ourselves to her several times but never got much more than a nod. She turned towards us again as we got out of the car and made our way up the walkway. We waved at her (nothing but a steely glare this time, maybe she truly was irritated) while Miller unlocked the door. I stuck my hand in the mailbox, our last spark of hope to salvage the day, and my heart skipped as I felt the edges of two envelopes. I pulled them out, but it was too dark to see who they were addressed to. We stepped inside. Miller flicked on the lights, and I checked the letters. One for each of us. Unsurprisingly, mine was from my mom. Miller’s, addressed in boxy, distinctly masculine lettering using her full name, Sister Esther Miller, was from her boyfriend. I hated myself for the sour envy I felt as I handed it over. The BF was a Utah State University pre-med student who was still writing to her weekly, even though they hadn’t actually spoken to each other in over three years. I’d never met the guy, nor had any stake in their relationship, but when you’re with someone for every minute of every day — barring showers and pee breaks, of course — you find out a lot about them. Sometimes more than you care to know. What I’d gleaned from our six weeks together was this: The two of them were high school sweethearts, and he’d left for his mission to Uruguay shortly after they graduated. Up until last month, boys could go as soon as they turned 19, and girls at 21. Miller said they wrote during his whole mission and had considered getting engaged when he got home, but instead, she decided she wanted to serve a mission as well, so he promised to wait. And they just missed seeing each other; he came home a week after she was assigned to enter the Evjen 25 Missionary Training Center. It was like Romeo and Juliet Mormon missionary version, minus — at least hopefully — the double suicide finale. Incidentally, the age requirement had just changed in October following a General Conference announcement. Instead of 19 and 21, it would now be 18 and 19. I didn’t ask Miller how she felt about that, but I could help but wonder if she was suppressing any resentment. The two of them could be married by now, decorating their first Christmas tree, planning the color scheme for their first baby’s nursery. Instead, she was eating pizza-flavored cardboard and deflecting the verbal harassment of arrogant liberal arts students, all the while forced to compensate for her subpar companion’s ineptitudes. Contributing to my saltiness, I knew, was the fact that nearly a year ago Will and I had ended in spectacular fashion. I couldn’t help but envy couples who made relationships look easy. Maybe the key was not being together. I untucked my button-down shirt and headed towards the kitchen. The first time I saw our apartment, I made a joke about how it looked like it belonged to a serial killer. There was no artwork on the walls except for one cheaply-framed picture of Jesus and a large map of the city marked with multicolored thumbtacks, indicating areas we’d recently tracted, people who’d let us in the door, places to stay away from. The few pieces of furniture were rejects from old church buildings: a pew, a stiff floral couch, a scratched up coffee table. There was no TV or bookcase, which made sense since we couldn’t watch or read anything besides our scriptures, and it smelled like cheap carpet and cigarette smoke, which was either from a former tenant or permeating the walls. It was clean, though, both because we hardly spent any time there, and because we had a weekly cleaning checklist which had to be sent in to the mission office on PDays, the one day a week we got to “prepare” for the next six days of proselytizing. Evjen 26 At least we had a washer and dryer, which was more than a lot of other missionaries could say. I’d heard that in some countries they didn’t even have a fridge. Speaking of, I opened ours and pulled out last night’s Saran-wrapped dinner (the thoughtful members always sent us home with leftovers) and stuck the plate in the microwave. As it hummed, I ripped open my letter and pulled out the neatly-folded piece of yellow legal pad paper. The scent of lasagna filled the kitchen as I unfolded the paper, briefly comforted by the sight of Mom’s erratic yet delicate cursive in blue ballpoint ink: Dear Sa Sister Banks, I’ll never get the hang of addressing you the right way. Foo. I’m your mother, I’ll call you what I want. It’s getting colder here, but still no snow. Dad put up the Christmas lights last night, and I had a little pity party thinking of celebrating Christmas without you here. Shame on me for being so selfish. I’m sure you’re having a lovely time, making so many holiday memories with all the wonderful people there. I can’t wait to hear about it. The grandbabies were both blessed on Sunday. What magical creatures they are! Everyone asked about you and told me to send you their love. I do have some sad news. I debated telling you, but figure it’s for the best if you know. They found a tumor in one of Pixie’s legs. They’re trying some medications but say she probably doesn’t have much longer. I know this is going to hit hard, but try to remember Pix has had a nice, long life. All dogs go to Heaven. We pray for you incessantly and can’t wait to talk to you in a few short weeks. Be joyful. P.S. expect a delivery from Santa soon. xoxo Love, Mom I understood Mom’s hesitation to tell me about Pixie. While she wasn’t my dog, per se, I’d grown up hearing how their decision to adopt her was motivated by my relentless begging for someone to play Polly Pockets with me. As the youngest child — and an 11th-hour surprise, at that — my parents must have been desperate to find something to occupy my attention. Max Evjen 27 was ten when I was born, Caroline and Angie eight and six, so by the time I was old enough to need playmates, they’d grown out playing. Instead, I became their pet, and Pixie became mine. But I’d known this news was coming, and not just because she was fourteen, the cocker spaniel equivalent of a sweet old lady with white Poly-fil hair. One of my RM friends told me how strange the spirit becomes when you’re a missionary, how you start sensing things, and so far, this had proven true. I’d divined an old roommate's wedding engagement, and in my last area, I once woke up in the middle of the night thinking about one of our investigators only to get a text the next afternoon saying he was in the hospital for a heart attack. The first, though, was when I said goodbye to Pixie before I left. Somehow, I knew it would be the last time. I’d been all but expecting this. And yet. Tears sprung to my eyes. I wiped them just as Sister Miller walked into the kitchen. “What happened?” she asked, putting her hand on my forearm. I was tempted to brush it off as nothing more than a release of energy from our bad day, but I decided to show her the letter. Her face fell as she skimmed it. “Oh no!” She pulled me in for a hug. I knew for some, dead pets were the idiomatic equivalent to spilled milk (“Can’t you just get another one?”) but she seemed genuinely empathetic. “That’s so hard,” she said, letting me go. “I cried for a week when my cat died.” “Thanks,” I said, appreciative of her effort. “I’ll be okay.” “If you ever need to talk about it…” “For sure.” Evjen 28 She gave me a smile of solidarity before grabbing an apple from the fridge and heading into the study room. Alone again, I suddenly realized it wasn’t just Pixie. It was the smell of the paper. My mom’s handwriting. The two brand-new nieces I’d never held or seen or heard cry. It was the fact that there were twelve days until Christmas and all I wanted was the whole holiday season to be over so I could say, “One more year,” when people asked me how much longer I had left. But I held in my tears, made my way down the nightly to-do checklist, and at 10:24 p.m., six minutes to lights out, I scrawled a reply to my mom: Dear Mom, Thanks for your letter. I’m glad you told me about Pix. Did they give her meds so she’s not in pain? That’s the hardest part, thinking that she’s suffering. I hope you’re spoiling her with all the peanut butter and Milk-Bones. I’ll write more in the email on P-Day (it’s way faster to type than to write) but yeah, everything’s getting all holiday-d up around here. I bought some eggnog for myself (Sister Miller says she’d rather drink a bottle of cough syrup) so it would feel a little bit like home. So fun about the baby blessings! Send pics if you can. Everything is going great! Give Pix a hug and a belly scratch from me. Love, Sadie Evjen 29 2. My gloom hung around the next four days. By Friday, the last day of finals, campus was a ghost town. Being surrounded by the typical effusive chaos of college life had its own challenges, but I quickly discovered it was going to be infinitely worse to have nothing to do. Of course, Miller took it in stride. I wanted to resent her for that, but I imagined myself a year from now, two transfers left, and realized there would be very little that could get me down. She and her BF were probably making wedding plans via letter, had probably already signed a contract on an apartment somewhere. She’d endured fifteen months of this; what were twelve more weeks? Monday was Preparation Day, and no matter my baseline mood, P-Day never failed to offer a boost. It was a luxury to not feel compelled to speak to every person we saw on the street, plus sweatpants. After completing some mission-mandated to-do’s — laundry, cleaning the house, grocery shopping — you were free until evening proselyting hours, which began at 6 p.m. Essentially, that translated to an afternoon off. In our district, that usually included meeting the other missionaries in our area for lunch. Miller and I were the only sisters in the group, which made sense. Out of the 150 or so missionaries in our entire mission — an area covering nearly all of Nebraska, half of both Kansas and South Dakota, and a sliver of Minnesota — there were only ten sisters total. From what I’d heard, bishops would beg President Trimble to send us to their areas, and it wasn’t hard to understand why. Before my mission, I’d always believed there was some metamorphic, cellular-level transformation that made boys all holy and serious and hardworking the moment they became elders. Turned out they were still just nineteen-year-old boys. Evjen 30 Case in point: We were eating our McDonalds Dollar Menu meals with them on the floor of the church gymnasium until the gathering devolved into the elders trying to knock down the empty soda cups they’d lined on the edge of the stage with brown napkin spitballs. Which was all fine and good — boys will be boys and all that — until one of them stuck their straw up their nose and released a weak-arching spitball that landed inches from Miller’s foot. “You guys are disgusting,” she said, scooting several feet backwards. “You love us,” Elder Peterson said. “You want to be us.” “Figured me out,” she said dryly before popping her last few fries into her mouth. She turned to me. “Library?” I nodded and stood, brushing the gym floor dust from my sweatpants. Each P-Day, we could send a single email home to our parents, and since we didn’t have the internet at our apartment, we had to use the computer lab at Love Library on campus. Peterson, a lanky, freckled class clown type, was so obviously in love with Miller it was hard not to laugh anytime he spoke to her. We actually spent a fair amount of time with him and his companion, Elder Martinez, since they were assigned to the same congregation at UNL. President Trimble figured it was a good idea to have both male and female missionaries available on campus to avoid any quote-unquote “distractions” that might arise from working with people our own age. The irony was that the only distractions I’d ever observed were internal. It wasn’t like anything was really going on between the two of them. Even if Miller had been single — and dating allowed — she was way out of Peterson’s league. The poor kid clearly internalized their brother-sister banter as flirting, but Miller just genuinely thought he was annoying. Evjen 31 “Don’t be lame, stay for basketball,” he said at the exact moment that a spitball hit his cheek. The whole group erupted in laughter. “Yeah, we’ll pass,” she said. “We’ll pass!” Peterson echoed, pretending not to be embarrassed. “Get it? We’ll pass?!” Elder Martinez and I exchanged glances. It was an unspoken inside joke between us, this mutual understanding that Peterson made an adorable fool of himself every time Miller was around. I didn’t know Martinez that well yet, but he was one of the few elders I’d met who I thought perhaps I might get along with in real life. If nothing else, he could read a room. Like Miller, he was nearing the end of his mission, and as was typical with seasoned elders, he’d just been assigned to be district leader for our area, which essentially made him our supervisor. We reported our numbers to him, he reported them to middle management — the zone leaders — and they’d report them to the Assistants to the President, or the APs. Being an AP was a coveted role most elders pined for their whole missions. At BYU, that title alone could earn a returned missionary a girlfriend. Unlike most of the other elders I’d met who were serving in leadership positions, Martinez wasn’t the salesmany type. He was quiet and reserved, listened more than he talked. The district leader in my previous area had reminded me of Michael Scott, overconfident and emotionally oblivious, and it had taken all my self-control to feign graciousness whenever he offered me “pro tips.” (“See the key, Sister Banks, is working smarter, not harder.”) Miller and I said goodbye, tossed our grease-spotted brown sacks into the trash, and headed outside. It was a cold day, and the windshield of our red Elantra was still framed by the residual frost we’d missed in the halfhearted scraping we’d given it that morning. The car wasn’t Evjen 32 ours ours, but it came with the area, so we got to claim it as long as we were the sisters assigned to campus. As Miller was the senior companion, she drove while I served as navigator. We didn’t have a GPS, so anytime we had to locate a new address, I had to reference the city atlas we kept in the glove compartment. Miller, though, had all our regular trips memorized — church, campus, grocery store, home — since she’d been sent to Lincoln the previous transfer six weeks earlier. “It’s a miracle the church doesn’t implode,” she said as she turned the ignition. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir began singing mid-Hallelujah, right where we’d cut them off, and we headed towards downtown. She continued analyzing the complexities of having teenage boys provide the manpower for the missionary program (“I mean, none of this would work unless the church was true”) while I gazed out the window, half listening. I didn’t think Lincoln was particularly beautiful, even at its greenest, and I could already tell winter was going to be next-level gray and depressing. The closer you got to downtown, the sadder the scenery became: decrepit turn-ofthe-century mansions with chipped paint and boarded windows, graffitied apartment complexes, wraparound porches packed with junk. I wondered what it looked like at its heyday, back when the country was new and people believed in Manifest Destiny and all that. In a lot of ways, the Midwest was living up to exactly what I’d imagined. My first area had covered the rural towns of Auburn and Brownville, and in all those three eternal months I could never shake the feeling I’d stepped back in time fifty years. It didn’t help that I was shellshocked and clueless, nor that my trainer was on her last transfer and extremely trunky — missionary jargon for checked out, over it, ready to be done. Evjen 33 And then there was my nagging jealousy. A few weeks back I got a letter from a friend serving a mission in Budapest who had so graciously included a picture of herself standing in front of some palatial structure you’d find in a fairytale, holding up a delicious-looking pastry. I was doing my best to fall in love with Nebraska, but Cupid refused to strike. When I was transferred to Lincoln to work with Sister Miller on campus, I was certain it was just the change I needed. College life was something I knew and loved and understood. I could relate to twenty year olds, empathize with their nihilism and righteous indignation at the state of the world. So far, though, none of that had come in particularly handy. Miller parked and we entered the library. The student who always seemed to be manning the front desk on P-Days greeted us. “Thirty minutes?” they asked. We nodded, handed over our drivers licenses for collateral, and thanked them as they handed us the computer access slips. Thirty minutes used to feel like a typing speed test with all I wanted to say, but my messages were getting lazier and less sentimental the longer I was out. I was essentially writing to tell my parents I was still alive. But the messages also functioned as a sort of weekly journal entry since I was too tired to write more than a line or two in my actual journal every night, the way we were supposed to do. In both regards, it served me well to carefully curate the experiences I chose to include. No reason to burden my parents with the slurs and rejections and slammed doors, and it’s not like I wanted to remember those, anyway. Miller went to the bathroom. I chose a computer and typed the access code from the slip into the keyboard, picking at my nails as I waited for the screen to load. “Been a while since I’ve seen sisters,” someone said next to me. I looked over to see a girl with thick-rimmed glasses, a flannel shirt buttoned to the neck, and a septum ring. She must have seen the confusion on my face because she pointed to my Evjen 34 badge as if to clarify how she’d known who I was. Mission rules said we had to have our nametags on even while wearing street clothes. “I’m Margot,” she said, extending her hand. I shook it. “Sister Banks. I mean, obviously.” I was flustered, my brain unable to process why a random stranger was instigating a conversation with me. I hadn't realized how comfortable I’d become persona non grata. “What’s your first name? Or are you, like, not allowed to say?” “Sadie,” I replied after a few milliseconds of hesitation. Some missionaries were weird about sharing their first name, as if saying it out loud would break the spell. As far as I knew, though, there weren't any formal rules forbidding it. “How long have you been out?” Been out. An insider phrase. “Four months,” I said. She nodded knowingly. “And how do you like Nebraska? I’m not from here either, so you can be honest.” Just then, Miller sat down on the other side of me, her face reflecting her surprise at finding me speaking to a stranger. She leaned forward to catch Margot’s eyes in the gap between my face and the computer. “I’m Sister Miller.” I was suddenly irritated by her presence, by the fact that I would always be overshadowed by her confidence and friendliness and symmetrical face. “Nice to meet you,” Margot said, clearly forgetting she’d just asked me a question. “I was just telling Sister Banks how it’s been a bit since I’ve seen sisters.” Evjen 35 “Oh, are you a member?” Miller asked, picking up on Margot’s obvious familiarity with the church. “Was.” I glanced at Miller, who, for the first time I could remember, seemed unsure of what to say. “I did the whole mission thing, too,” Margot continued. “Went to New York City. Coolest eighteen months of my life.” “So you’re just not, like, super active right now,” Miller said. It wasn’t phrased as a question. “Life gets so busy, I totally get it.” “It’s more that I just don’t believe in it anymore. Or, I guess, I believe in other things,” Margot replied without even a hint of awkwardness or tension or resentment, as if she’d just told us her favorite color. “Oh,” Miller said. She nodded and smiled, but I could tell it was strained. As for myself, I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. Ever since my brother Max stopped going to church five years ago, my thoughts about post-Mormons — apostates, to use the doctrinally-correct term — had been complicated. I mean, it still made me confused if I thought about it too hard, but I also got defensive whenever I heard anyone offer their own pitying, judgy opinions. “Such a shame,” I remember overhearing one of my aunts tell another. “Especially after how hard Rebecca and Aaron fought for their eternal family.” “Hey, you guys should come over for dinner one night when you don’t have a member feeding you. I make a mean massaman curry,” Margot said. “We’d love that,” Miller said, still pretending she wasn’t rattled. “What’s your phone number?” Evjen 36 Miller wrote down Margot’s phone number in the back of her planner and, with nothing left to say, the three of us absorbed ourselves into our silent tasks. My inbox, for once, was actually full of dopamine-spiking content: My mom had attached some adorable pictures of my nieces from their baby blessings, and also sent a message saying she’d confirmed our Christmas phone call at Bishop VanLeuven’s house, the leader of our assigned congregation. My heart raced at the thought of communicating with my parents in real time, of hearing their voices. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Margot was finishing up with whatever she was working on. She gave us a friendly, if slightly hurried, goodbye before leaving the library. Miller didn’t bring it up until we were in the car, halfway back to our apartment. “That wasn’t a coincidence, Sister Banks. God put Margot in our path for a reason.” My mind jumped to the spiritual moment I’d had after opening my call — epiphany, revelation, whatever it was. I’d always considered it in light of teaching someone new, of facilitating an investigator’s conversion, by why couldn’t it apply to bringing someone back to the church? You heard it all the time — members sharing how they’d fallen less active and were brought back to the church by a divinely-appointed set of missionaries. The fact that she’d openly invited us over had to be a sign she was anti or anything, unless she was planning some sort of sabotage, which I realized wasn’t 100% out of the question. In my last area, a less-active member had invited us in for lemonade then proceeded to offer a passive-aggressive prayer in which she asked God to “give us courage to break free from Satan’s grasp and back to the true Christian path.” Miller and I didn’t talk much when we got home. I cleaned out my handbag and finished cleaning the kitchen. She vacuumed. We each folded our freshly-washed garments into neat white stacks. I knew some companionships would spend their P-Day afternoons baking cookies Evjen 37 together or taking silly pictures to send home, but I always revelled in those last few hours of silence, of being in my own head. At the apartment, we were allowed to be out of sight of each other as long as we left the doors open, so I’d try to capitalize on this alone time whenever possible. I liked Miller just fine, and as far as I knew she had nothing against me, but being with someone 24/7 was just….a lot. Before we knew it, it was time to change back into our proselytizing clothes and head over to dinner with the Mangolds, a sweet older couple whose house was covered in Huskers paraphernalia and perpetually smelled like onions and Windex. We’d sometimes eat with the student members, usually Hot Pockets and other standard college fare, but more often we were fed by members from the nearest family congregation, the Pioneer Ward. Tonight, the Mangolds had invited both us and the campus elders, which was pretty typical. “Double the blessings,” they would say, heaping football player-sized portions on all our plates. The last time I’d weighed myself on a member’s bathroom scale, I’d already gained five pounds. And that was weeks ago. The elders’ car was already curbed in front of the blue split-level when we arrived. Sister Mangold greeted us at the door with pillowy hugs while Peterson made stupid faces at us over the top of the bannister. “Come up to the kitchen,” she said with her crepe-paper voice. Brother Mangold met us at the top of the staircase, helped his wife up the last couple steps, then led us to our designated seats around the table. It was decorated with a gaudy Christmas tablecloth and a crocheted angel centerpiece. “It’s just meatloaf,” Sister Mangold said self-deprecatingly, which we countered with the obligatory affirmations. (“It smells so good!” “Meatloaf is my literal favorite!”) Brother Mangold called on Elder Martinez to pray — assigning the supplicant was head of the Evjen 38 household’s duty — then dished us up while, as per usual, he began reminiscing about his own mission in Virginia, back when the whole East Coast was lumped together as the Eastern States mission. All of us had already heard the story about the Holy Ghost leading him and his companion to a man whose leg had been crushed by a farm implement, but we listened with rapt attention anyway, raised our eyebrows appropriately at all the plot twists and turns. Admittedly, the meatloaf was dry and too salty, but it still felt nice to be sitting around a table with proxy grandparents who equated us with canonized saints. Members were what saved us. No matter how poorly the day was going, knowing we had a hot meal waiting, at which we would be the guests of honor, was sufficient motivation. Sister Mangold was the dotingest of doters. As soon as our meal was finished, the four of us tried to help with the dishes but were rebuffed. “You just go relax in the living room,” Sister Mangold said, patting Miller and I on the cheek. “You deserve it.” As validating as this lionizing was, I felt something bordering on guilt whenever members talked this way, as if we spent our days crawling through trenches or rescuing babies from burning buildings. Being a missionary was hard, but I couldn’t honestly call it abject suffering. We had more than enough food to eat — too much, one might say — and a nicer car than I owned at home. Each month our church-issued debit cards were filled with more of an allowance than I’d ever had. Though I did know some people who saved up enough money themselves to cover the $400 monthly payment the church requested, my parents were subsidizing the cost. Miller and I sat on the loveseat across from the elders. Peterson started messing with one of the painted wooden nutcrackers on the coffee table, and it slipped from his hands and nearly hit the floor. Evjen 39 “Don’t touch her stuff,” Miller scolded. “Don’t touch her stuff,” he mimicked in a high-pitched voice. Miller rolled her eyes. Elder Martinez and I exchanged glances. “So. Transfer calls tonight,” Peterson said, clearly sensing her irritation and now fiddling with the zipper on his scripture case. The kid couldn’t sit still. “We’re safe,” Miller said. “I’m dying here.” “Think you’re staying on campus for your last two, huh?” Peterson said. “I wouldn’t be so sure. Rumor on the street is that the elders in Grand Island are piles and Prez is going to whitewash it with sisters.” I’d forgotten it was transfer week. The location for new assignments were always announced in person at a large meeting, but two nights before, you’d get a call from the zone leaders letting you know if you were staying or going. For obvious reasons, it was rare that both missionaries were transferred out at the same time; it made sense to leave at least one person in each area who was familiar with the area. Whitewashes, as they were called, really only happened when the mission president was converting an area over from elders to sisters (and vice versa), or if the companionship was having obedience issues. Nothing could turn missionaries from beloved congregational mascots into social pariahs faster than being caught breaking the rules. Brother and Sister Mangold walked into the living room.“Who’s sharing the thought tonight?” she said, setting a plate of snowflake-shaped sugar cookies topped with silver sprinkles and coconut flakes on the coffee table. “Banks, you’re up,” Peterson said. Evjen 40 Before we left members’ homes, we always shared a spiritual message to thank them for the meal. Food for blessings. The church had obviously come a long way from its original takenothing-but-the-shirt-on-your-back-and-hope-someone-takes-pity-on-you proselytizing strategy, but some principles still applied. The workman still needed to prove worthy of his meat. The Mangolds looked at me, peered into my soul with those generous elderly gazes. I opened my scriptures to a random page and scanned the highlighted sections. Our daily routine included two hours of morning study, most of which was spent reading the Bible and Book of Mormon and writing our thoughts down in the margins. None of my notes seemed worthy of sharing. Several uncomfortable seconds passed as I aimlessly thumbed through a few other pages. My cheeks grew warm with everyones’ gazes. “So I was reading in John this morning,” I finally said, clearing my throat. “I’m trying to read the Gospels since, you know, Christmas is coming up. There was one verse that stuck out to me: ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ It’s just, like, so amazing to know that God loved us that much.” Sister Miller shifted beside me. I looked over and realized there was something sad and tired about her, and I knew it was because she felt responsible for my progress as a missionary. Both she and my first companion had been endlessly patient, quick to offer their reassurances that my confidence would grow with time, but I sensed Miller was beginning to wonder what was wrong with me. I couldn’t get by on John 3:16. It was a quote for a cutesy wall hanging, a cliché, the most basic and doctrinally-nebulous scripture of all time. My two-year-old nephew probably had it memorized. Evjen 41 “Isn’t that a beautiful verse of scripture?” Sister Mangold said, clearly trying to spare my ego, which I both appreciated and slightly resented. “Never gets old,” Brother Mangold added, closer to the mark. We chatted for a few minutes longer, the Mangolds asking about our Christmas plans (“You’re always welcome over here, you know”) and sharing news about the birth of their first great-grandchild. “Well, we better get going,” Elder Martinez said at a break in the conversation. “Thank you so much for dinner.” “Yes yes, of course, best be getting on your way,” Brother Mangold said, pulling himself to standing. “Won’t find any honest seekers of truth in our living room. Not ones that haven’t found it already.” “Take a cookie or three for the road,” Sister Mangold added, holding the trembling plate out to us. I didn’t want a cookie, but took one with each hand anyway. ** The phone rang while I was in the bathroom that night, taking as long as humanly possible to get ready for bed. It had been a mildly successful evening: one new investigator, an international transfer student named Sunita (I’d learned by now not to get my hopes up, but you had to start somewhere) and a good second lesson with Jessica, a freshman who was investigating the church after an LDS classmate from high school died and she’d been intrigued by what she heard at the funeral. She’d invited us back next week. Honestly, if we made it past the Joseph Smith story with someone, it felt like we were in the clear. Evjen 42 The ringing stopped. “Hello?” I heard Sister Miller say, followed by a long pause. Then, “Shut up, seriously?” My stomach knotted. Clearly, it wasn’t Elder Martinez on the other line calling for our evening numbers — she’d never have been so cavalier with him. I dried my hands and hurried out of the bathroom with my skirt still unzipped. Miller was sitting at her desk in the study room, phone still to her ear. When I met her gaze from the doorway her eyes went wide and telling. “Okay, well, I guess we’ll see you Tuesday.” She hung up and slowly set the phone on the desk. “Zone leaders?” She nodded. “I’m leaving,” I guessed. She shook her head. My stomach sank. “You?” I knew this was part of it, all this disruption. You’d go crazy if you spent too much time in one area, with one companion. In a life where every day was the same — study, teach, eat, sleep — you needed a change of scenery now and again, if only for sanity’s sake. But one transfer with Sister Miller wasn’t enough. Things were safe with her, purposeful, and despite my obvious inadequacies, I always knew we’d be okay, still find the people we were supposed to find. Though I didn’t know any of the other sisters well, I’d at least met them all, and there wasn’t a single one I didn’t foresee a personality clash with. “Was Peterson right, then?” I asked. She nodded. “Whitewashing Grand Island with Sister Fuamatu. I don’t know how the Evjen 43 elders find this stuff out. It’s not like we can call missionaries outside our districts.” It was so Miller to think the best of everyone, to assume that if something was prohibited it was therefore impossible. “That’s not all of it, though.” “What do you mean, not all of it?” She grinned, relishing her secret, dragging out the silent seconds. “You’re training a greenie here.” “No, I’m not.” “Oh, but you are.” “I’m a greenie. And I, like, suck.” She rolled her eyes playfully. “You don’t suck. And you shouldn’t say suck even if you did. Plus, you’re not a greenie anymore. Four months is, like, a quarter of the way through. Besides, President Trimble wouldn’t have called you to be a trainer if you couldn’t handle it. First Nephi 3:7, Banks: ‘For I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.’” I felt sick. “I’m not ready.” “Because you say you’re not ready. You have to stop thinking there’s some magic switch that’s going to make you eloquent and confident and faithful.” “What do you mean ‘faithful’? When have I ever broken the rules?” Her demeanor shifted, exposing glimmers of the emotions I knew she worked so hard to suppress: frustration, exasperation, fatigue. “What does faithful literally mean, Banks? Could you honestly look me in the eyes and say you’re full of faith?” Evjen 44 The words stung. She must have seen it in my face because her voice softened. “It’s so obvious, Sister. This is God’s plan. It’s the only way you’re going to grow.” My hurt morphed into something else, something hot and barbed. “What did you tell President Trimble during interviews?” Every six weeks, missionaries met with the mission president, shared their successes and what they were struggling with. President Trimble had taken over for the last mission president just a few weeks before I’d arrived, and though he never complained to us, I got the feeling it was a harder gig than he let on. While missionaries made the decision whether or not to serve, mission presidents were just called out of the blue: “Hey, can you drop everything for three years, move to a place you’ve never been, and manage a couple hundred twenty year olds alive? Oh, and it would be great if you could make sure they’re facilitating church growth while you’re at it.” As much as I was flailing, I couldn’t help but empathize with him and his family. His two youngest kids were both in high school, even. I couldn’t imagine being dragged a thousand miles away from home as a teenager. I’d been able to fake it through my last interview — which, incidentally, had immediately followed Sister Miller’s — but I’d sensed that he knew my feelings about missionary life were more complicated than I was letting on. And it appeared this wasn’t simply divine inspiration on his part. Miller looked away, began organizing the books on her desk into neat stacks. “I just told him the truth.” Tears pressed behind my eyes. “Which is?” I could tell she was wrestling with how to phrase her response. “It’s…you’re just Evjen 45 existing, Banks. Going through the motions. Do you know why you’re here? Do you really even want to be here?” I wanted to be angry at her. To hate her, even. But the questions were not only valid, they’d been lurking deep down inside of me for months, trying to find purchase ever since I stepped into the MTC. That single, glowing moment of illumination I’d had with my mom while opening my call — the only substantial tendril keeping me from plunging into hopelessness — had been steadily fading since August. I cried. She came over and wrapped her arms around me. “It’s normal to be homesick and overwhelmed. But what’s that saying? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting things to change? This is exactly what you need. Challenges lead to growth.” She broke away and grabbed both my shoulders. “You can do this. God will help you. You just have to trust him. And if you can’t trust him, trust me.” I forced a smile. This was Miller talking. Who was I to disagree? Evjen 46 3. “So, what made you want to serve a mission?” Sister Jensen asked. My new companion, fresh from the Missionary Training Center in Provo, had a highpitched voice that matched both her size and the springly blonde curls that sat just above her shoulder. She seemed impossibly young; four months seemed to have aged me exponentially. We were headed south on I-80, returning to Lincoln from the transfer meeting in Omaha. It was December 19th, and I was finally discovering why so many people had forewarned me about the Midwest cold. Tiny snowflakes danced chaotically on the windshield. As the senior companion, I drove — my first time since I’d left for the MTC — and my hands were clammy beneath my death grip on the wheel. “It’s kind of a long story,” I said, which was the truth. “Don’t we have time? That last sign said there’s still 26 miles to Lincoln.” I considered making up some fiction about receiving a prompting while hiking Y Mountain, or being inspired by a line from my patriarchal blessing, but decided that it was probably best not to flout mission rules (section 3.4 in the White Handbook was entitled “Honesty”) in my first hour as trainer. “I was engaged, but it didn’t work out.” I just met this girl. I owed her zero details. Sister Jensen didn’t say anything. I snuck a sidelong glance and could tell she was annoyed by my answer, maybe because I’d given her one measly sentence after telling her it was a long story, or maybe because a failed engagement was a stupid reason to go on a mission, which wasn’t wrong. Evjen 47 We drove in silence for a minute. “Sorry. You’re right, we shouldn’t talk about home,” she finally said. “No no, it’s fine, it’s just … like I said, long story. I’m sure I’ll be blabbing all about it soon. Trust me, you’re going to learn way more about me than you ever wanted to know.” I turned up the music, humming along to MoTab, while she pulled out a pen and notebook from her handbag and opened it to a clean page. “Who are your investigators?” She clearly meant business, which I appreciated. I described the three students we were actively teaching: Madison, a Lutheran girl dating one of the members; Sunita, the international student from Nepal Miller and I had just met; and Jessica, the freshman who’d recently attended an LDS funeral. Sister Jensen wrote furiously. “Oh, and we just met a less-active at the library the other day,” I said. “Margot. She invited us over for dinner, actually.” I gasped as I realized I never copied Margot’s phone number from Sister Miller’s planner. I explained the situation to Sister Jensen. “Did she tell you where she lives or anything?” I shook my head. “Is there some way to get ahold of Sister Miller?” “I can probably ask the zone leaders. Hopefully she saves her old planners.” We were always issued a new planner at the start of each transfer. It was a nice metaphor for a new beginning, a clean slate, but the constant turnover had its obvious potential drawbacks. Despite this jumpscare, it felt surprisingly good to be in charge, to be the one with the answers. Before transfers, Miller had helped me brainstorm things to occupy our time for the student-bodiless week ahead, and I realized it wouldn’t be as barren as I was originally thinking. Evjen 48 That night, the ward was having an end-of-term Christmas party that would be ideal for introducing Sister Jensen around. Plus, we had lessons with Madison, Sunita, and Jessica all lined up over the next few days, and with members no less. Whenever possible, we were supposed to get the congregation involved in the teaching. Data — and the church was big on data — showed that retention rates depended on whether or not newly-baptized converts had friends in their wards. Less important was whether or not our investigators liked us. I’d lost track of the number of times I’d heard the phrase Are your investigators converted to the gospel, or to you? during missionary trainings. “I’m going to pray for them,” Sister Jensen said suddenly, turning the music down, folding her arms, and lowering her head. “Like, right now?” “Dear Heavenly Father…” I almost laughed at the absurdity of it, this spontaneous freeway invocation for a bunch of strangers she had never met. Gratefully, I held it in. She was traumatized, I told myself. I thought of my own arrival in the mission field, how vulnerable and unworthy I’d felt, the sour homesickness that never left my gut. But maybe this was exactly what I needed, precisely the companionship Miller had envisioned. Someone so full of greenie zeal that it would seep into my subconscious and fix me. ** By the time we neared the apartment, the snow was falling thick and fast, the world white. There was hardly anyone on the roads. I found it funny how Nebraska shut down at the slightest inclination of bad weather, while in Utah you were just expected to know how to drive in the snow. It was a rite of passage. Evjen 49 As I parked, I noticed a milk crate-sized brown package on the doorstep. Excitement surged through me as I remembered my mom’s letter mentioning they’d sent off a Christmas package. “Can I help with your bags?” I asked. “I think I’m good.” I popped the trunk for her and, unable to help myself, went and unlocked the door so I could check the box. Sure enough, the label was addressed to Sister Sadie Banks in Mom’s unmistakable handwriting. I slid it through the open door and into the entryway, then grabbed the envelopes peeking over the top of the letterbox and set them on top of the package. I met Sister Jensen back on the walkway. She was dragging a bag with each hand, head lowered against the wind. The wheels kept getting stuck in the snow. “I can really help,” I said, taking the handle from her left hand and wheeling it up the front steps. We stomped our shoes on the faded welcome mat, dusted the snow from our skirts and off her bags, and stepped inside. I felt self-conscious of the apartment, as if the smell and the bare walls and the clashing furniture were somehow my fault. “Bedroom’s this way.” I led her to our room, pointing out the closet space and dresser drawers Sister Miller had vacated this morning, the freshly-made twin bed she had slept on just last night. “I’m totally fine to switch if you want the bed closest to the window,” I offered, though I didn’t really want to. Sleeping against a wall always made me claustrophobic, but charity only counted if it was a sacrifice, right? Gratefully, she declined. I figured she’d want a few minutes alone to get settled, so I headed back into the living room to unbox my package. Evjen 50 But mail first. Unsurprisingly, three of the four letters were for Sister Miller. I knew we’d be getting her mail for the next few weeks, since there were likely already letters in transit and it would take time for her parents to get her new address to family and friends. I set them aside to forward to the mission office. The letter on the bottom was for me. As soon as I saw it my eagerness to open the Christmas package was eclipsed by an implosion that emptied me of air. There was no return address, but it didn’t need one. I would have recognized the handwriting anywhere. I almost set it aside, but my morbid curiosity won out. My hands shook as I ripped an opening in the envelope, pulled out the letter — a single piece of college-ruled paper — and unfolded it. Dear Sister Banks, There’s no easy way to say this, so I guess I’ll just say it. I’ve been dating someone for a few months, and last weekend I proposed. We have a few scheduling things to iron out, but the wedding will probably be at the Salt Lake Temple sometime in June. I know things happen for a reason. I hope you can see that, too. I also hope you’re finding people to teach and learning a lot. Choosing to serve was absolutely the right call for you and I’m really happy for you that you get to have that experience. Sincerely, Will An old roommate had run into Will on campus a couple months ago and filled me in on his dating news via letter (“Trust me, she’s not even that cute”) but it still felt surreal holding the letter in my hands, still made me nauseous to read and reread these emotionless words. Will and I dated for two years, knew each other as intimately as two celibate people can. He was, for Evjen 51 several months, going to be my husband, the father of my children, my companion not just for time, but for eternity. And he’d sent me a business memo. It was the first letter I’d received from him. I hadn’t really expected him to write — our engagement had already been called off for nine months by the time I left — but before my roommate had told me he was dating someone, it was hard not to let my brain entertain the possibility that he was missing me, that he regretted ending our relationship. It had been the worst type of break up, completely out of the blue. I’d been dress shopping with my mom just that morning. Will casually slipped in a “we need to talk” on the hour drive up to Aspen Grove (the site of our first kiss, incidentally) which had given him plenty of time to elucidate several soul-splitting justifications for his decision, including the fact that I wasn’t spiritual enough, that my priorities were concerning, and that my political persuasions and “obsession with race and gender stuff” gave him a dark feeling. He had no choice, he said, but to call it off. (I’d laughed in shock-induced delirium at the irony that I was wearing my Obama-Biden ‘08 sweatshirt.) He still thought I was a “great person,” though, and knew I’d find the “right guy” someday, find my way back to the “right path.” It was strange how, in hindsight, I could still feel so wounded and yet equally so sure I had dodged a bullet. You want the truth about why I’m serving a mission, Sister Jensen? Most probably people would probably equate my decision to running away, maybe see it as a desperate attempt to win him back, but in truth it wasn’t either. I was trying to prove Will wrong. Or rather, I was trying to prove to myself that Will was wrong. Maybe I wasn’t Sister Miller material, but I loved God and always tried to do the right thing. Despite what Will — and Evjen 52 the vast majority of other BYU students — felt about the intersection of Mormonism and politics, I refused to believe that being a liberal made me an apostate. Numb, I set the letter aside and started opening the package. I was mad at myself for ruining the only Christmas joy I could hope for by reading Will’s letter, but now that it was ruined, I needed a flotation device, something to bring me back to stasis. Inside the box was a miniature Christmas tree already strung with lights and decorated with tiny, handmade ornaments. At the bottom of the package were several small gifts wrapped in candy cane-striped paper and a card. I set up the tree in the empty corner of the apartment, extended the wire boughs, then placed the gifts, one of which was for Sister Miller, beneath it. I plugged in the lights and sat back to admire it, trying to will Christmas cheer into my bloodstream, to feel anything. I picked up the card and pulled it from its envelope. The front was a vintage film still from It’s a Wonderful Life, George and Mary hugging while Zuzu hangs from her father’s shoulders, her small hands clutched over his chest. When I opened it, a tiny bell fastened to an elastic string jingled. Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings was printed inside, and just below it, in my mother’s cursive: “To our Courageous Missionary: You make our life wonderful. Remember: no man is a failure who has friends. Love, Mom and Dad.” The tears came then. In my family, that movie represented so much more than just monochrome Christmas nostalgia. It was a parable for life. George, with all his imperfections, was the kind of Christian my parents had taught us to be — selfless, humble, kind to those who could do nothing for them. We’d watch it every year, cry together as all the people George had helped throughout his life Evjen 53 poured through his front door bringing their own sacrificial offerings to save him from Potter’s evil plot to get him imprisoned. My longing for home — for a single hug from my parents — hit as an acute ache, how I imagined it might feel to be slowly hollowed out. I cried harder than I ever remembered crying, the type of tears that blur not only your vision, but time and all senses. When I came to, I realized Sister Jensen was standing in the hallway, clearly unsure of what to do or say. Any length of time might have passed. I felt a wave of guilt for letting her see me like this. I was supposed to be the strong one. “I’m so sorry,” I said, standing and wiping my eyes on the sleeves of my sweater, grateful I hadn’t put on any mascara that morning. “How’s everything going?” “Are you okay?” “Yes. Yeah, I’m totally fine. I’m probably just, like … hormonal or something.” A white lie didn’t count as dishonesty, right? Either way, admitting the truth felt inconsiderate, irresponsible. No brand-new missionary should have to deal with a homesick trainer. “Okay. Well, I’m ready to go, if you are.” I realized then that she was wearing a different coat — a long black parka with a fur-lined hood — and calf-high snow boots. “Like, right now?” In different circumstances, I might have laughed as I remembered I’d already said those exact words to her right before she prayed in the car. “I can finish unpacking later. It’s proselyting hours, so shouldn’t we get out there?” I glanced towards the window. “We can’t drive around in this. Trust me. President Trimble has told us to stay inside during snowstorms.” She shifted uncomfortably. “Have you tracted here? In this complex?” Evjen 54 I smiled as gently as possible, not wanting to make her feel dumb. I could still feel the weight of the compulsion to talk to everyone I saw in those early days, an oppressive fear that if you missed the chance to speak to one of God’s elect that had been carefully placed in your path, the sin was on your shoulders. “The mission office agreed to some no solicitation policy with the apartment manager when they signed the lease,” I said. “Just since we’re all neighbors, you know? They don’t want people getting uncomfortable.” She didn’t look like she felt the least bit absolved. “But don’t they deserve to hear the gospel message, too?” “Maybe being a good neighbor is enough? Think of it as planting seeds for another interaction with missionaries down the road.” I stole the phrase almost verbatim from my first companion. It was a nice, assuaging idea to mitigate the fact that the vast majority of our interactions with people went nowhere. You had to learn to live with yourself somehow. Nothing I said seemed to be computing. Suddenly, I had an idea. “Why don’t we go out and shovel walks? We’ve only got one shovel, so we’ll have to take turns, but it’s better than sitting in here doing nothing.” This seemed to appease her somewhat. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll get my snow gloves.” I couldn’t help but be a little proud of myself for coming up with the idea, not to mention grateful for both the distraction and the anesthetizing numb that shoveling snow would surely provide. Service was one of the only mission-approved non-proselyting activities, and I often thought about how I would have much preferred building a water well or a schoolhouse in some remote village to worrying about everyone’s salvation. I wondered what Will would claim that said about me. Evjen 55 ** The storm cleared out in time for us to attend the ward party that night. The theme was Hawaiin luau. The gathering had been organized as an attempt to celebrate the culture of a few of its Polynesian members, though three of the seven were siblings who had been adopted from the Marshall Islands by a local white family and were, for all intents and purposes, very white themselves. I understood the desire to lean into the congregation’s diversity, but wondered if Oriental Trading Company leis and paper umbrellas in mocktail piña coladas really did the job. At BYU, one of my history classes had delved into Polynesian colonization, and there were definitely some difficult conversations as we tried to reconcile the church’s evangelical intentions with the objective exploitativeness of Western takeover. I’d yet to figure it out. The church building, nestled on campus between the music buildings and the Lied Center, was small and unassuming. I was conscious of Sister Jensen’s nervous aura as I parked, but couldn’t think of anything helpful to say. If I’d known her better, I’d have shared my mom’s favorite catch-phrase: “The only way through is through.” It was what she said to us when we found out Dad had prostate cancer several years back, the time we all got a terrible stomach bug on a cheap cruise ship off the coast of Florida, the night Will broke up with me. As a Banks family proverb, I found the phrase reassuring and inspirational, but I thought it would probably just seem patronizing coming from a virtual stranger. Though the snow had stopped falling, the arctic wind had lingered behind. We pulled our coats around our necks and rushed towards the warmth promised by the church’s illuminated glass doors. Even from outside, I could hear cheesy beach music and occasional bursts of laughter. Evjen 56 “We invited all our investigators to this,” I said as we approached the door, checking the cell phone to see if we’d received any I’m here or sorry, I’m not going to make it texts. (There weren’t; very rarely did people think to check in with us.) “Hopefully at least one of them will be there.” “What do we do if not?” “Just hang out with the members. ‘Build relationships of trust,’” I added with air quotes. “You’ll hear that all the time, every training. It just means to make sure the members feel confident trusting you with their referrals. Knocking doors feels productive, but really we should be working with the members.” I opened the door. A rush of party noise and warm air hit us. “Sisters!” There were a dozen or so members gathered in the foyer, and several of the girls came over and hugged us. We were minor celebrities even, and maybe especially, in a singles ward. Miller and I had often dissected this phenomenon. In Utah, you hardly ever saw the missionaries; the church was so prevalent that they assigned one set of missionaries to a region encompassing thousands of members. Here, in the “mission field” — what members called anywhere outside of Utah where being Mormon made you a minority — we were a concrete manifestation of Zion, proof that the church was alive and thriving. We gave validity to their testimonies, to their commitment to a religion that, frankly, a lot of people hated. As quirky as some of these young adult members were, I was amazed at their collective ability to manage being young and LDS in someplace like Lincoln, where beer and hooking up were as much a part of the culture as football. “This is Sister Jensen,” I said after the hugs had made their rounds, feeling weirdly like I was introducing a date. Evjen 57 Sister Jensen waved timidly. “Your curls are adorable,” one of them said. “Yeah, you’re so cute and miniature,” said another, linking arms with both of us. “Come on, they already prayed on the food.” They led us into the gym where we always met the elders for meetings and lunch and PDay basketball, on the rare occasion we felt like sticking around. The “cultural hall” was its official name, and one was included in each cookie-cutter LDS church for this very purpose — partying, Mormon style. The room was decorated with pastel streamers and balloons; red plastic tablecloths and cheap Dollar Tree decor topped the round tables. A few people wore fake grass skirts and leis. There was something comforting, grounding about ward parties, like walking into a Wal-Mart in an unfamiliar town. Bishop VanLeuven, the equivalent of the congregation’s pastor, though in an unpaid, temporary role — his day job was dentist — and his wife waved and made their way towards us. Singles ward bishops were like mission presidents but on a condensed scale, still in charge of managing a range of young adult emotions and problems, spiritual or otherwise, but getting to do it from the comfort of their own homes. Not that it was any less intense; it was a several year, several hour per week commitment and, from what I’d gathered when my dad had served as clerk to the bishop a few years back, the calling took a hefty emotional toll. Bishop VanLeuven seemed to enjoy it, though, and always talked about what a pleasure it was to “mingle with the cool cats of the church.” Like most of the singles ward bishops I’d had over the past few years, he was all about fun and good energy, but he had a deeply spiritual side, too. Since I’d arrived, he’d cried at every testimony meeting. Evjen 58 “Welcome! We’re so glad to have you!” Sister VanLeuven said, hugging Sister Jensen. “You’re in great hands with Sister Banks here.” Sister VanLeuven hardly knew me, so the praise felt like lip service. I chose not to be irritated; in the church, womanhood was synonymous with bend-over-backwards kindness, sometimes at the expense of authenticity. Besides, her role wasn’t easy. Being the wife of a mission president or bishop or a host of other demanding church callings was often as challenging as the calling itself, especially for the families who had small kids, which the VanLeuvens did. This was probably their date night. Though my dad had never been in any sort of high-ranking position, there had been several times his church assignment had taken loads of time, and it was interesting to see my mom, who was terrible at faking emotions, do her best to feign 100% positivity and support. “It was so fun to talk to your mom the other day!” she said. “She seems like such a neat lady. Did she tell you we arranged a time for you to call home on Christmas?” “Yes!” I said, genuinely enthusiastic this time. “Thank you so much for inviting us over.” “Oh, it’s our pleasure. We always have the missionaries over for Christmas breakfast. Our kids can’t wait.” While Sister VanLeuven got Sister Jensen’s information so she could coordinate a call with her parents, as well, I spotted Peterson and Martinez, both wearing leis, chatting with a few members. On brand, Peterson also had on a pair of goofy cat-eye sunglasses and a Hawaiin shirt unbuttoned over his white one. Martinez glanced our way and I waved. They started walking towards us. “Here’s the elders,” I said to Sister Jensen. “Since we’re in the same ward, we see a lot of them. For better or worse.” Evjen 59 As if on cue, Elder Peterson opened with, “Ah, fresh meat.” “Nope,” Martinez said flatly. “First thing to remember, Sister Jensen, is to not listen to a word that comes out of Elder Peterson’s mouth.” I turned to Peterson. “Sorry your girlfriend got transferred, by the way.” Martinez laughed louder than I’d ever heard him laugh before. Peterson looked shocked. “Ew, I don’t even…who are you even referring to?” I rolled my eyes and laughed. “Oh my gosh, elder. It’s so obvious.” He feigned confusion. I patted his arm. “Think of it this way. Two more transfers until you can write her at home. No rules against that.” “Doesn’t she have a boyfriend?” Martinez asked. “Yeah, but they haven’t seen each other for literally three years. Fair game until she’s got a ring on her finger, right?” “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Peterson said. Martinez and I exchanged smirks. I glanced over at Sister Jensen, hoping to clue her into the dynamic that had worked when Sister Miller was here — the three of us against Elder Peterson — but she was glancing around the room, looking uncomfortable. “Do you want to go around and meet some more people?” I asked. “Yeah,” she said, turning away from the elders without so much as a nice to meet you. Discreetly, I flashed Martinez a look to acknowledge the awkwardness. “Have fun luauing, elders. Come grab us if you see any of our investigators walk in. Is Kaden coming?” Perhaps talking shop would lighten Jensen up a little. Evjen 60 “Said he was,” Martinez said. “What about any of yours?” I shrugged. “You never really know, right?” I followed Sister Jensen to the nearest huddle of girls. This time, she didn’t seem to need my introduction. Over the next few minutes, she became a different person: bubbly, chatty, composed. It took the pressure off of me, but I couldn’t help but feel slightly tricked that she’d concealed this side of herself for the past ten hours we’d been together. I let myself wander the room a bit to catch up with ward members who Sister Miller and I had discussed might be potential friends for our investigators. We’d joked about how neither of us anticipated missionary work would involve so much matchmaking. There were a couple of times I’d look up to see Sister Jensen searching frantically around for me, making sure I was still within eyesight. I remembered, all too well, how suddenly being tethered to someone else took some getting used to. I wondered if marriage felt that way, if you ever walked into your bedroom at night and thought, “Oh, you again.” There were no signs of our investigators until almost an hour later when Madison walked in with her boyfriend, Bryce. They were the prototypical it couple — he an athlete, she a beautyqueen blonde, both of them tall and polished and trendy. Like usual, they seemed to be in a dream-like state, holding on to each other as if scared the other would suddenly disappear. It was sometimes uncomfortable trying to teach lessons with all their touching, but I could empathize, however grudgingly, with the obliviousness that accompanied being in love. The two of them had been dating for six months or so, shortly after Bryce had come home from his mission to Uruguay. While being in a relationship with someone from another religion wasn’t forbidden, it was impossible to have an eternal marriage — one that would Evjen 61 continue after death — unless both were LDS and temple-worthy. And I knew from our discussions that they’d been talking marriage. In other words, there was a lot on the line. I found Sister Jensen and tapped her on the shoulder. “Madison’s here,” I said, pointing out the table where the couple was now sitting. Sister Jensen’s face lit up. She excused herself from the animated conversation she was having with a member about some church book. “Are we going to try to teach her now?” she asked as we walked towards them. “No. We have a lesson lined up tomorrow at Bryce’s apartment, though.” Madison waved when she saw us. “Sisters! Come sit! Did Miller get to Grand Island okay?” “I think so?” I said as we sat down. “They don’t really tell us anything.” Bryce looked up from his phone and gave us a head nod. We weren’t really chummy, but there was a mutual understanding that we needed each other. Madison made an exaggerated frown. “I’m going to miss her so much. It’s not fair that they move you around like that without telling us.” She and Miller had had a special connection, both of them belonging to the same league of unapproachable women. “Not that we’re, like, not glad you’re here,” she added, touching the table in front of Sister Jensen. I remembered how, in my first area, everyone kept asking, “Where’s the other one?” for several weeks after my arrival, as if it were my fault the sister I’d replaced had been sent away. At least Madison had the social awareness to realize how that might feel. “I’m so excited to be here,” bubbly-version Sister Jensen responded. “Where are you from?” Madison asked. “Medford, Oregon.” Evjen 62 In the chaotic morning, I realized I’d never asked her, though she’d made it clear she didn’t want to chat about our non-missionary selves. And truthfully, where you were from didn’t really matter. Like your first name, your personal history was essentially erased for eighteen months. “What about you?” Sister Jensen asked Madison. “Are you from Lincoln?” Madison shook her head. “Elkhorn. It’s a suburb of Omaha, like an hour north of here.” “And I’m guessing you go to UNL? What’s your major?” “Ugh, don’t remind me,” she said jokingly, rolling her eyes. “I’m in the comm department. Mostly it’s fine, but, you know. Finals week.” She sighed dramatically. “You guys are so lucky to get a break from school for a couple years.” “What are you doing over the break?” I asked, trying to phrase it like a run-of-the-mill smalltalk question, but really assessing how much she’d be around for us to teach her. She glanced sidelong at Bryce. The two of them shared a look that I couldn’t decipher. “We don’t have too much going on. Going home a few times, but I’ll mostly be around.” A few people came over and started chatting the two of them up about weekend movie plans. It was always awkward to be around when people started talking about real-life young adult stuff. We were their age but we weren’t, and there was no natural way to include us in conversations about school, pop culture, dating, gossip. Luckily, Sister VanLeuven started a white elephant game shortly thereafter (I got a pair of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer socks, which I gave to my favorite member of the ward, a sweet girl with Down syndrome; I wouldn’t be allowed to wear them anyways) followed by karaoke. Naturally, Elder Peterson got the loudest laughs singing a terrifying rendition of “Santa Baby.” Evjen 63 It was during “Mele Kalikimaka” musical chairs that I glanced at the phone. Thirty minutes to curfew. I caught Sister Jensen’s eyes across the circle of people and tapped the top of my wrist since it was too loud for her to hear me. We extracted ourselves from the circle with hurried goodbyes to people around us, wandered back out into the cold and to our car. I started it and we made our way down Q Street. Quiet Sister Jensen was back, but that was fine with me. All the fake cheeriness was draining. We drove in silence until we were a couple miles from home. I suddenly felt compelled to talk, not because the silence was bothering me, but because I was worried it was bothering her. “Well, you made it through your first day,” I said. “Hope it wasn’t too painful.” “Not at all,” she said unenthusiastically. “Madison’s nice.” “For sure. You’ll love her.” “I can’t remember, did you say she has a baptism date?” I shook my head. “She grew up really Lutheran. Like, really Lutheran. Went to a Lutheran high school and everything.” There was a tendency in the church, at least for us Utah Mormons, to assume that people’s devotion to other religions was half-hearted, or at least less committed than we were to ours. Since being out, I’d learned this wasn’t true. I’d met some Nebraska Christians who put my discipleship to shame. “She’s taking the discussions nice and slow.” “Maybe we should set one with her at the lesson tomorrow.” I was hit with the same discomfort I’d felt in the car when Sister Jensen started praying on the way home from transfers. I pushed it down. What does faithful literally mean, Banks? Could you honestly look me in the eyes and say you’re full of faith? Evjen 64 “Yeah,” I said. “Of course.” As we pulled up to the apartment, I saw something on the front porch. A package, I thought at first. But as we parked and made our way to the door, I saw that it was actually a foilwrapped shoebox. I picked it up and opened the lid. It was filled with an assortment of what looked to be store-bought butter cookies. There was a tiny slip of paper resting on top of them. “Who’s it from?” Sister Jensen asked. “I’m not sure.” I grabbed the mail — a single letter from my mom — and unlocked the door. Sister Jensen turned on the living room light, illuminating the slip of paper that I could now see had been cut out of a book: When deeds speak, words are nothing. ** Dear Sister Banks, The ward Christmas party was tonight. The ham was terrible, dry and too sweet, but the company was good. Everyone was asking about you. I told them your exciting news about you training a new sister (President Trimble sent us an email to let us know). Brother Fowler said, “That speaks volumes about the kind of missionary she is.” Back when I was first taking the lessons (a lifetime ago) there was a new elder — can’t remember his name now — who was so homesick he started crying right in the middle of a lesson, poor thing. I remember making him a cup of tea thinking it would cheer him up, which only made him cry harder. To think! He told me later he didn’t know which was worse — breaking the Word of Wisdom or offending me. If I’m remembering right, he drank the tea. Dad and I watched Jude and baby Katie so Caroline and Nate could go out for an uninterrupted meal together last night. I tell you what, us old fogies forget how exhausting parenthood is. I thought after raising you four I’d never forget how to calm down a rabid twoyear-old, but we didn’t have the right kind of chicken nuggets in our freezer (Malcom wanted the dinos) and it took a good full hour to get him to stop screaming. Cuddling Baby Katie, though, was worth the ringing eardrums. I’ve been thinking a lot about finding peace in trials. What I keep coming back to is this: life is bigger and deeper and more complex than the here-and-now. I don’t understand most Evjen 65 things, or maybe much at all, but I know God is love and the choices we make ripple in ways you sometimes don’t understand until years down the road. Please know we’re feeling the blessings of your work. Be happy. Remember: “When you are in the service of your fellow beings, you are only in the service of your God.” Love, Mom Evjen 66 4. In true Nebraska form, it was sunny and mid-50s the next day. The snow was mostly melted by the time we left our house after our morning routine: exercise, which consisted of halfhearted push ups and squats, breakfast, and two hours of study and teaching practice. Thursdays were usually my favorite proselyting days, since UNL allowed clubs to set up tables on the patio of the Union building. I preferred tabling to contacting directly; it was much less stressful to be approachable rather than to be the one doing the approaching. Plus, there was something emboldening about standing next to our homemade tri-fold display featuring an 8X10 Jesus while holding a bowl of foil-wrapped Rolos. (“Come for the candy, stay for the gospel,” Elder Peterson liked to say until one of us shushed him.) Though we’d never gained an actual investigator from tabling, we’d met some really cool people who always said hello whenever we ran into them again on campus. Those seeds aren’t going to plant themselves. Plus, as tabling made me an unofficial member of the university, I was better able to siphon some of the campus energy I deeply missed. People-watching had always been a pastime of mine, and tabling gave me a chance to understand the culture at UNL a bit better. What I determined was this: life wasn’t altogether that different here than it was at BYU. Of course, I realized that my ethnographic fieldwork was giving me skewed results; since we had a 9 p.m. curfew, we didn’t have much of a chance to witness things that likely would have easily distinguished the two universities. Still, people were people. Nebraska had the “it” girls with orange tans and fake eyelashes, the bros that chased them, the nerds who everyone knew would be making six figures before the rest of us had landed our first job. The sports nuts who would sell their souls to the football gods without flinching. The artsy types who lived more in their heads than in reality. Evjen 67 UNL also had its fair share of the devout. Along with the “Insect Science Club” and “Sustain UNL” and the “Husker Bass Anglers,” there were plenty of religious groups, the vast majority of them Christian. Though the singles ward was technically separate from the UNL Latter Day Saint Student Association, by all intents and purposes they functioned in the same way — to provide community for the members, and to spread the gospel to others. Sometimes members would come sit with us between classes, which I thought was very brave, as on more than one occasion we were approached by their shocked friends who hadn’t even known they were LDS. Even though finals were over, campus dead, Elder Martinez and I had confirmed meeting for tabling when he’d called for our numbers the night before. Maybe people would be more willing to talk to us since they didn’t have to rush to class, we reasoned, though I think we both knew it just felt easier, more productive than trying to fill the time with street contacting. He and Peterson were already setting up when we arrived. I greeted them as Sister Jensen got into a conversation with a lone passerby, a girl with a long brown braid who could have easily passed as a BYU student. “What’s up?” Martinez said. He was clearly tired. Peterson was zoned out beside him, examining a scar on his right hand. “Just what’s always up,” I said facetiously, helping Martinez with the stubborn legs of the folding table. Martinez unfolded the cardboard display and balanced it on top of the table. I looked it over. We always updated it with a printed flier listing the ward’s activities; this week’s schedule was essentially empty now that the party was over and the semester was ending. Just the weekly Book of Mormon study group we always offered, though we rarely had more than three attendees and they were all usually ward members. Evjen 68 “Oh, before I forget, can you pass on a message to the zone leaders for me? I need them to call Sister Miller and see if she has her planner from last transfer. There was a phone number in there that I forgot to copy down.” “Sure. Let me text them.” He pulled out their phone and typed into it. “So are we really just going to pretend to be busy until the students get back in January?” I asked. “I think I might go crazy.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll check with Prez and see if they’ll stick us in the family ward for a couple weeks. They could probably use a less-active blitz. Elder Marsden said they have like 300 people on the roster that no one’s ever seen.” “I don’t want to do less-active blitzes. Elder Powell said he had a gun pulled on him last transfer,” Peterson piped up behind us. “There has to be people around who stay here for work, or hate their families. Plus, they’ll be lonely and bored. Ideal conditions.” “Yeah, but will they want to talk to us?” I said. “Do they ever want to talk to us?” Elder Peterson joked, unwrapping a chocolate and popping it in his mouth. I had to laugh; it was rare for one of Peterson’s jokes to land. “Fair. And don’t eat all the chocolate.” “Not going to lie. Holidays are hard,” Elder Martinez said. “Last Christmas I was in Platte, South Dakota — middle of nowhere, dead all the time — and there weren’t even any members who invited us over so we just ate frozen burritos and wrote letters all day.” “Man. Sounds festive.” Evjen 69 It was crazy to think that last Christmas, while Will and I were exchanging gifts on the couch next to my parents’ Christmas tree, Elder Martinez was already several months into his mission, eating sad burritos in Platte. I glanced at Sister Jensen, who was now deep into her conversation with the girl. “Guess I should go be companionable.” “Newbie’s got some greenie energy, that’s for sure,” Peterson said. I approached them silently so as not to interrupt any momentum. “This is my companion, Sister Banks,” Sister Jensen said. “We just met yesterday.” “And now you, like, live together 24/7?” We nodded. “Oh my god, that’s so wild.” She held out her hand to me. “I’m Abby. I’m part of the Navigators Campus Ministry.” “Oh, very cool!” I said. “I’ve met a lot of people who do Navigators. You usually have a table here, right?” “Yeah. We see you guys here every week. I’ve been meaning to come introduce myself.” NCM usually had a large table decorated with professional-looking promotional materials that made ours look like they’d been designed by a fifth grader. The people manning it always wore matching red t-shirts that said Where is YOUR compass pointing? “Navigators is amazing. Like, totally changed my life and discipleship.” “What exactly is your discipleship?” Sister Jensen asked. I felt my shoulders tense. “Well, first and foremost, I believe Jesus is my Savior. And that nothing I’ve done or will do can change the fact that he died for my sins. His grace is what saves me.” Evjen 70 Sister Jensen smiled broadly. “We have so much in common. A lot of people don’t believe we’re Christian, but Christ is central to everything we do. I mean, it’s the church of Jesus Christ. He stands at the head.” “You’re saved, then?” Abby asked. “If you mean baptized, then yes. We believe the path to salvation is like stepping stones, covenants and ordinances we make with God that eventually lead us back to him. Baptism is first.” “So you don’t believe in Christ’s grace.” “Of course. We have a scripture in the Book of Mormon that says, ‘For we know that it is by grace we are saved, after all we can do.’” “But that’s faith and works. The Bible clearly says that Christ’s grace comes through faith and faith alone. Ephesians 2:8 says ‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of god.’” I tried to interject but Sister Jensen cut me off. “‘A religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.’” “Is that from your Mormon bible, too?” “The Book of Mormon? No, it’s a quote from Joseph Smith, the prophet of this last dispensation. We like to say this to our Christian friends: Bring your faith and let us add to it.” Abby’s smile soured. “So you think my faith is weaker than yours.” Only now did color rise to Sister Jensen’s cheeks. “No, I didn’t say that. But I do believe that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is God’s true church upon the earth. And that if you read the Book of Mormon — which isn’t another Bible, by the way; it’s a companion Evjen 71 to the Bible that has a history of God’s people in the Americas — you’ll gain a testimony of it yourself.” Abby looked both amused and affronted. I felt like I should say something, to offer some clarification, but what? Nothing Sister Jensen had said was technically wrong. It was on me for being uncomfortable. Why was testifying so easy for other people, and so difficult for me? When Abby finally spoke, she seemed more sad than anything. “Good luck with your missionary service, sisters. I’ll be praying for you.” She walked away. I glanced at Sister Jensen. “Maybe I was too pushy,” she said. “You were great!” I said, though the whole exchange had made me cringe. I had to give her props — she had guts — and truthfully, we’d been encouraged, instructed, to be firm and absolute in our teaching. But I could never wrap my brain around that kind of directness ever translating into investigators and converts. “Maybe just, like, trying easing into it a little more. Most likely Abby was baiting you, so don’t stress it.” Though we’d met plenty of nice evangelicals, it was rare for our conversations to end up warm and fuzzy once we started talking doctrine. “It was so much easier in the MTC,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh. I could empathize; as well-intentioned as the MTC volunteer practice investigators were, most Provo residents simply didn’t have the capacity to tap into the breadth of scenarios that awaited in the mission field. “Can I just observe you for the next person?” “Yeah, sure,” I said, trying to act casual, like doing actual missionary work was something I was definitely competent at. Evjen 72 I took a deep breath. We stood in front of the table together and smiled at the few people who walked by. Occasionally, they returned our smiles with pitying hellos or a head nod, but everyone seemed so clearly uninterested in talking to us that I couldn’t work up the courage to stop them. Finally, I made eye contact with a guy in an Obama shirt. “Forward,” I said, hijacking Obama’s 2012 election campaign slogan. He slowed. “Are you being sarcastic?” “No,” I said, probably too eagerly. “I’m a genuine Obama groupie.” “I have a hard time believing that,” He eyed me quizzically, but his tone was playful, flirtatious even. Regardless of how interested this guy would be — and I wasn’t counting my chickens — I could tell he wasn’t dangerous. “Why? Didn’t know Mormons were allowed to think for themselves?” I felt Sister Jensen observing me, taking mental notes. He glanced back and forth as if waiting for the punchline. “You seriously voted for Obama?” “Yeah.” “Betrayed your own kind?” I laughed. “Nothing against Mitt. He just wasn’t my guy.” It had been the first presidential election in which I’d been allowed to vote, and I’d taken the responsibility very seriously. President Trimble had highly encouraged us to participate in the election, but because we weren’t permanent residents of Nebraska we had to request absentee ballots from our home counties. Voting was something I’d been waiting for since middle school, Evjen 73 and it felt disappointingly anticlimactic to do it at my study desk, fill in the little bubbles like I was completing a magazine survey. I didn’t even get an “I Voted” sticker. “But there’s a lot the Democratic Party stands for that seems, l don’t know, antithetical to what y’all believe. What about Prop 8?” “Yeah, well, I’d argue there’s a lot the Republican Party stands for that seems antithetical to what we believe, too. Eliminating programs for the underprivileged? All these hard lines on the Second Amendment when so many people are dying?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “So are you coming to the rally tonight?” “What rally?” “The gun rally. At the Capitol. After what happened last week.” My eyebrows furrowed. “At the elementary school in Connecticut.” I was immediately sick, my heart aching for a tragedy I knew nothing about. Ignorance is bliss, until it invariably morphs into shame. “We’re not allowed to watch the news,” Sister Jensen cut in. Any hint of respect on his face disappeared. “Well, suppression is one way to avoid problems.” He walked off. Before I could say anything, Peterson blurted out behind us, “Banksy’s seriously a libtard?” “Dude!” Martinez scolded, slugging Peterson’s shoulder. “Are you 13?” Peterson laughed, but I could tell Martinez was genuinely irritated. I didn’t respond. I felt nauseous, imagining the worst about what had happened, angry but unable to find a specific home for it. It was everything, everyone. Myself included. After an hour Evjen 74 or so of standing around while Peterson tried and failed to entice campus stragglers to the table with the chocolate bowl, I told the elders we were leaving. I was so upset myself that I’d hardly noticed that Sister Jensen had gone quiet until it was just the two of us again. “Everything okay?” I asked. She didn’t look at me. “It says in the White Handbook to avoid political conversations.” On top of my anger, I felt the sour embarrassment of being called out. “I guess I didn’t feel like telling someone who I voted for was a political conversation.” “What else would it be? And besides, that was more than just telling him who you voted for.” “I don’t know. Honesty? I guess it’s important to me to show people that we’re not just blind sheep following arbitrary rules. That there’s not one right way to be Mormon.” “But there are wrong ways,” she said. A familiar indignation — which I firmly believed was the righteous kind — spread through my chest. “You can be liberal and Mormon. They always read that letter over the pulpit before elections — ‘Good can be found in all the political parties’ or whatever.” “I think it says ‘principles compatible with the gospel may be found…’” Her pedanticness was starting to get under my skin. “So you think what that that guy said is true? That being a Democrat goes against what we believe?” “I didn’t say that.” “You kind of implied it.” “All I meant to imply is we’re told not to discuss politics. And I promised myself I would be an obedient missionary, no matter what my companion said or did.” Evjen 75 I fumed for a few seconds, but quickly realized my indignation was accompanied by defensiveness. Sister Jensen was right. The handbook did explicitly say not to talk about politics. Not only was I terrible at teaching, at finding people to teach, but I was also disobedient, uncommitted, blasé. Sister Miller had been wrong. Without her, I wasn’t growing. I was just becoming more myself again. Which is to say: not fit to be training a new, impressionable missionary. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” My whole body felt heavy and tired. “I just don’t get why we have to be so robotic. Sometimes I just want to, I don’t know, be who I really am. Show all the sides of me.” She didn’t speak for a minute. I could tell she was thinking hard. “But what’s the most important side of you?” I realized it was an answer I couldn’t give. ** We were teaching Madison the lesson on the Plan of Salvation that night. It was my favorite one to teach, probably because it was the part of church doctrine that made the most sense to me. The premise was simple: A loving God, the literal father of our spirits, had sent us to earth to experience mortality so that we could become like him. If we followed his plan, we would return to live with him after death. As a kid, I would sometimes lay awake in bed at night, kept from sleep by thoughts of death, of losing my family, of black holes of nothingness. While the Plan of Salvation didn’t prevent these existential crises, it gave me a staircase out. I wasn’t alone. Every first Sunday of the month was set aside for testimony meeting, an open-mic church service. And every month, there was guaranteed to be several members whose Evjen 76 remarks were centered on these doctrines. Maybe a family member had just died, or someone had received a scary medical diagnosis, or a new baby was about to be born. We were always thinking about where we came from and where we were going after this life. If the gospel was the “what,” the Plan of Salvation was the “how” and “why.” It was me and Sister Jensen’s first formal lesson with an investigator, and as senior companion, I knew I would have to take the lead on teaching. After our uncomfortable conversation that afternoon, we needed a reset. I had to show her that I wasn’t dead weight or delinquent. That even if missionary work didn’t come naturally for me, I was trying. It wasn’t the only reason the stakes felt high. While Madison had perhaps personally connected more with Sister Miller, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was the person I was supposed to find, the “one” I had felt so strongly would make my missionary service worth it. Madison was about the same age as my mom was when she took the lessons; joining the church would change her life, her family, forever. Thirty years down the road, would she be sending out a missionary of her own? And if I messed this up, botched it, would I be held accountable? Nerves ruined my dinner appetite, which was a shame because one of the wealthier guys in the ward, an RM himself, had met us and the Elders at Runza and told us to order whatever we wanted. Peterson’s typical brotastic idiocy was significantly tamped down; I figured Martinez must have given him a verbal lashing after we left campus that afternoon. We arrived at Bryce’s house right on time. “Sister Miller and I would usually pray before lessons,” I said. She eagerly agreed. I could tell she wasn’t holding onto any resentment from this afternoon, and I was grateful. Evjen 77 I said the prayer, including in it my hope that Madison’s heart would be ready for the message, that the Spirit would be with us, and — for my sake more than Sister Jensen’s — that our teaching would be clear and easy to understand. Bryce met us at his apartment door. His cheeks were a little rosy, which told me they had either been making out or fighting. I wasn’t sure which was preferable. “Sisters!” Madison said. She was sitting on the couch, a fuzzy blanket wrapped around her shoulders and Bryce’s white cat, Simpson, sleeping on her lap. We sat in the two kitchen chairs Bryce had moved into the living room for us. “How’s it going?” I said. “Good! We’ve been so lazy all day. Finals week caught up to us.” She and Bryce caught each other’s eyes and smiled. “You deserve a break,” I said, trying to stave off my envy, both of having someone to look at her that way, and the freedom to do absolutely nothing. Bryce sat down next to her, resting his forearm on top of her thigh. We chatted for a few more minutes about school, about how Sister Jensen was liking Nebraska (“Everyone’s so nice!”), until I found an opening for a time-to-transition-to-church-stuff sigh. “All right, well, are we ready to get started?” We prayed with them and opened our scriptures. “Today, we wanted to talk to you about the Plan of Salvation.” My fingers jittered like I’d just downed several Red Bulls. “It’s all about God’s plan for us: where we came from, why we’re here, and where we’re going after this life. What would you say is your purpose on Earth?” Evjen 78 Madison stroked Simpson’s back, thinking. “Well, I guess I would say love. Loving my family and friends. Loving God.” I nodded. “Me too. And if you’re anything like me, I’m sure you think about not wanting that love to end at death, right?” “Yeah, of course.” So far, so good. “That’s what the Plan of Salvation is all about. God’s plan for getting his children back to him. And not just as individuals, but as family units.” Like I’d planned, I segwayed into an object lesson that I’d learned in primary as a child, showing her my hand and wiggling my fingers. “My hand represents our spirits. We lived with God long before he created Earth as his spirit children. But we couldn’t progress and become like him until we had a physical body, like he did.” I took one of my winter gloves from my pocket. “This represents our bodies. When we come to earth, our spirit joins our body. But our body isn’t us.” “Lutherans don’t really talk about life before life.” I’d known this was coming, and I was prepared. “The doctrine about pre-existence is pretty unique to Latter-Day Saints. But there are scriptures about it. Do you want to open your Bible to Jeremiah 1:5?” Madison read. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” The language in her ESV Bible was more colloquial than our King James, but I was getting used to it. Daresay I even envied it a little. All the thees and thous were muddling. I waited for her response, sure that her mind had just been blown. Evjen 79 “So you’re saying that this verse shows us that Jeremiah was predestined to be a prophet?” “Yes,” I said, excited she was understanding. She gave me what felt like a courtesy nod. “Okay. Are there others?” “Yeah, um, there are plenty in the Book of Mormon. And a lot more in some of our other books of scripture.” While we’d read with her several times from the Book of Mormon, we hadn’t dug much into the Book of Moses, which was Joseph Smith’s translation of Genesis, or the Doctrine and Covenants, which was a record of the direct revelations from God to Joseph Smith. They could get pretty complex, so we usually held off on any deep dives into those books until investigators understood the basics. At least in theory. Truthfully, I’d never gotten that far. “Like in the Bible, though,” she said. Sister Jensen piped in. “First Peter 1:19-20. ‘But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.’” She said this without looking down at her scriptures once. I should have guessed she’d be a scriptorian. Madison shifted. “I don’t know. I guess to me those verses are more speaking about God’s omniscience than our pre-existence. Like, if God can see the end from the beginning, of course he would know that we’ll be born and the choices we’ll make once we are.” I deflated. The red in Bryce’s cheeks deepened. I realized that maybe stressing about this lesson was a third alternative to kissing or fighting. Sister Jensen answered. “But that’s precisely why we needed the Book of Mormon. And modern prophets to clarify the things about ancient scripture that don’t make sense.” Evjen 80 Madison started to respond but stopped herself. After a few seconds, she said, “Okay. I guess for the sake of moving on let’s just assume I’ve got this point down.” She wasn’t snarky about it, but I could tell her questions weren’t answered. I wanted to keep discussing premortality, to explain it in a way that made sense, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say about it. “So, going back to the glove example, our spirits enter our bodies,” I put the glove on and wiggled my fingers some more, “and eventually our bodies die.” I took the glove off. “But when Christ comes again our spirit and body will be permanently joined together.” “We’re agreed there,” Madison said good-naturedly. “Phew,” I said, pretending to wipe my forehead with the back of my hand. Madison laughed, but Sister Jensen interjected. “I feel like it’s kind of important to understand premortality, though, since it’s central to everything we believe. It was in the spirit realm that Satan and Jesus both presented plans for us for us to become like God. In Satan’s plan, we would be forced to follow God, and everyone would make it back to him. In Christ’s, we would get to choose.” Madison raised her eyebrows. “K wait, so Satan was, like, a good guy?” “Yes, our spirit brother, Lucifer. Son of the Morning.” “So you take Revelations pretty literally.” “Some parts, yes.” “But if the whole point is getting back to God, why was Satan’s plan so bad?” “If we’re forced to do something, is that true discipleship?” My own mind raced as I watched Madison, her face contorting like she was computing a math equation. An uneasiness was growing inside me. The questions she was asking were not Evjen 81 only valid, they were points I’d considered at one point or another but had never felt comfortable to voice. When she spoke again, there was a slight edge to her tone. “So Satan started as our brother, but then presented a bad plan. How’d he go from our brother to the devil?” We needed to get back to the basics, for my sake as much as hers. “Really, the most important thing to understand is that God loves us and wants us back with him,” I said. “There are so many rabbit holes we could get lost in.” “I think Sister Jensen is right,” Madison said. “I want the full truth. I really need to understand this.” I nodded, feeling chastened. “Okay, so, like it says in Revelations 12, there was a war in heaven, and it was about this argument — whether we should be forced to follow God, or get to choose. Satan lost, so he and everyone who followed him got cast out. That’s our interpretation of the whole third-of-the-host-of-heaven thing.” “And then he came to Earth?” “Yes, well, this was all before the Creation,” I said. “So then God creates the earth, including Adam and Eve in the Garden, and that’s when Satan re-enters the story. Just like all Christian churches, we read and believe Genesis, too. Satan tempts Eve — ” “Well, but wait,” Sister Jensen interjected. “We have a very different interpretation of the Fall than what Madison probably knows. We believe the Fall was all part of the plan. There’s a scripture in the Book of Mormon, Second Nephi 2:25: ‘Adam fell that man might be; and men are, that they might have joy.’” It was one of my favorite scriptures in the Book of Mormon. So why was I holding back a grimace? Evjen 82 “So you’re saying Satan was basically hired to be the villain?” Madison asked. “Kicked out of heaven only became part of God’s plan, anyway?” “Not hired. We still believe he is the father of all lies, the one who tempts us to sin. But if God is omniscient and all-powerful, doesn’t it make sense that he would foresee Satan’s plan and use it to his advantage?” Madison was thinking hard. “But — and I don’t mean any offense here — there aren’t, like, that many Mormons in the world. If joining your church is essential for salvation, not many people are going to make it.” Sister Jensen lit up, like she’d masterminded this whole conversation just to get to this point. “We’re one of the only churches that performs proxy baptisms for those who never got to hear about the gospel in this life. Missionary work continues after we die. No offense intended on our end, but how could a merciful God say that only those who were privileged enough to hear about Christ in this life can make it back to him?” Madison’s face fell. I couldn’t determine what exactly she was feeling, but I knew from previous lessons with Christian investigators, the concept of baptisms for the dead — just like the pre-earth life — seemed dubious to many Bible readers. The uneasiness was growing. We were going into too much detail, moving too fast. “God wants us to become like him,” Sister Jensen continued. “To be able to create our own worlds, have our own spirit children — and coming to Earth and having the experiences of mortality was essential for this plan. We choose God by making covenants with him in the temple, including baptisms for the dead and eternal marriage. We aren’t saved as individuals, we’re saved as family units, which I think is so beautiful. Spouses are sealed to each other, and kids are sealed Evjen 83 to their parents. Forever. And like proxy baptisms, we can perform proxy sealings for those who never had that chance.” “But what if they wouldn’t want that?” “Why wouldn’t they?” Madison was becoming agitated. Simpson jumped off her lap. Bryce caught my eye, and wordlessly, we shared an understanding: We were watching a train wreck. “Well, I can think of lots of examples,” Madison said. “Abusive fathers. Cheating wives. People who get old and realize they hate each other. And what about parents who get divorced, like mine? What happens to their kids? Which one of them would I hypothetically be sealed to?” Finally, Sister Jensen seemed to sense the tension in the room. “Those situations are hard, but we just have to trust that God will work things out in the end.” “So there’s all this very specific doctrine for every single little thing, but for this I just have to trust it will work out in the end?” I cut in. “It’s so much to take in. It’s okay if you need to take some time to digest it all.” She rubbed her forehead and sighed. “And what about all the polygamy stuff.” I glanced again at Bryce. He gave me a pleading look that I wasn’t sure what to do with. If Madison wanted the truth, she’d find it one way or another. It was strange to me that the two of them had never discussed this, that she seemed to have saved all her questions for us, but I realized I could understand; I’d experienced firsthand the tipping-point potential of ideological differences in a relationship. “We don’t practice polygamy now,” I said. “That ended in the 1800s.” Evjen 84 “But online it says polygamy still applies to the eternal marriages. I looked it up. Like, if a wife dies, a husband can do the eternal marriage ceremony with another woman, but women can only ever be sealed to one man. Is that not true?” I could tell she hoped against all hope that she’d read wrong, that she’d accidentally landed on some faulty anti-Mormon website. “It’s true.” My own cheeks were flushing, my trembling hands now more numb than anything. “But you wouldn’t have to. No one will be forced into anything against their will.” “Pray about it,” Sister Jensen said. “It used to be confusing for me, too. I promise that if you take it to God, share with him that you’re struggling, you’ll come to understand it as part of his divine plan.” Madison started to cry, and tears of empathy filled my own eyes. Bryce handed her a tissue. It took her a few seconds to compose herself. “I have to be honest, sisters. Everyone in your church keeps telling me to pray, to ask God myself about all this. And I am. I do, everyday. But still all I’m feeling is darkness.” Bryce put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer to him. I was hit with a sudden, sickening premonition that this lesson had led us to an end. Of what, I wasn’t sure yet. ** I was devastated by the time we got back in the car, but I didn’t say anything. Nothing Sister Jensen had said was technically incorrect; Madison had asked for the truth, and Sister Jensen had obliged. We drove in agitated silence for several minutes. Sister Jensen was the one who finally broke it. “We should have committed her to a baptism date.” “What?” I snapped, legitimately shocked. Evjen 85 “A baptism date. If she has a date to work towards, she’ll start to receive her own witness.” I wanted to scream, and was immensely proud of myself for my calm, pragmatic response. “You have to remember that people are coming from a completely different paradigm. Their beliefs are just as important to them as ours are to us.” “But the truth is the truth.” “Yes, but she’s thinking the exact same thing. For some people, it isn’t a lightning strike. They need to take things slowly. Baby steps.” I felt her getting frustrated beside me, which struck me as ironic. “What you’re saying seems a lot like the frog and the boiling water, how it won’t jump out if you turn the heat up slowly. We’re not trying to trick people. To manipulate them into believing us.” For the second time that day, Sister Jensen had presented an argument that both silenced and filled me with quiet rage. It was almost funny how two days ago I was stressing myself out about ruining her. She was like a bionic evangelizing machine, straight from some missionary factory, preprogrammed with all the right scriptures. 100% sin-proof. So similar to Sister Miller in so many ways, and yet so very different. “Madison is my friend,” I said simply. “And it makes me feel bad to think that she’s hurting because of us.” “But a good friend would want her to have the truth.” ** I tried not to storm around while we were getting ready for bed that night, but I couldn’t help but think about Madison crying, about how Bryce must be feeling right now. I wondered how so many people had interfaith relationships and made them work. My own parents included. Evjen 86 While I couldn’t remember all the details of their relationship — who is ever interested in hearing their parents’ love story? — I knew they were together for a while before she joined the church. As a kid, her conversion had seemed so natural, so obvious, the inevitable conclusion. Now, I realized it was probably lucky I’d ever been born. Sister Jensen was in the bathroom when Elder Martinez called. I tried not to sound too deflated when I answered. “Hey.” “What’s up?” “Oh. You know.” “Numbers?” I pulled my planner from my leather bag and opened it to today’s page. “Five lessons taught, three lessons with members, no new investigators, no one with a baptism date.” “Cool. How’d the lesson go with Madison?” “Not great.” “What happened?” I sighed. Peeked around the bedroom door to make sure the bathroom was still closed. “Things got deep. Fast. We didn’t even make it past the Fall.” “The Plan of Salvation’s actually super tough to teach. Especially to Christians.” “Yeah.” I laid on my bed, shielding my eyes from the ceiling light. “You doing okay?” I was surprised to feel tears spring to my eyes. I couldn’t cry on the phone, especially not to Martinez. For multiple reasons. “Just tired I guess.” I bit my lip, focused on the pain to keep the tears from turning into sobs. “How about you guys? Red-letter day?” Evjen 87 “Nah. We got stood up for both our appointments.” “Sucky.” “Yeah. Just then, Sister Jensen walked in wearing her pajamas. She had some sort of cream all over her face. She kneeled by the side of her bed, a not-so-subtle hint for me to get off the phone. “K, well, goodnight,” I said. “Yeah. Oh, wait. I talked to the zone leaders about Sister Miller’s planner.” “Does she have it?” “No. She told them to tell me to tell you that she’s sorry. I guess she’s running out of room in her suitcase and decided to throw all the old planners away.” I sighed. It figured. “Well, thanks for checking. Goodnight.” “‘Night.” I hung up and turned off the light. “Goodnight, Sister Jensen,” I said, but she didn’t answer. She was already praying. Evjen 88