Ministering
Despite the Rigors of Doubt and Remorse
Sometimes you get missions within missions. In the context of a greater goal or objective, you are given "smaller" assignments. Those smaller assignments might be smaller on paper, or perhaps seem more trivial or shorter in duration, and may even seem easier to accomplish than the longer term goal, but as they say: the devil is in the details, and sometimes the little assignments can be the most difficult, the most trying. This is a story about one of those times.
This intense trial of faith, or action, happened to me. Luckily I was given this smaller mission when I was twenty, not just 19.
At age 19, I don't think I would have been able to handle the shorter term mission goal that Judd Allsop had given me. I received this assignment within my greater two year mission, a week or so after my twentieth birthday.
President Allsop, my mission president, posited some trust in me; I feel like I was placed in a challenging but doable assignment: to be a Branch President in Santa Juana. Implicit within the specific mission of this longer term assignment was the belief, the trust, the noble aspiration that the Lord was guiding things, that the God of All Creation was in charge. And things would work out, people would progress in building the Kingdom of God. His faith would grow, as would mine, in depth and width.
Up to that point in my mission in Chile, I had born some responsibilities and I think that I was doing okay. Despite getting disturbingly sick for almost a month in my second area, I was healthy again and I was learning to do more things, carrying more weight as a missionary. And I was about to take on a large charge, of some import.
Keep in mind, we all do things for different reasons from day to day, from month to month, and from year to year: our motivations may change, our moods may swing, our experience and knowledge may lead us to think and act differently; outside and inside influences make us behave and decide differently as we progress.
But the primary motivation of each LDS missionary, or any Christian missionary, for that matter, is to serve Jesus Christ: to do as He would do, love as He would love, represent Him and act for Him, be a living witness and emissary of the Lord, to represent the Head of the Church that we bear on our badges. Whether you believe in a Divine Source of power and authority, you can recognize the idealistic notions, impulses, and motives of serving such a higher cause, and doing it well.
I was sent to Santa Juana for my third missionary area of Chile, after first being assigned to a rural town for four months as a newcomer, and then being part of the big city of Concepcion for six, minus the month of illness and recovery. My third and smallest area of my mission was my biggest responsibility, and perhaps became my biggest trial.
The LDS Branch of Santa Juana was one of the newest units in our Concepcion Mission: prior to me being called as the Branch President there had been four others. Elders Cluff, Boston, Bagnara, and Elder Petersen. All of us were assigned to teach and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ like every other missionary, but with the added duty of finding leaders of the faith, particularly find and train a good branch president. If you have a good branch president, everything good can happen in a Mormon group: more organized meetings, more fun and faith-promoting events and activities, in sum, more growth and prosperity and overall success. Bounty and winning that God would certainly approve of.
The prospects for a short-term call to branch president in Santa Juana were small but not bad: there were four prospective men who could have potentially taken the helm as our hopeful branch president, within the next 4 months to a year: Eduardo Santibañez, Luis Quiñones, Mario Seguel, or Oscar Chavez. Each had pros and cons.
Eduardo was an older man of some responsibility, a barber who had his own business. He had a family and a decent house (for Santa Juana, or for Chile); he was married to a long-time devout wife, an evangelical church goer; however, after living a rather lower life of heathen, he had experienced a miraculous change of lifestyle and behavior after meeting the missionaries and joining our church. He had dropped tobacco, alcohol, poor language or abusive treatments, (from my recollection), he was motivated to be a man of God. The Mormons had "made him Christian"; his wife reciprocated his leap of faith and commitment to Jesus with her own baptism into the faith following suit. More on this later.
Eduardo was the Branch First Counselor when I arrived to the fledgling unit, while Luis Quiñones was the second counselor. Like Eduardo, Luis seemed dedicated and earnest, but unlike Brother Santibañez, Luis's wife was not a member and did not seem too supportive of his participation in our faith. It probably did not help that she was hard of hearing, and Luis seemed to be considerably more humble of circumstances than Eduardo, also known as "El Bigote". Eduardo's nickname bespoak a man of some presence; despite his less than clean past as an individual when it came to spiritual matters, Eduardo was a family man of consequence in a small town. Eduardo seemed more properly placed or stationed as a person for new leadership in our faith, especially since his life change with the LDS elders that same year of 1990; his appearance on most fronts seemed that he was groomed to be the native leader local Branch President of Santa Juana.
Mario Seguel and Oscar Chavez had just been baptized the weekend before I arrived there, as the former Branch President Elder Cluff, the one that I replaced, left the country at the end of his two years. Mario was older and retired, married to a long time member of the Church who had been far away from any active members for many years. He was a good man, but maybe a little past his prime. Oscar was the son-in-law of Eduardo, and might have been ready for priesthood leadership within a few short months. He was young, successful, and exuberant.
But alas, things would fall apart. To use a phrase by the Nigerian Igbo author Chinua Achebe.
Eduardo had a weakness as far as his conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and our fledgling congregation, among his other former weaknesses. But this was a strength for him as well. Perhaps one of his greatest strengths. His downfall, and eventual turning from this newfound faith that had found him meeting weekly with me and the other new members, was mostly due to his very strong and devoted Evangelical Christian wife, who had officially joined our faith not long after his baptism. We all thought she had committed to Jesus through the authority and power of our priesthood as we administered it. We thought that their commitment to God, as we understood Him, was with us. God works in mysterious ways. It was not meant to be in this way for him, with us. Not for our mission, our hopes.
No. Not that year, and not the next.
There are a dozen different excuses that might explain what was to happen, and maybe hundreds of ruminations by my part, and perhaps others have had similar thoughts, recriminations.
Excuses that would be exploited, so that Eduardo and others who had supported him would give up on that baptismal covenant that he freely took upon himself, letting go of the priesthood imparted to him, and its power and promise, relinquishing the allegiance to the Branch he had endeavored in, and to me, his Branch president. Ahh, it felt like: betrayal. I took it personally. And it wasn't all Eduardo. He was not the only one involved in leaving. He was not the only one that I felt the sting of betrayal or giving up, giving in on being an active member of the Church.
I blamed my American companion, ultimately, for the impetus of apostasy, as Eduardo and his family did and others would, for a goodbye letter interpreted as inappropriate, especially since it was left to a 15 year-old that he had ecclestiastical duty for. We would visit the people both already baptized and investigating in the branch. He wrote a final letter to some of the youth, and he would sign it with "besitos", meaning little kisses. But, worse yet as I would come to see, she had kissed it with her lipstick, which made it appear more suggestive. And then Eduardo et al, his immediate family and promising son-in-law Oscar, got hold of it.
So at least, that blame, and the shock or impact lingering from this young elder that they had grown to love and trust, created the initial push to really move them away. To stop coming. To end the exercise of that priesthood and authority that we were grooming him, our First Counselor in the Santa Juana Branch presidency for. That we, as emissaries of Christ, were preparing him for. My smaller mission within the mission. Cut in pieces and unraveling. Eduardo, his family, and others.
Many wanted him to quit us. Quit our church. And I was the guy who was supposed to help him move ahead. I am confident his wife wished it so, to go back with her to her ways. She had known her group for 29 years, the one Eduardo had ignored or avoided. And now she was determined, especially after she and others saw the letter that my companion on his way home to the United States had left with a young lady in the branch, that ill-fated missive that fell into the hands of Eduardo and the rest.
Excuses. Others had wanted it so: Eduardo's wife's flock, her pastor, while to us committed to the Restored Gospel: these were excuses and alibis of the Adversary himself ... And, lastly for reasons and blame, the excuses of us imperfect missionaries, it all came to an escape, a release of charge. The burden of responsibility, my charge, the efforts of those before me and after, back to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Spencer Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson.
I had been commissioned to do much the same as them. President Benson had signed my papers to be there.
President Allsop had asked me to take this mission faithfully. And now it had turned into apostasy. Fell into disarray.
I was in charge. But I wasn't. People had been abandoning the church. The faith. Me.
I took it personally. Eduardo, his wife, his 12 year-old son, a faithful deacon who would pass the sacrament, new converts Oscar and his wife Candida. The present and future of the Church in Santa Juana, the LDS Church in Chile writ large.
Blocked. Trancado. Or damned, condemned. It felt like we had lost part of our body.
But the spirit of flight didn't just go to this family, it wasn't stopping there.
More people were convinced that us youthful missionaries were wrong, and that this branch, which had some 40 people attend my first Sunday out of a total of 70 members on the rolls, after two short years of existence, were taking away their participation. The most recent people of promise were calling it off! Before they had really started. And more people, as they were close knit, were ready to quit. Quit these Mormons, this new faith of foreigners like us. Gringos who seemed nice enough, but could we be trusted? Were we who we claimed to be? Or simply wolves in sheep's clothing?
There was Elizabeth Reyes. Caught in the cross fire.
Sister Reyes was a 19 or 20 year-old convert (like almost everyone else in Santa Juana, so new to the faith and practice), and in charge of our primary children. She was marvelous and doing a great job, organizing our small cadre of youth and teaching them the lessons and songs every Sunday.
Of our meager membership at that point, she was one of our most vibrant and promising leaders.
I went with my new American companion, who had replaced the letter sender, across the dusty summer streets of Santa Juana, to visit her house; it was late enough during those long summer days of the Christmas season to be dark. Elizabeth lived with her mother, her younger sister, and two brothers, none of whom were members of the church like her.
She was doing her best to stay committed, to be an example to her own family and others. And now confronted with these new defections and feelings of doubt, she was torn, as many people would be.
Now she, too, was ready to quit. She had become close to Eduardo and his family, to the daughter Candida and Oscar, who had only been baptized a few weeks before, now in full exit mode.
That night we arrived at her house on the edge of Santa Juana with heavy hearts, a terrible feeling of loss and waywardness. Darkness and confusion. My personal mission to the small town was a shambles. How to fix it? How to stop the bleeding?
How could this be? One letter? Yes, it was against missionary rules, but one break in confidence in the form of a goodbye note from a youth leader? By a missionary that was not even the Branch President? A guy who had gone back to his native home, happy for accomplishing what he thought was a satisfactory two year mission? How could we stop this madness?
We arrived at Elizabeth's house; she wanted to talk to me, her Branch President, alone. Under the circumstances, that was appropriate. A bishop or branch president in the LDS Church has the privilege or right to speak in private to its members. As a full time missionary, we also try to comply with the rules of never being alone. So we went into their back yard, within sight of the kitchen window where my companion could see both of us, Elizabeth and the Branch President in crisis mode, and me, him. There were also males inside the home, which although not members or priesthood holders, was a good thing for us elders to be surrounded by.
I stood in that darkened Chilean patio area, among grape arbors and other trees and plants, with Elizabeth.
She said, President Clinch, or Elder Clinch, " I do not wish to continue going to Church."
I didn't know what to say. A knife that that was already lodged in my inner gut was now being twisted tighter.
I don't think I could speak at that moment. I think I did the only thing my body, my heart, my anguished soul knew how to do.
I wept.
I then said some things, (it has been many years and perhaps I did not want to record on paper what else I attempted to say). Suffice it say, I cried and then pleaded with her to reconsider.
Like a kind soul, she tried to console me and reached out to hug me, seeing me in a state of grief and pain. I put an arm up to stop her. Missionaries do not have close physical embraces with young ladies. This was the root of the very reason, excuse, that the Mormon Santa Juaninos had rebelled against their newfound allegiance to this foreign faith, because of the young man who had left a few days before, with that accursed note. An impropriety of intimacy between genders, rules broken by young men who should know better.
We humans should know better.
Elizabeth remained active the remainder of my months in Santa Juana. We weathered the storm of inactivity, with Mario Seguel, and Luis Quinones, and few other stalwort priesthood men and women and children, like Elizabeth, and others like Sister Leonor Guzman, and Brother Alex Bueno and his wife and family. We finally baptized three converts before I left, after a long, hot, dry summer of little growth or convert action. We staunched the bleeding, we weathered the storm. I left after five months, realistically far from achieving the personal mission that I was given by my mission president. I guess we had fallen further behind than when I had first arrived. But we held on to what we could.
The smaller objective within the greater mission was frustrated, but the mission of Jesus Christ for me and others endured.
What things would I have changed, had I known of all the consequences of indiscretions by my missionary partner and even my own misjudgments, I would have done things differently. I readily admit that I could have been much better at applying my better judgment before, during, and after all the travails and trials, I have this story to tell.
I call it "ministering".
We could have avoided so much misdirected angst, regret, loss. We could have made Santa Juana a visionary Latter-day Saint Branch, a jewel among a crown of other churches.
Our ministering, our administering, our preaching and organizing, our efforts could have been better.
Our faults could have been less visible, less exploited, less damaging.
But in ministering, in attempting to serve a Higher cause, a Higher mission, the Highest Master of All, we see how us mortal ministers are in such need as One like Him.
Beyond doubts and remorse, we must aim for the mission of life and death, which is redemption.
Redemption and forgiveness.
Forgive us, Father, for we know not what we do.
We do know that we have tried to minister in Thy name.
And there is no more regret. Only shining hope, with distant memories of attempting to do what the Son of God, who submitted Himself below all, has done for us, His dear brothers and sisters.
To the farthest reaches of the Earth.
Even ministering to the Saints of Santa Juana. Saint Jane.
Much has been forgotten in the course of history, but not you. This twenty year-old going on fifty (within the decade) remembers you fondly. I was your minister.
I will see you again. Thanks to the Minister.
