By Julia Ditto | FāVS News Columnist
I love the Book of Mormon. Not the musical per se, which is currently playing in Spokane at the First Interstate Center for the Arts and is well known as a very funny and crude caricature of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its members and their beliefs.
No, I’m talking about the actual book, the one shared throughout the world every day by more than 74,000 real-life missionaries. Like all caricatures, “The Book of Mormon” musical gets a lot of laughs, but it’s a distortion that fails to get at the heart of why actual missionaries do what they do.
LDS Missionaries Serving Others
I know a lot of people, young and old, who are currently serving as missionaries. My oldest son, George, is finishing up his two-year mission in Santiago, Chile this August. Other nieces, nephews and friends are currently serving in the Philippines, Brazil, Republic of the Congo, Peru, France and Bulgaria. A few are even braving the wilds of Arkansas, Texas and Utah.
As I read the letters they write home to family and friends each week, I’ve found the one thing they all have in common is this: they love God, and they love their neighbor. Serving others and sharing their joy is the greatest way they know how to show that love. That’s why they are serving missions.
My daughter’s best friend, Emma, is a missionary in Arequipa, Peru. Previously a stand-out high school student and athlete, Emma has served her mission with the same relentless energy and love that she has displayed in every other aspect of her life.
In one letter home, she wrote of an elderly woman she often passed on the street who would sit in her wheelchair for hours on end, unable to move because she was in so much pain. Emma started pushing her in her wheelchair any time she would pass by.
“I never did anything huge for her,” Emma wrote. “But I pushed that little old lady in her wheelchair almost every day for three months to the corner so she could hail a taxi and very slowly and uncomfortably sit down to catch a ride to the mercado where she would sit all day to eat her meager lunch. I think it’s what Jesus would do, too.”
That was a small thing, but it was fueled by what is referred to in the Book of Mormon as “the pure love of Christ.”
“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail—But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever” (Moroni 7: 46-47).
When my parents decided to serve as missionaries in 2009, they were both in their 60s. Neither had gone on a mission in their younger years, and serving together as an older married couple was something they had long dreamed of doing. They secretly hoped they would be asked to serve on a tropical island somewhere.
Imagine their surprise when they were sent to Romania instead. They served for a year and a half as humanitarian missionaries, organizing projects large and small to help the suffering people in Romania.
One project had them replacing the lumpy and bed bug-infested mattresses in a facility for one city’s homeless elderly. My stepdad was a furniture salesman for many years, so he and my mom personally selected and delivered the mattresses and bedding, and then they and a group of other missionaries spent the afternoon making each new bed with a clean mattress pad and fresh new sheets.
“I kissed many a wet cheek that day,” my mom said. “They just were blown away that we would all appear and be angels like that.”
Russell M. Nelson, the current prophet and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said, “Regardless of where we call home, members of the Church feel passionately about the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Thus, our greatest joy comes as we help our brothers and sisters, no matter where we live in this wonderful world. Giving help to others—making a conscientious effort to care about others as much as or more than we care about ourselves—is our joy.”
“The Book of Mormon” musical may get you to laugh, but the book—and what it motivates those who read it to do—is definitely better.
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Great message, Julia, about the importance of service in in our own lives, I sort of believe you can ‘go on Mission’ whereever you are living, no matter what age, and daily. I appreciate that LDS does give this dogma a high priority in its faith approach. Seems to be a universal principle among most places of worship/religions/faiths,etc–helping your neighbor with a loving heart and hand.