“All the explanations proposed seem to be only partly satisfactory. They range from massive climatic change to mammalian predation to the extinction of a plant with apparent laxative properties, in which case the dinosaurs died of constipation.”
― Carl Sagan (Astronomer, cosmologist, & author; 1934 - 1996)
So long as there are theorists in the world, I suppose there will be conspiracy theorists too. There will be individuals who believe in truth and evidence and there will be those who believe in fantasy and deception. There will be teachable people and there will be those with a one-track mind. That's just the world we live in. A world where nobody can seem to agree on anything anymore, not even the truth, and that sometimes includes science.
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No two missions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are alike. Most experiences are had between two companions and the account dies with them, lost forever. Not all experiences will be remembered or regaled; in fact, most are forgotten with the unstoppable sands of time. Some aren't worth remembering, but some are. Even after years of being home, I can recall many people I met, what they looked like, what they said even if we only had one encounter on the street, maybe the color of their house, the street we were on, the weather that day, and many other random details. I have a decent biographical memory. And I am grateful for this opportunity to preserve them in this blog, this digital "time capsule" if only to get a laugh out of some of them. After all, some of my favorite stories, especially family stories, have some humor to them.
THE UNREACHABLE & THE UNTEACHABLE
I think the strangest conversation I had on my mission in Mexico was with a man we hadn't anticipated teaching. At the time, I was still training Elder Chavarria, who was still a new missionary and relied on me to set the example. As such, I took a lot of the initiative in starting conversations and finding people to teach, including what we might teach. That's not to say in the least that I was any more capable or had all the answers, especially since I was still building confidence in my Spanish capabilities and he was a native speaker.
We first met the man's wife vending clothes in front of her house in a quiet cove of the community (which was a common thing to do in Mexico). Her name was Claudia. She was well into her pregnancy and multitasked managing her clothes stand while supervising her four-year-old son kicking his soccer ball around. I thought to myself, “Here is a beautiful family that should be together forever. Let’s share the gospel with them”. We introduced ourselves and asked to come back when her husband was home to teach them all together. Husbands were normally the tougher of the couple to get along with and didn’t like it when we met with their family without getting to know us first. It was understandable, and we avoided being alone with women anyway as part of our mission rules. Furthermore, we loved teaching entire families together when possible.
We had trouble finding Claudia whenever we came back. She was unreachable. But one time we knocked and ran into a man who identified himself as her husband, Emmanuel. Even though she wasn't around, we thought we'd take advantage of the opportunity to break the ice and have a brief lesson with him anyway before trying again another day to find everyone at home. We asked him if we could share a brief message to which he accepted and let us in.
Note: I'm pretty confident that the images above, even though they're old outdated images, are of the location where this story takes place. On the image to the left, you can see what I thought was a dead-end wall where the son was kicking his soccer ball. Directly across from it you see the wall where the clothing was handing and the massive tree protruding from the walled-off yard where this lesson took place.
At first, he seemed polite enough; he pulled out some chairs and we sat under the shade of a massive tree in a sizeable secluded dirt yard. We did our best to lead our way from a casual conversation into a gospel message. Knowing that his family was about to get larger with a baby on the way, I thought we’d teach him about God’s plan of happiness.
I suppose we started the conversation by talking about the importance of families. We may have asked him his feelings towards his son and pregnant wife, assuming an easy answer back like, "I love them so much!" to get our conversation on eternal families going. In the process to our dismay, we discovered that this man was not legally wed to his wife and had no intentions to do so. Quite frankly, I’m not sure that the wife wanted to be married to this man (some sadly choose cohabitation only for financial purposes rather than a commitment to a cherished person). He was dirty and unkempt, yes, but the longer the conversation went, the more apparent it became that his conduct was "helter-skelter" and questionable, and his state of mind was identically askew. Crushed beer cans and old cigarette butts were scattered all over the dirt ground. The first thing he does moments after we walk into his yard is he grabs a sixpack and offers us a drink of beer which we declined (obviously). Then he continues to drink in front of us. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he smoked more than nicotine if you know what I mean. His mind was off in wonderland. In fact, if I understood his Spanish, he actually told us that he has some sort of condition in his brain! He was unteachable.
In addition to his drinking beer and smoking and living with his out-of-wedlock pregnant wife, to top it off, he also believed in reincarnation and "La Santa Muerte" which is Mexico's Saint version of death itself personified. Yet he didn't pray and didn't do much reading either. All in all, he was about as far from the gospel as one could get.
He was more interested in drinking than in us. He hardly looked at us he was so lost in his own alcoholic world. Realizing that we couldn’t get through to him, we tried to be brief and leave him with the invitation to repent and come unto God. After all, repentance is the most vital message of the gospel. It's an essential part of missionaries' purpose as representatives of Jesus Christ. If there was only one thing that Heavenly Father would want us to communicate and this would be his only chance to hear from His representatives, it would be to alert him to his need to change.
The call to repentance was brief because I was sure he wasn't listening to anything we said anyway. But, just as we're readying to leave, he asks us what we believed about God and the creation of the world. Our response was short and as simple as we could put it. We dumbed it down for him, so to speak, for obvious reasons. We simply stated that God was our loving Heavenly Father and that the Earth was created to help prepare us for our return to Him. To make his question somewhat relevant, we slipped it in that life was a time to obey God and repent of our sins (See "Night of No Labor"). Hint, hint. Then he made one of the strangest "out-of-the-blue" tangents I’d ever heard as a missionary, especially to follow a serious message of repentance... “Do you believe in dinosaurs?”. Caught off guard by his sudden, yet random interest in a conversation, I'm thinking, "What does this have to do with anything?". What does this have anything to do with our salvation or religion, etc? Confused why he was dragging dinosaurs into the discussion, I answered that my companion and I personally did (not that it’s a religious doctrine, rather we believed they once existed). Then he followed up his remark with such confidence, “The dinosaurs went extinct when God divided the light from the darkness, right?”. What?!!! I had no idea where he got that idea from or why he brought it up but admittedly it made me laugh a bit on the inside. I'm sure that intoxication played a part in what was coming out of his mouth. At least, I hope that's all it was.
We wasted time trying to convince him that dinosaurs were irrelevant to our conversation about God's plan for eternal families (and frankly disagreed with his random belief about dinosaur extinction), but he was persistent. He was ready to submit his testimony as evidence that the dinosaurs went extinct when God divided the light from the darkness and he was bent on convincing us if it was the last thing he was going to do. There was no reasoning with him. Every time we tried to steer the conversation back on course to God’s Plan of Salvation, he was completely oblivious and uninterested. He paid more attention to his beer than to us. While we were trying to teach faith and repentance, he was thinking about dinosaur extinction.
But I guess he's not the only one. Why is it that rather than focusing on Jesus Christ, so many people in the world, the religious community included, sometimes overly concern themselves with what might be called, "dinosaur doctrine"?! You know what I'm talking about. Why some people insist on cracking the code on "dinosaur doctrine" instead of the doctrine of Christ is absurd. Why is it that we sometimes have more interest in esoteric things than the plain and precious things that God has already revealed (1 Nephi 19:3-7)? Even in days of old, the prophet Nephi in the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ wrote:
"For the things which some men esteem to be of great worth, both to the body and soul, others set at naught and trample under their feet. Yea, even the very God of Israel do men trample under their feet; I say, trample under their feet but I would speak in other words—they set him at naught, and hearken not to the voice of his counsels." (vs. 7)
While discovery is part of our journey in mortality (See "What is Truth? Faith and Science"), we need to remember that this life is first and foremost the time to prepare to meet God and therefore, those things pertaining to the restored gospel: faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, and other priesthood ordinances, are the things that matter most in the eternal perspective. In time, I believe that all things will be revealed, but we need to appreciate and treasure the small and precious truths if we are ever to comprehend or perhaps even deserve further light and knowledge. And with the ultimate goal of eternal life in mind, the whole objective of our existence, we would do best to live in the present and prepare for the future rather than dwell on digging up the past.
At length, we left not wanting to waste any more time. He was "nice" all in all (at least to us) as far as manners go, but we were looking for more than "nice people"; we were looking for those who would receive the restored gospel and do all that was needed to change and repent. The Law of Chastity and the Word of Wisdom were the first in a series of problems that stood in his way and it was clear that he did not want to change. If he was going to, he'd have a long way to go, but he wasn't keen on taking a single step in that direction.
We never went back. It would have been a miracle to progress with that man, and we do believe in miracles, but if the scriptures are clear about one thing, I’ve said it before and I will say it again, it is that faithful action precedes miracles. It is more than the hope of the missionary that results in another’s conversion. It is the desire of the one to change himself. We cannot repent on behalf of others. Repentance is personal and true repentance endures. Done properly, it can be the sweetest blessing but repentance is never accidental! It is always a personal choice. A commandment, yes. But also, a superb blessing that leads to more blessings. If you're so interested in dinosaurs, you should consider becoming a Paleontologist.
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