My Badge of Honor

This is how I wound up not going on a mission for the LDS Church...

From the time I was young, I was told that I had a mission to perform in my life, a purpose for coming into this world.  Everyone who is raised Mormon is told that they have a mission - a special something that only they can perform, something that you agreed to accomplish before you even came to this world.

It is like serving a mission for the Church, and I had been told to prepare from the time I was young to go on a mission.  I had the change jar that held my coins that were the start of my missionary fund.

But the mission I am talking about is a bit different.  It is more like a life mission.  And it is up to you to find out what that mission is.  The LDS Church provides certain tools for you to find out.  For instance, when you are maybe in your early teens, you can go to the stake patriarch.  The patriarch is someone who is given special authority to give blessings called "patriarchal blessings" that can serve as a map, offer clues for one to discover their true purpose in life.

I had been told since I was a child that I had a special mission to perform.  My parents were done having kids before I came along.  They had some sort of spiritual experience that convinced them that I should be born.  To this day, I still don't know what it was; they never told me.

But I was told that I had a special mission.  I needed to prepare for it, or it would be given to someone else.

Throughout my entire childhood, I wondered what it could be.  At around 6 years-old, I became convinced that it would have something to do with plural marriage.  On a trip to Phoenix, my father had stopped with the family to see my Uncle Vergel Jessop in Colorado City, the husband of several wives.  I didn't know anything about him, but, that night, they had spread out blankets on the living room floor for the children to sleep on.  I woke up at midnight when their tall, grandfather clock struck midnight.  I had a feeling come over me.  There was something special being lived in that home, and, even though I was only six, I knew that I would live it someday.

I look back to that moment with amazement, looking at the direction my life has taken.  Self-fulfilling prophecy, or not, it came true.  Of course, then, I had no clue how it would happen.

My father gave us a lot of direction.  As an adult, I am amazed at how he wasn't afraid to discuss controversial topics with his kids - at the kitchen table, in the car.  He was talking to us all the time.  (I was the only ten year-old, I'm sure, that brought up the Adam-God Doctrine in class.  I'm sure that he got in trouble over that.)

At the time, I also didn't realize what a maverick my dad was.  He was constantly in the proverbial hot water.  His local priesthood leaders were always coming to see him, and they would retreat for what seemed hours to his bedroom for private discussions.  Later, my dad told me that they were threatening him with excommunication.  And, because he didn't want to affect his family, he would always acquiesce, back down on his controversial opinions to maintain his church membership.

Afterwards, he would always stop going to church for a while, a kind of silent protest.  But he would still send his family.  One Sunday, I announced to my dad that I would not be going to church that day.

"You don't go," I pointed out.

"I tell you what," he responded.  "When you have put as much study into your religion as I have, then you can decide for yourself whether or not you can go.  But until then, you're going."

The teachings of my dad upon me were unmistakable.  As a result of his teachings, I seemed to know a lot more about Mormonism than many of the other kids I attended church with.  I remember when the Sunday School or seminary teacher would ask questions, I was often embarrassed that I was one of the only students who would know the answer, could raise my hand.  Most Mormon kids had to memorize key scriptures.  My dad made sure that I delved into the meaning of those scriptures, into the mysteries, if you will.

This doesn't mean that I was a saintly kid.  I was anything but that.  As a teen, I kind of went wild.  But the main reason - not only did I have a spiritual experience that let me know that my mission somehow involved plural marriage - I had some pretty scary spiritual experiences as well, of the opposite nature.  They scared the hell out of me.  And in my teenage logic, I figured that if I was as wild a kid as I could be, that God would be forced to withdraw my "mission" from me, and I would be left alone.  No spiritual experiences - scary, or otherwise.

It's kind of funny how we run from our destinies, but they always catch up to us.

My dad could see what was happening to me.  So he made a deal with me.  If I moved to Utah and went to college, boarding with a polygamist uncle of mine, he would help pay for my college.  I think often about this decision and how it totally shaped my life.

By this time, my dad had been excommunicated.  He got sick of backing down.  Later, he told me that he had felt called to something greater, that he had felt this call all of his life, and that he felt that this was the last time he would receive this call.  So he stood up.  This time, he didn't back down like was expected of him.  He stood up for what he believed.  My dad was the most principled man I have ever known.

Within a short time, my mother and oldest brother were excommunicated, also.  There were rumors that the bishop wanted to talk to me.  I was nervous.  This was around the age when I was ready to go on a  mission.  As the inevitable confrontation came, I told my dad that I didn't want to be excommunicated, that I would serve a mission and not say anything about what I truly believed.  My dad tried to talk to the bishop about this.  But in a way, I think I had my mind made up when I walked into the bishop's office.

It was the day before I moved to Utah.  It was a sunny September morning, and there was no one in the chapel building but me, my younger brother, and the bishop.  He sat us down and asked a total of two questions:

"Do you believe that plural marriage should be lived today?"

Me:  "Yes."

"Do you support Ezra Taft Benson as Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, and the only man on the earth who holds the keys?"

Me:  "No."

That was it.  There was nothing more to the interview.  The next day, I moved to Utah and enrolled in college.  A month later, I received the invitation to my excommunication trial, and the results of my trial - both on the same day.  I was excommunicated from the LDS Church.  I wouldn't be serving a mission.

Deep down, I knew that I had taken a stand for a greater cause.  But that doesn't mean that I didn't feel the loss of all the things I would never enjoy.  I would never receive my endowments in the temple.  I would never marry in the temple.  But what I felt the most keenly - I would never serve a mission.

Over the course of the next year, my entire family got involved with a fundamentalist Mormon group.  That is where I met Martha, and we got married shortly after being introduced.

One Sunday, I met with my family at my parents' house.  They had invited a special visitor - a man who was qualified to act as a patriarch.  I had never received a patriarchal blessing in the Church, and my father had invited this elderly man to come and give patriarchal blessings to all of us.  The man, with a very good nature, agreed to give us patriarchal blessings with the condition that my father would give us blessings of our own, saying that it was very important for father's to act in that capacity for their own families.

Before the blessings, he asked each of us to get up and speak a little bit about ourselves.  When it came time for me to speak, I told the story of my excommunication, and then I expressed regret that I had never had the chance to serve a mission for the Church.  The patriarch then interrupted my speech.

He said, "You will go on a mission.  But it won't be like the missions in the church.  It will be to all of the world, and it will be for the rest of your life."

When it came time for me to receive my blessing, he put his hands on my heads and pronounced many things upon me.  But he again reiterated that I would go on a mission to all of the world, for the rest of my life.

Within a matter of months, this old patriarch was dead.  But I always remembered his promise to me, guarding it in a special place in my heart.  I attended a religious service, and someone got up and spoke of this old patriarch and some of the things he had said while he was living.  They said that he had said that the winding-up scene will not happen until two men go into every nation and dedicate that nation for the gathering out of the elect, and the gathering out of the records.

When I heard these words, I felt chills going up and down my spine.  I knew, I KNEW that this was part of the mission that was in store for me.

Twelve years later, I stood on a beautiful hill, overlooking Auckland, New Zealand, and three of us dedicated that nation for that purpose.  So if I never visit another nation in that matter, that part of it was indeed fulfilled.

When I was excommunicated, I received two sheets of paper.  I called them by Badges of Honor.  Did I want to be excommunicated?  No, there are days when I wish that I still belonged to the LDS Church.  But the blessings and experiences I have experienced since then are far greater than anything I would have received otherwise.

In posts to come, I will talk more about my experiences as a different sort of missionary.

There is one other story that I want to tell about this old patriarch.  He told me that he had been a student of the gospel all of his life.  He had traveled to temples all over the United States and Canada to learn the mysteries of the Mormon religion.  On one occasion, he was in Washington, but he became very ill.  He picked up a hitchhiker.  He made up a bed in the back of his station wagon so that he could rest, and he asked the hitchhiker to drive him back to Utah.  The whole way from Washington to Utah, he lay in the back of this station wagon and talked with the hitchhiker.  This mysterious man seemed to have a grasp the gospel in way that was uncanny.  He taught the patriarch many things that he had never heard before.  When he got to Utah, he tried to find out who this hitchhiker was, but he was never able to find out...