The "Incomprehensible Joy" of a Mission - Part 3 - Learning Forgiveness

This is Part Three of a series. While not necessary to understand this post, if you are interested in the first post, click here.

In Doctrine and Covenants Section 4 - a classic for missionaries - it teaches that anyone who embarks in serving the Lord, if he does so "with his might," then he "layeth up in store that he perisheth not."

When looking at the footnotes for this phrase, I noticed once that it referred to the story of Joseph in Egypt. Think through this story with me: The inspired Joseph lead Egypt in saving food for seven years. It probably seemed a silly thing to do. Times were great! There was so much food! Why save it? But, sure enough, a famine came. This food storage saved Egypt.

When embarking in the service of God, we create something of a spiritual food storage. As a missionary I have see miracles. Without question, I have seen more miracles in the past 18 months than in the 19 years prior. These become my "store." Eventually, the spiritual famine will  come. It always does. It will be then that I can draw from the food storage I've been accumulating during this bounteous spiritual harvest of a mission. The short teaching of King Benjamin stands out to me: "Remember, and perish not" (Mosiah 4:30).

I have been pondering a lot over Alma 28:8 lately. It reads (with my own emphasis clearly added):

"And this is the account of Ammon and his brethren, their journeyings in the land of Nephi, their sufferings in the land, their sorrows, and their afflictions, and their INCOMPREHENSIBLE JOY."

In the next series of posts, I would like to share some of my favorite stories from my mission. No question about, there's been a lot of tough spots. But I don't think it's by mistake that this verse describes "sufferings," "sorrows," and "afflictions" - three synonyms for "really crappy time" - and only one word for "really good time." There's a lot of really crappy times out here. However, I absolutely refuse to believe that it was by accident that the good times as much more powerful language than the bland words for crappy times. The joys of a mission truly are incomprehensible.

For the sake of those who I talk about, I normally change the names of everyone but myself. With her permission, however, I will be using Amanda's real name.

Learning Forgiveness

One day in my first area, we had a man come to church out of nowhere. Neither me nor my companion recognized him. He was clearly not a member of the church from a different area; we could tell that much. But we had no clue who he was. We talked with him a bit, learned his name was Shawn, got his information, and scheduled an appointment with him. A few failed appointments later, we finally got in with him!

Our first visit went all right. He seemed to want to get close with God, but he was clearly not really paying attention to anything new we were trying to say. But, we didn't have a lot of work going on at the time, and he was still coming to church, so we kept going back.

The situation turned from bad to worse, though, when we met Shawn's girlfriend, Amanda, who was living there with him. She would come in here and there, and usually end up berated completely unnecessarily by Shawn within a few minutes. Whether she was giving us dinner, asking a question, or anything else, it was not good enough for Shawn. She didn't talk much, but I can hardly blame her given the situation that she was in at the time.


Bit by bit, we got to know Amanda better as time went on, especially as we made friends with Amanda's daughters who were living there as well. Eventually, we were over there every couple nights to play with the girls. Some of my favorite memories of my mission include running around with these two, playing a strange combination of keep away and fetch.

All the while, though, there was really no progress in teaching Shawn. My companion and I really weren't sure what to do. Even worse, Shawn's treatment of Amanda got worse and worse. My companion and I really didn't know what to do there.

One day, we drove up to Shawn and Amanda's house. She came out to the driveway, and told us that Shawn wasn't home. We initially took that as her inviting us to leave - but she just stood there at our window, looking at us. We carried on a little small-talk conversation, but we weren't really sure what to do. All of a sudden, she says, "You know, I would go to church too if I had a ride." We had always assumed she wasn't interested since Shawn would come and she wouldn't. But we quickly arranged for her to get a ride.

She came on and off for the next month or so, and we got to know her a little bit better as time went on. One day, we saw her at the library, clearly upset. We asked her what was wrong, and went outside to talk. Shawn had just been put in jail for as much as six months. In mine and my companion's mind, we thought it might be a kind of good thing, but we saw her dilemma. He was the only one working in the house. She had two kids at home to take care of, and no real way to pay for them or the house. And, as big of an idiot as he was, Amanda definitely did have feelings for Shawn.

We started making a special effort over there. The girls were really troubled. The older one was convinced

that Amanda was going to be gone as well, any day now, and would have a small tantrum whenever Amanda left the house. The younger one didn't fully understand what was going on, but was quite willing to share that her dad was in jail. We tried to help Amanda as much as we could around the house, while throwing in random spiritual tidbits whenever we could.

I was on an exchange with Elder Jeffries one day and we stopped by Amanda's. I didn't really explain the situation as well as I should have, but I intentionally left out that we had never really had a sit-down lesson with her. I figured we'd see what his naivety could do. Sure enough, after a little small talk, Elder Jeffries asked, "Could we sit down and teach you a lesson?" To my thrilled amazement, she eagerly accepted. Knowing that the classic first lesson about the Restoration wasn't really what she needed, we had a warped lesson about why bad things happen and how we can use Christ to help pull us through them. I don't remember many of the details, but I remember two things: First, she was crying through most of it. Second, Elder Jeffries invited her to be baptized and she accepted on the spot.

We were able to continue teaching Amanda, and it was one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had.  I want to interject here and assure you that I have Amanda's permission to explain all of this. But, as we got to know her more and more, one of the most insane life stories started unfolding before us. Growing up, Amanda had been abused very bad. Anything bad that a father could do to his girl, her father did to her. When she was sixteen, I believe, he was arrested and is now serving about 30 years in prison. From there, her mom decided it was more important to find a new man than take care of her kids, so Amanda filled the role of mother for her younger brother and sister. Also when she was sixteen, she had her first child. She has since had three more from three different fathers, each of which treated her terribly, culminating with Shawn. When we met her, it was clear that she wasn't full of self confidence. When we really got to know her, we understood why.

Teaching her was interesting. I honestly think we taught the Restoration about five times before she understood what a prophet even was, let alone the importance of having one in the latter days. It just didn't matter to her at all. But here's what she did know: 1) She knew that there was a God. 2) She knew that He loved her. 3) She knew that she could feel more loved from Him than she had her entire life. 4) She knew she felt that love the most when she was at church, praying, or reading the Book of Mormon. As such, she was at church every week, she was praying everyday, and she read the Book of Mormon cover-to-cover within a couple months.

There is one day teaching her, that I will never be able to forget. We were teaching the Doctrine of Christ (faith in the Lord, repentance, baptism, receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end), and were talking about how through repentance, anyone can be healed and forgiven. Then came easily the hardest question I have been asked as a missionary: "Does that mean I should forgive my dad." How does a 19-year-old boy answer that one? I was as honest as I could be, and said, "Well... the technical answer is yes. But I can't imagine being in your shoes..." We read a few scriptures about the importance of forgiveness, and talked a little bit more about it. We weren't really sure what she thought, but we really couldn't blame her for not going along with it.

As her baptismal date came up, EVERYTHING that could go wrong, did go wrong. For a while we thought she had tuberculosis. Then she was about to get kicked out of her apartment. Then she really did have strep... probably about three times in one winter. The real kicker was when Shawn got out of jail. She by that point had written him off, and he was livid. He started throwing around every accusation imaginable. She was partying and sleeping around and leaving the girls home alone and bringing guys back with her. It was all absurd and didn't hold any water, but it sure caused a stir for a while. When you combine a huge custody case and essentially a kidnapping, it was Satan's strongest front against anyone's spiritual progression I have ever seen. However....

...he definitely didn't win!

Want to know the most amazing part, though? While we had to move her baptism back a few different times, it was never because of illness (except for the one time that we thought she had TB) or even because of Shawn wreaking havoc on her life. She absolutely refused to get baptized until she had written her dad a letter in prison, to officially say she had forgiven him. Every day she would get on the phone with her sister and they would talk for upwards of an hour, sorting through her thoughts. In that time, they would usually come up with one or two sentences of the letter. After over a month, she finally had finished a letter. It was the first time that she had contacted her dad since he'd been arrested.

A few months later, I was in a new area, and we started teaching a high school aged girl who was going through an almost identical situation to Amanda's at that age. I couldn't stop thinking about Amanda the whole time. Eventually, I asked Amanda if she had any advice for how to reach this girl. I shot her a text, probably the first time I'd really contacted her in a couple months. Within seconds, I got a call. "Tell her that this gospel is all about moving on. When we repent, we can move on from what we have done. When we forgive, we can move on from what people have done to us."

Amanda has definitely had a rough go since her baptism. She's bounced all over Western New York, largely because of Shawn. I'm working on getting her back to church (Haha this is a shameless plug, since I told her just yesterday that she needed to be at church this Sunday and I know that she is going to be reading this! haha), but she has still been reading the Book of Mormon like no one I've ever met. Last I knew, she had finished it for the fourth time, but that was a few months ago.

All of that aside, though, I have never learned as much about the power of the Atonement as I did with Amanda. I watched the Lord transform her life, and watched her move on to bigger and brighter things! She perfectly exemplified President James E. Faust's statement, "If we can find forgiveness in our hearts for those who have caused us hurt and injury, we will rise to a higher level of self-esteem and well-being."

While I hate to use back-to-back quotes, I love what President Gordon B. Hinckley had to say about forgiveness:

"I wish today to speak of forgiveness. I think it may be the greatest virtue on earth, and certainly the most needed. There is so much of meanness and abuse, of intolerance and hatred. There is so great a need for repentance and forgiveness. It is the great principle emphasized in all of scripture, both ancient and modern."

Thank you, Amanda, for teaching me more about 'the greatest virtue on earth" than anyone else!