Sunshine

To me, this song and video capture the spirit of going out into the world without purse or scrip - the hope that angels go with you!  I hope that you enjoy!

A True "Without Purse or Scrip" Story

This is a true story.

There were three young men, still teenagers.  Their priesthood leaders had given them a calling as missionaries.  They did not represent a church or a group, simply the presence of priesthood existing outside of the bounds of the LDS Church.

The calling they were given was an experiment of what it would be like to go out as missionaries without purse or scrip, the way they used to do in the Mormon Church.

They lived in eastern Arizona and were nestled between reservations belonging to the Hopi, the Zuni, the Navajo, and the Apache.  These three young men were called to serve the Native American peoples in this area,  or - as Mormons term them - Lamanites.  They were told not to preach to them, unless the opportunity came up.  They were to use Alma and the sons of Mosiah as an example, as taught in the Book of Mormon.  In that story, the sons of Mosiah went among the Lamanites and worked for them as servants, and, in this way, they were able to have an influence over the people.

The young men drove to the edge of White Mountain Apache Reservation and parked there and set off on foot, with no little trepidation.  They followed the highway through the ponderosa pine forest until they came to a dirt road.  After following the dirt road, the came across an old house.  There were old cars around the house, and the whole yard was choked with weeds that came up to their chests.

They knocked on the door.  An old Apache man came to the door, and the three young men introduced themselves and asked if they could clean up the yard.  They worked for most of the day clearing out weeds and garbage from the old man's house.

When they were done, they followed the dirt road deeper in the forest.  They started to notice many cars taking this road into the middle of nowhere, and so they followed the cars.  Soon, they could hear drums pounding out a rhythm through the trees.  Soon, a large gathering came into view.  Several cars were parked, and hundreds of natives were gathered.

The three young men wandered into the gathering.  It was a sunrise ceremony, and most of the community was in attendance.  They were invited in and seated at a table and served food.  They found themselves seated at a table with the heads of seven different nations.  Some had traveled from as far away as Oklahoma.

The young men stared at each other in disbelief.  Just hours ago, they had parked their car on the highway, not sure what was going to happen.  The next, they are seated at a table, eating dinner with seven chiefs.

They were given a tent.  The pow wow went on long into the night.  The next morning, they wandered back to the car and drove home, still dazed at the whole experience.

The young men were my brother and two brothers-in-law.  This story took place about eleven years ago.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico...

For most Mormons, they look to Utah for their history.

My family also looked to Mexico.  Mormons have had a rich history in Mexico.  First of all, Mexico is a conflicted nation that can't decide whether to embrace its European heritage, or its Native American roots.  It is a nation of Native Americans that is almost ashamed to be indigenous.  And yet, to Mormons, the Native American lineage is almost sacred.  We believe that Native Americans are a chosen people, of the house of Israel.

So, at the end of the 19th Century, not only did Mormons settle in northern Mexico to live polygamy.  (Yes, Mitt Romney's family.)  But the Church started an active mission throughout Mexico.  In 1910, this became interrupted by the Mexican Revolution.  All white Mormons - under the threat of death - were expelled from Mexico, back to Utah, leaving their indigenous congregations to fend for themselves.

In 1915, the town of San Marcos, Hidalgo  - 45 miles north of Mexico City - was taken over by Zapatista guerillas.  In this town was a Mormon missionary of Mexican decent named Rafael de Monroy, along with his companion were captured.  They were identified as "Mormons" by the Zapatistas.  They distrusted anything American, and Mormonism was identified as typically an American institution.

The two Mormons were detained by the soldiers and commanded to forswear their religion.  The two brave missionaries refused.  They were told to surrender their weapons.  Monroy reached into his knapsack and took out a Book of Mormon.

"This is the only weapon I need," he said.

They were told that they would be executed by a firing squad.  The missionaries asked if they could kneel and pray first.  They were allowed, and then they were offered blindfolds, which they refused.  They were shot where they were kneeling.

They are considered martyrs by many Mormons, and I grew up hearing this story.

The Revolution had driven the church authority out of Mexico, and, afterwards, the political climate as well as financial problems kept the Church out of Mexico.  In the meantime, the congregations had to govern themselves, independent of Salt Lake City, and without their influence.

When the missions were established in Mexico, it was done by white Mormons who knew the language and loved the culture.  Men like Rey L. Pratt.  The men that Utah send after the Revolution were not of the same caliber.  They were men that looked on Mexicans with disdain and refused to give the indigenous people autonomy.  It doesn't matter whether these Church leaders really viewed Mexicans this way (although I think they did).  The Mexican people felt that they were treated this way.

Twice, they entreated Salt Lake City to allow them leadership of Mexican decent.  Twice, they were denied.  On the third attempt - which they called the Third Convention - they declared themselves separate from the Mormon Church.

You can read some unique things in history books about the Third Convention.  But historians - in their attempt to revise history - neglect to mention certain things.  The Third Convention continued to live polygamy - long after the mainstream church abandoned the practice.  The Third Convention was the last bastion of plural marriage in the Mormon Church.

In 1946, the LDS Church sent ambassadors to try to woo the Third Convention back into the proverbial fold.  Men like David O. McKay and J. Rueben Clark negotiated a deal with the leaders of the Third Convention - they could return to the Church, but they must only live in public with only one wife.  Most complied, and returned to the Church.  (Some didn't, but that is a different story.)

My father, who served a mission in Mexico in 1961-63, remembered going to sacrament meetings in the LDS Church and seeing old couples with more than one wife.

When my father came into the Mexican mission, one of the heroes in his mission was a man named Benjamin Parra.  This missionary was a grandson of Rafael de Monroy, who gave his life for the sake of Mormonism.  He was also the son of the second wife of Third Convention polygamist.  He was famous, because he had over 200 baptisms under his belt.

Sometime in 1960 or 1961, Benjamin Parra and his companion were traveling by train through Mexico. A moment of inspiration fell upon him, and he stopped the train in the  middle of nowhere.  He told his confused companion that he felt impressed by the Holy Spirit that they must get off of the train.  It was 4:00 AM.  They started walking into the wilderness.  They walked over a mountain, and down into a valley.  They climbed another mountain, and another one.

There was a small village on the other side called San Andres.  The sun was just coming up.  There was a small fountain in the middle of the village, and they made their way to the fountain and started singing Mormon hymns out loud.  The curious villagers came out to listen, and the two missionaries began to preach to the village.  The preached all day.  By the end of the day, they had baptized the entire village in a canal that flowed nearby.

Nowadays, Mormon missionaries must follow a certain protocol and teach potential converts a series of classes called "lessons".  Missionaries can't baptize without following the formula, and they certainly can't baptize on a whim in this manner - with permission.  Yet this was a faith-promoting story that was told to me all through my childhood,  It was published in LDS magazines such as the Improvement Era and the Ensign.

My father told me this story several time when I was young, and he idolized Benjamin Parra as the perfect missionary,  In 1972 - at the age of 32 - Parra was placed in charge of the mission in Vera Cruz.    Three years later, he was made responsible for church real estate transactions in Mexico, and made a special representative of the Quorum of the Twelve in Mexico.

Eventually, Parra was accused of embezzling from the Church and excommunicated.  This shattered my dad's image of Benjamin Parra.  In 1997, my dad traveled to Mexico City and stopped by the Church offices at the Mexico City Temple.  He took a clerk aside who knew Benjamin Parra and asked him about the whole embezzling thing.  My dad was told that the whole thing was a lie.

Benjamin Parra might have had a knack for missionary work, but he had no talent for business.  He used to just sign the checks.  He never knew what they were used for, or what the money was being diverted to.  He was cut off for signing his name to checks that he had no clue what they were used for.

It goes back to the whole reason the Third Convention occurred in the first place.  It is no doubt that churches are businesses, and businesses are money.

What happens if you take money out of it?  What happens if you stop trying to build up the business and focus instead on spreading the good news of the gospel?  What if you made it about faith instead of numbers?

Would you have the bravery to hold up the scriptures to men who want to kill you and say, "This is the only weapon I need!"

A Hitchhiker's Guide to Polygamy

This is one of the ways that I conceived this project:

At the beginning of July, my plig van was broken.

By "plig van", I mean my 15 passenger, beat-up, old Dodge van that is the only vehicle big enough for my enormous family of two wives and eleven kids.  It had been parked for a few weeks, waiting for me to come up with enough funds to fix it.  In the meantime, we were all using my second wife Temple's Ford Taurus to get back and forth - the car upon which I had put a cow print on the hood while navigating our five miles of dirt road one night.

The way this usually worked - I would stay home with my first wife Martha on our ranch as much as possible while Temple got up early and took her car to work.  Then she would come home late.  If I needed the car, I would get a ride into town to Temple's place of work and pick up her car.  After my business was over, I would try to have her car back to her on time to go home, and somebody (like my mom) would pick me up and take me home.  It was a frustrating arrangement, but it worked in a pinch.

I have to say at this point that Temple is a very hard worker.  And at the moment I write, she is the only one working, supporting all of the family.  I have had a rough couple of years - with my health.  For the past two years, I have had a diabetic ulcer on the bottom of my foot - a gaping hole on the ball of my right foot.  The doctors had tried everything to get me to heal - three surgeries, along with several complications - DVTs (blood clots in places you don't want them), bone infections, the possibility of amputation, allergic reactions to antibiotics, crutches, IVs at home, nurses coming to my house, and deep, dark depression.  It was not a good time for me.

In June, they had finally taken the wound vac off.  The wound vac is this - you put a piece of sponge into your wound, and then you seal it all up with sticky plastic.  There is a tube coming out of the plastic that feeds into a little machine that you wear over your shoulder with a strap.  This machine sucks and sucks at your wound, creating a vacuum that provides an environment where your wound can heal.

They had pulled the wound vac off of my foot, and what was left was a tender scar on the bottom of my foot.  It was not all the way better.  But it was closed for the first time in two years.  I was ecstatic.  I had to wear special shoe that took the weight off of the ball of my foot and put it on my heel.  It was basically like wearing one clown shoe.

But I was walking!!

Walking has always been how I cleared my head.  Walking was how I gathered my thoughts.  I used to walk for miles and miles every day.  And I hadn't walked for two years.

So I picked up the car from Temple in the morning.  She made it very clear that she needed her car in the afternoon and wanted to make sure that I would have it back on time.  I went into town and ran errands.  Then I called my mother to see if she could pick me up.  No luck - she was gone.  No one else was around, either.

On the way home, I stopped by Maverick and bought Temple a big Mountain Dew (her addiction) in a 42 oz. cup, and a Coke Zero for myself.  Then I drove back to her place of work.  She came out to meet me, and I delivered her drink to her.  She asked me if I had a ride.  I lied to her and said that I did.

I didn't even know what I was doing.  It was four miles of highway to the turn-off to my house, and it was another five miles of dirt road until my house.  I got a wild hair.  This was something I hadn't done in years.  It was exciting and dangerous.

Carrying my Coke Zero, I walked out to the highway and started walking.  I stuck out my thumb.  The first car passed.  Nothing.  They didn't slow down.  The second car passed.  It was a pretty girl.  She waved at me.  But she didn't stop.  The third car was a battered Datsun.  It stopped for me.

I ran over to the car and got in.  There was trash everywhere.  The man inside was of indeterminate age - leathery tan skin, scraggly hair, bad teeth.  He looked like he was on meth.  But he stopped to give me a ride.  He told me he was on his way to Show Low - 35 miles away - for a court case.  DUI.  He hoped that he won.  That was the extent of the conversation we made.  He drove me the county road and dropped me off with an apology that he couldn't take me in all the way.

The dirt road stretched out in front of me.  It was a hot, July day, and I was sweating.  The Coke Zero was already going warm, and there wasn't much left.  I started walking.  I didn't realize how remote we live until you walk and realize that there are no cars passing at all.

Luckily, I had my bluetooth headphones and was jamming to my favorite music - the Pixies, Silversun Pickups, etc.  My feet crunched on the cinders in rhythm to the music.

It was a hot day, but far to the South, over the gentle peaks of Arizona's White Mountains, thunderheads were starting to explode over the crest of the hills.  This was the start of the summer monsoon season, and I wondered if I could make it home before any rain would come.

I started to think about my whole situation.  It had been nine months since I had even held a job.  For a while, Temple - who worked hard to provide for the family - had to drive home every day on her lunch breaks to change my IVs.  I couldn't help around the house.  I couldn't contribute.  I had to just lay there on the couch every day and watch TV until TV held no interest, or read a book until I realized that the entire day had slid by and I hadn't even read three pages.

What the fuck had happened to me??

Was this going to be the rest of my life?  I served no purpose in our family any more.  I didn't feel like I was needed by anyone.  I had always worked, always provided, always protected while my wives built a home.  Now they did everything, and I did nothing.

Not to mention the asshole that I had become.  It wasn't until later that I learned that vancomycin - the drug they had me on - can cause mood swings.  And, boy, did they swing.  My foot was better, but, during the healing process, I had managed to push away anybody that meant anything to me.

As I walked, I stopped the music, and the tears started.  I cried and I cried until the tears stopped.

And then I prayed.  I talked to God as I walked and poured my heart out about everything that I had gone through.

My foot was still tender and starting to hurt.  So I stopped and sat down for a few minutes.  An ant bit me on my ass.  So I kept walking.

I kept walking until I was so tired that I stopped thinking.

At one point, I sat down to rest my foot again, and an SUV passed by.  I was sitting at the side of the road, and so I stood up and brushed myself off.  An old man and woman stopped and asked if I was okay.  I smiled and explained that I was just walking, that I had just had surgery on my foot, and was just resting my foot.  I held up my clown shoe in demonstration.  They looked at me like I was strange and drove off.

About four miles in, I gave up.  My foot was throbbing, and I called my brother who came and picked me up and took me home.  I was hot and sweaty and took a shower before my wife got home.  She was a little angry with me when she found out I had hitchhiked/ walked home.  Not only was hitchhiking dangerous, what about my foot?

However, I was exhilarated by the experience.  After not being able to walk after two years...  It put some thoughts into my head...

I Hope They Call Me on a Mission...

I hope they call me on a mission

When I have grown a foot or two.

I hope by then I will be ready

To teach and preach and work as missionaries do.

This was one of the songs that I was taught as a child growing up in the LDS Church.  Once a week, we would meet with other children in our Primary class and sing songs like this.  We were taught that the most glorious thing that a girl could do was to grow up to be a wife and a mother.  And the most important work a boy could do was to serve two years as a missionary when he turned nineteen.

At that magical age, a young man would leave his home, his family, and trade in his jeans and t-shirts for a white shirt and tie.  He would go into rigorous training at a facility in Provo, Utah - complete with barracks -  called the MTC (Missionary Training Center) before getting whisked away to his pre-selected mission.  If he was lucky, he would get six weeks language training and get to go to some exotic, foreign country.  If he was not lucky, he would go to New Jersey, or Nevada.

But the where didn't matter.  He would serve the Lord wherever he was called.

Growing up in Arizona, I was taught from an early age that I would go on a mission someday.  I didn't question it.  I just knew I would go.

My dad served a mission in Mexico in the 1960s.  It was kind of how he met my mom.  (My mom was from Mexico, but was living in the States by the time they met.  Her brother was serving the same mission as my dad.)

My dad came back speaking perfect Spanish, and - for the rest of his life - he was more Mexican than most Mexicans.  His mission changed his life.  (I will talk quite a bit more about my dad as I blog on.)  When guests would come over, he would break out the slides, and we would all look at grainy photos of my dad - a lanky man with a crewcut in the photos - standing atop pyramids in the jungles of Yucatan.

I wanted to be like my dad.  I wanted to be a missionary.

When I was eight, I was given a can - ironically a coffee can.  It was spray painted gold, and a slot was cut into the top.  Whenever I would get a spare coin, I would drop it into the can.  It was my missionary fund.  I don't know whatever happened to that can, or the money inside.  It was probably put in the gas tank when funds got scarce for my parents.

My dad was always a maverick, and, at some point, he began to question some of the policies and practices of the church.  More specifically, he questioned practices done away with by the mainstream church - like plural marriage.  When I was 17, he began to teach the family that polygamy should have never been done away with.  By the time I was 18, my dad was excommunicated.

When I finally turned 19, I was called into the office of my bishop for an interview.  Instead of talking about my mission, my bishop asked me two questions:

"Do you believe that polygamy should be lived today?"

I answered:  "Yes."

"Do you believe that Ezra Taft Benson is a Prophet, Seer and Revelator, and the only man on earth who holds the keys?"

My answer:  "No."

I was dismissed.  I was frustrated.  I knew that this would end my dream of going on a mission.  I told my dad that I wanted to go on a mission.  I told my dad that I would not teach my beliefs to anyone while on my mission, but only abide the teachings of the Church.

On my behalf, my dad went to the bishop and made a plea for me.  "Is it possible that my son could still serve a mission?"

One month later, I enrolled for college class in Salt Lake City, Utah, and I got, by mail, the invitation to my excommunication trial and the results.  I was cut off from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I really didn't regret my decision.  But I did regret not getting the chance to serve as a missionary.

Little did I know that I would serve a mission of a different sort...

Shortly after my excommunication, I had a dream that changed my life.  I was standing on top of a steep, rocky hill.  A rocky landscape spread out before me.  At the base of the hill stood my father.  He called me down the hill.  But the hill was steep, and I was frightened to climb down.  So I refused.  My father went up the hill, grabbed me by the ear, and drug me down the hill.  I was cussing him out the whole time.  

When we got to the bottom of the hill, he deposited me into a tent.  Inside the tent were four women, veiled and dressed in white temple robes.  (I had never seen temple robes before this dream.)  They were to be my wives.  I became ashamed of my fear, and I was grateful to my dad for dragging me down my hill...

Getting Started

Everyone has seen Mormon missionaries - you know, the young guys on bikes, white shirts, ties, and name tags.  They are virtually cultural icons, even referenced in movies.

It wasn't always that way, though.  When the Mormon Church called men on missions, they got the call, and that was it.  They went out into the world "without purse or scrip" as mentioned in Luke 22: 35.  That is to say, they had to wing it.  They had no money, only the clothes on their backs, and survived on the charity of others.  Those who showed a kind heart were usually those who the missionaries would teach.

This was the Mormon-style of missionary work until about the 1940's, and then the Church developed a fund to help out missionaries get by while out in the "field".

But I am not going to get into that right now!

This is mainly to introduce myself!

Hi, my name is Moroni Lopez Jessop!  (=> see profile =>)  I was raised in the LDS Church, but never got to serve a mission for them, because I got excommunicated for believing in the modern practice of polygamy.  I live in rural Arizona with my two wives and kids, and I am writing a book.

I am writing a book on the history of the custom of preaching without purse or scrip in the Mormon religion.  I will discuss much of that history here.

This will culminate in me actually doing an experiment of going out in a similar fashion and teaching people without purse or scrip, just like the old Mormons did!  It is kind of scary and exciting!  I will blog about my preparations, and when I leave (probably next year) I will blog about my experiences while I am on the road, all Jack Keruoac-style, and shiz!

When I get back, I will write a book about my experiences.

It is something that I have wanted to do all of my life.  I hope that you will read about my travels.  I look forward to comments and advice, and I hope that all of you will follow on my journey.  (Well, not literally.  I'm not Forest Gump, or anything.)

Peace!