In most of the ways that matter, I grew up in a fairly typical Salt Lake City Mormon home. What this means is that I went through most of the various Mormon rites of passage right on schedule in an environment that looked very much like an photograph from the Ensign: baptism in the basement of the Salt Lake Tabernacle, priesthood ordinations by a faithful father surrounded by family, and all the rest. Coming home from my mission, however, was slightly different.
The traditional Salt Lake City missionary home coming consisted (in those pre-9/11 days) of a vast throng of family and friends waiting at the arrival gate with banners posters, cheers, hugs, and happy reunions. Return of the conquering hero. Mine was somewhat different. The mission office, run as it was by 20-year-olds who really didn’t know what they were doing, messed up my return flight. They failed to confirm my seat from Los Angles to Salt Lake, which was given away. Hence, I arrived in Los Angles from Seoul with no way of getting to Utah. A friendly ticket agent was able to book me a flight on an earlier plane (I had originally been scheduled to have five or six hours in LAX) to Utah, but calls to my family to let them know of change proved unavailing.
The result was that I stepped off of the plane in Salt Lake and there was no one there. I walked down to the luggage claim, got my bags, called and left a message asking that I be picked up at the airport, and went outside to sit on the curb and wait. About an hour later my mother and sister arrived to take me home. During this whole adventure, I was, of course, dressed in my missionary uniform, complete with the name tag declaring that I was Oman Chang-no of the Mal-il Sung-do Yae-su Ku-rhee-su-do Kyo-hwae. This being Salt Lake, many if not most of the people passing me by in the airport, were Mormons with senses finely attuned to every nuance of LDS ritual and symbolism. There I was, a single missionary very much without the traditional throng of family members. “Elder, are you coming home?” a number of people asked. “Yes,” I responded, and they hurried on, constructing in their heads, I am sure, imagined stories to account for the Salt Lake anomaly of a lone returning missionary. I imagine that the narratives ranged from the judgmental to the heroic: Perhaps he came home early because of “worthiness issues”; perhaps he is the lone member in his family, having served an honorable mission (in which he no doubt baptized thousands, Amon-like) despite the fact that his whole family has disowned him. I thought the whole exercise was funny — especially the puzzled expressions on well-meaning Mormon faces — and in any case, I had a book to read while I waited.
I am certain that there is no greater significance in this story, but I do like to hold it in my mind as a reminder of how our Mormon amateurishness so frequently tangles our attempts to work through the scripts that we sometimes set for ourselves. I like to remember the fact that Mormonism is basically run by people who don’t really know what they are doing.
My mission tried to send me home to Rochester NY, instead of Rochester, MN. A last minute rerouting had me changing planes in London (Gatwick) where I discovered that they had failed to include the London-NY portion of my ticket in the packet. I was rerouted again, and ended up with a 7-hour layover in Chicago, where I hopped a cab to the temple. The cab driver, on seeing the temple, asked ” What in the world kind of buliding is that?” With such an opening, I explained. He took my English Book of Mormon, I did my first session in two years, boogied it back to the airport and flew to MN. Most effective day of my entire mission…
Nice one, Nate.
I found myself in a similar situation, but it was my own bloody fault. Upon my departure from Germany (December, 1989), a kindly member presented me with a box of my favorite Lebkuchen (German gingerbread), which I stored in my carry-on bag. When asked by a customs official at Minneapolis/Saint Paul if I had anything to declare, I perkily volunteered “Well, sir, I have a box of Lebkuchen!”
This announcement inexplicably spawned referrals to customs officials and managers from all over the Minneapolis/Saint Paul airport, and in the hour that it took them to figure out that Lebkuchen was, in fact, just gingerbread, I missed my connecting flight to Portland, OR (home).
I dozed in the nearly-empty airport for 5 hours on my luggage and caught a later flight, arriving home at about 1:30 AM. The terminal was closed and there was no-one there, and I muttered to myself “Well, this is a journal entry.”
Fortunately, my family was waiting for me at the end of the security gate, and my Mom crushed me against the wall within minutes of my exiting the aircraft.
Thanks for sparking that trip down memory lane, man. Geez, I was a dork.
I was bummed when I didn’t get to sit next to a photographer on the plane ride home and recount all the faith-inspiring stories of my mission a la “Labor of Love”.
Nate is too humble to acknowledge that his story was the inspiration for the Mollywood epic, “The RM.”
I went home to Mexico City, which I’d never seen before! There was a throng of people waiting at the exit from customs, holding signs and such, but not for me : ) They were advertising various sorts of taxi services and the like. I think those of my family living there came, though. I don’t remember that part super well. I did go through customs in the U.S., in L.A., but then got right back on a plane without leaving the airport, not to return to the U.S. for a few weeks. A Mexican stake pres. debriefed me. Cool stuff.
My return home was fine. My role in the themes of this post is that I was the incompetent functionary that fouled up the return trips of many other missionaries. I remember one poor elder who couldn’t take missionary life anymore. As the mission secretary, I set up his flight and handed him his ticket the night before. He slept in the mission home, and the AP’s took him to the airport. At six the next morning, I got a call from those same AP’s, informing me that I’d forgotten to include the Elder’s passport in his packet.
My companion and I jetted to the mission office and grabbed the passport, then ran it to the Porto airport. Sadly, we were too late, the flight had already left. However, enterprising Elders that we were, we realized that the flight was headed to Lisbon before it would cross the Atlantic. The drive to Lisbon takes three hours, and the plane left in about three hours and twenty minutes. Unfortunately, Lisbon was out of our mission, and the President was too– having traveled to Germany for a conference. What to do.
We were soon flying down Portugal’s freeways at breakneck speed, crossing outside of the mission boundaries, flirting with excommunication, and thrilled at the prospect of seeing the great capitol of Portugal, which had always been forbidden (my companion was from Lisbon, so his return there, unauthorized, had an even more illicit feel than my own trip South). We barely managed to deliver our cargo in time, passport in hand, and he took his lonely trip back to the motherland. We headed back North for a date with the President, working on our story the whole way back. Another happy ending (yes, I was allowed to serve out my remaining time in Portugal, but on heavy probation and encumbered by one of those electronic parolee tracking anklets).
By the way, speaking of the differing perceptions people had of Young Elder Oman sitting alone on his return trip, I recall pondering the nuances of language when different friends returned from their missions. Note the different meanings of the following sentences:
Did you hear? Larry got home from his mission.
or
Did you hear? Larry came home from his mission.
A very different set of long-lasting implications rests in the change of that one word.
Mark,
Just to make you jealous, in 1998 I actually shared an apartment with the actor that played the elder in Labor of Love for three months back. Got to tell him all my mission stories, faith-inspiring or not.
Aaron B
I recall that the office elder who arranged my flight home found great humor in flying us (me and 6-8 other elders all returning to the Salt Lake area) from Northeastern Brazil to Sao Paulo to Chicago to Salt Lake. That flight from Sao Paulo to Chicago is never-ending! The other way to go (Recife to Miami to Salt Lake) would have been several hours shorter. I am afraid that amatuerish sometimes bleeds into willful!
During that journey home, I felt a strong bond with some of my fellow travellers from my mission, one of whom I had known since we were roommates in the MTC. As a group, we sat near each other and reminisced in several planes and airports for large chunks of the near 24 hours that we were en route. However, when we hit the gate in Salt Lake and walked into that terminal, not one of us said good-bye. As far as I know, each was far too preoccupied with his own welcome party. I have not heard from or seen any of them since.
Come to think of it, from the MTC drop-off to each transfer to that strange non-goodbye at the airport, my mission was one abrupt exit after another.
My sister and I are the only members in my family… and she was out of town the day I flew out. My home teacher drove me to the airport, where I walked out onto the tarmac and up the stairs into the plane. The drive from Salt Lake International to the MTC in the MTC shuttle was bizarre… but nothing could be stranger than walking into that sea of families as I tried to maneuver through them and past the group of missionaries getting their patriarchal blessings in the foyer. Sitting down in the LGM hall, I felt utterly alone. I was so eager to serve. Man those were hard weeks.
My return was largely uneventful… I touched-down in Fresno and my sister and one of her friends was standing on the tarmac. I debarked, and I held my little nephew — 12 days old — in my arms as we walked through the airport. At my homecoming, my sister spoke so long that I had about 2 minutes to speak… and then came the meeting before the high council, where I was welcomed home by a bunch of strangers who read aloud the letter from my mission president that mentioned what a good cook I was, but didn’t mention any of the people I’d taught. Yeah… that one still hurts.
I loved having served… but that doesn’t mean that everything went as I would have hoped.
Dh’s flight from NYC got canceled; it was Christmas Eve. The elders fanned out to find other flights. Dh finally got on one, but it went to Dallas, not Houston. His mom faithfully climbed in her car and began the 6-hour drive to Dallas (from SW LA) to pick him up on Christmas Day. Dh was upgraded to first class; they took his decidedly shabby mission overcoat to the first-class coat closet with a puzzled look. Then they offered him turkey or filet mignon. He could not for the life of him remember what filet mignon was! He ordered the turkey, and was chagrined to see the beef arriving for others.
He got all the way home around 4:00 PM, Christmas Day.
Does it ever go smoothly? MIL is constantly giving up seats on planes for elders stuck on stand-by.
Sometimes it does go smoothly. My last mission area was North Hollywood, California, close enough to the Burbank Airport that our doorstep conversations were often interrupted by incoming planes. A month before my departure date, I asked the mission secretary if it was possible to depart from Burbank rather than Los Angeles. (She was a senior missionary, with actual secretarial experience, not a young elder.) She made the arrangements, and a man in my ward picked me up at 6:00am, drove me the 10 minutes to the airport, and I was on my way.
As for family greeting, I was not expecting the traditional SLC airport-style brigade. I had the bonus of spending a few minutes with a sister and her small children due to a short layover at the Denver airport. I arrived at Philadelphia, my final destination, about 20 minutes early, so my parents were not there at the gate to greet me yet. It sure beats a long delay.
Several months ago, I saw a lone missionary sitting next to his bags at Phoenix Sky Harbor international airport, where I was visiting. So I walked over and asked if he needed a ride or anything — like Nate, his itenerary had changed by several hours and there was no one to meet him. I let him call his home on my cell phone to tell his family he had arrived, then gave him a ride to somewhere in Mesa or Chandler or wherever it was that he directed me — when we arrived at his home, we found his family frantically putting together the celebration that they had expected to throw that evening. I dropped him off and drove away while all the hugging and crying and carrying on was happening. I really have no idea what his actual civilian name was, and don’t expect I ever will.
I wonder why no one offered Nate a ride?
My flight home from my mission should have been easy. Direct from Phoenix to Seattle. I was lucky to get a window seat, but it was right behind the left wing. As we reached cruising altitude, something in the back of my mind was bothering me. I’d been on flights a few times before, and was under the impression that water does not exist in liquid state at 30,000 feet.
Yet, on the wing, there was clearly a narrow stream of liquid. I had only been on a few flights, so I pushed it out of my mind… until, the captain gets on the loudspeaker and says “Hi there… One of our hydraulic systems has failed. The backup systems are working fine, but, we’re going to have to make an emergency landing in Vegas. There will be fire equipment on the runway when we land, and we won’t make it to the terminal under our own power, but don’t worry, this is all routine”
Well, I ended up as a lone missionary in the Las Vegas airport for 2-3 hours. They did give us food coupons, and eventually got us all back on flights to seattle. My family had already left home by the time I landed, and nobody had cellhpones back then, so I was unable to contact anybody to tell them what was going on.
They still all waited for me to get home, although some of the family had to cancel on the homecoming dinner we had planned.
I had a friend in college who had every returning missionary’s worst nightmare: his family moved while he was gone and did not tell him where. He had a mixup at the airport similar to Nate’s and so not only was he alone at the airport, he couldn’t contact his family because he no longer had their phone number.
To be fair to the family, they had tried to send him the information, but he got home before the letter telling him where they now lived and their new phone number got to his overseas mission.
Yikes.
I made it home all right, barely. I flew from Malaga to Madrid and from Madrid to Paris. In Paris they had to hold the trans-atlantic flight for me.
The reason being that (1) transatlantic flights in the Charles De Gaulle airport leave from a different terminal and (2) there was nothing in the way of signage or monitors to tell the traveler where his flight was and (3) the man at the information desk responded to my Spanish in incomprehensible French, and then to my English in incomprehensible French, and finally, after staring at me distastefully for some time, pointed to a bus that was starting to pull away and informed me in nearly un-accented English that I needed to get on it to get to the correct terminal. I had to sprint with my luggage like a lineman pulling a windchute. The sprinting didn’t stop there, either. Several airline employees were stationed at strategic points to tell me to ‘run, run!’
Those who know me will tell you that I have not allowed this incident to color my views of the French.
My family forked out the bucks to come and visit my mission with me before I came home. As I am a twin, my parents flew to Thailand to visit his area first, then they picked me up in Korea.
The interesting part of my flight home, was that when we landed in LA, some drug enforcement officials stopped us, and asked if my twin brother would mind carrying a packed of marijuana or some other elicit drug so that they could test this dog they had trained. Can you picture it. An honorably returning missionary packing drugs as he walks through the airport. (In case you are wondering, the dog did sniff my brother out).
Great stories.
Some parents of a young missionary in south America went to pick up their son, I can’t remember the country, but they were traveling with their son and somebody shot at them. I know they shot the dad in the arm and I can’t remember if they shot the son, wounded, I mean. They were all right, but it made the front page here. I think they spent some of the time in the hospital in the country.
Coming home was an adventure.
My family moved from Colorado Springs to Springfieild, MO a few months before I came home from Brazil. These were the days before email, so I didn’t get the acutal address to return home to until just before reservations had to be made.
I flew from Sao Paulo to Miami, then to Dallas (conicendentally I spent three months paying for my sins in the Texas Fort Worth Mission before my Brazilian Visa cleared) and on to Springfield. It took abour five minutes for a born again, holy roller pentacostal to accost me on the train between terminals. It was then I learned just how much english I’d forgotten.
Homecoming consisted of my Dad meeting me on the tarmac. I gave my homecoming address sandwiched between the Bishop and a High Council speaker to a ward I’d never seen before. Kind of a let down, but I left for school three weeks later.
Comment 17 bothers me. This drug sniffing dog has been conditioned to associate the black and whit missionary name tag with drugs. They should only use people who look like left-leaning, radical, dope smoking hippie types for these tests.
If you didn’t detect the heavy sarcasm in the above comment, please seek professional counseling now.
I am amazed at the number of bloggers who served Korean missions. Is Oman your real name or your Korean *nom de tracting*? European surnames usually are difficult for Koreans to pronounce, so we take Korean names. At least we did when Heber J. Grant was the Far East mission president. The name I was given in the LTM (yes I’m that old) caused trouble when I got to the mission. It sounded too much like *our boyfriend*. The high school girls loved it. I changed it on my first transfer after getting my mission president’s approval.
The strange part about getting home was that my step-father decided that I needed a thick steak. It was more meat than I ate in the preceding 2 years. My mom couldn’t understand why I had no aversion to walking several miles to get somewhere.
I got home on a Saturday. The Stake President the next morning told me that he wished I’d have called the night before. He would have released me and I could have gone on a date. The look on my face must have been priceless. I began my counseling for the terminal clueless the next day.
Three of my mission transfers involved flying. A few years ago during a layover in Pittsburgh or Cleveland or some such place, I came across a missionary in the airport. Reading through the above stories, it dawns on me that I assumed he was in the middle of his mission and not at the end.
“I am amazed at the number of bloggers who served Korean missions.”
It’s because of all that “han” (frustration, agitation, anger, angst, stubborness, defiance–it kind of defies translation) we absorb while there. Those who served in Japan, by contrast, return serene and filled with a Zen-like peace of mind. Also, the kimchee keeps us up late at night; ideal for blogging.
When I came back into the US through Sea-Tac, the customs official made several comments about being a missionary that I had to correct, like, “So, you were there for a year? No, two years.” After I corrected him a few times, he just shook my hand and said “Welcome home, Elder.” I passed through without any of my bags being searched. It later dawned on me that he was testing if I was a genuine LDS missionary. Maybe some smugglers try to pass themselves off as missionaries to get through customs?
I didn’t serve a mission in Korea, but I did visit for a month with my family when I was sixteen. It’s a beautiful place. I enjoy eating kimchee too, though I’m sure that Russell or Nate could outdo me in that department without any trouble. One of my memorable experiences in Korea came when I took a big bite of some unknown stuff — I’m a pretty adventuresome eater, sometimes to my detriment — and the stuff turned out to be really, really hot. I immediately drained my microscopic cup of water (what’s with the tiny cups there, anyway?) and managed to squeak out “Mul, Ju Say Oh” (water, please) as my eyes watered. My family thought it was hilarious, of course.
Add me to the list of missionaries who went to Korea. What is probably more unusual is the number of Korean missionaries who are also lawyers, and it is not a recent phenomenon, either. Taking the Utah bar exam 20 years ago was almost a mission reunion. One companion, one who lived in the same house for several months, and at least two others that I had known fairly well in the Land of the Morning Calm.
My wife enjoys kimchee more than I do. It was one of those “tests” to see whether she was really The One.
I wonder … can we deduce something from the Korean missionary thing about the Lord’s (or the Brethren’s, or the missionary department’s) criteria for assigning missionaries to serve in Korea? In addition to the Korea-mission RMs here, the others I know (such as my cousin) are extremely bright people, but also a little nerdy. I am trying to remember the missionary application. The picture could possibly reveal nerdiness, but did the application require information that revealled intelligence?
Or is it the other way around? Does serving a mission in Korea make one brilliant? A nerd? Both?
“In addition to the Korea-mission RMs here, the others I know (such as my cousin) are extremely bright people, but also a little nerdy. I am trying to remember the missionary application. The picture could possibly reveal nerdiness, but did the application require information that revealled intelligence?”
I have no idea what you could be talking about. I was wearing my very best Star Trek uniform in the photo sent in with my missionary application.
In response to number 26, I think you are taking a very important factor out of the equation. I don’t think it has to do with the picture at all. I think it has to do the the Lord’s knowledge of us all. He sent only the best to Korea. ;) If being a little nerdy makes one the best, then so be it.
Shawn,
Please explain to me why I ended up in Brazil then? If you saw my photo from my application you would definitely have thought I was bound for Korea.
Though I don’t accept the explanations given so far for why so many of us ended up blogging or in law and philosophy (the latter hasn’t been mentioned yet, but it’s true), I do think it is an interesting phenomenon. Perhaps we should ask Frank M to do an analysis of the variables to see if we can figure out some causal connection to being a missionary in Korea. (But I must say that those who went after the country was divided into more than one mission missed out on the real Korean mission experience, sans Book of Mormon, sans discussions, avec dysentery, hepatitus, etc.)
For those who were wondering, “sans” is a Frenchified way of saying “ope-shi” and “avec”: is a Frenchified way of saying “wha-ham-kae.”
Oh-man Hyung-jae, I used the French for those poor readers who may not have had sufficient education to know Korean.
By the way, I think the responses to Shawn’s post (26) prove his point about the correlation between nerdiness and serving in Korea, though I’m not sure that the correlation shows us causation in either direction.
I am very grateful for all those who served as missionaries in Korea
because my family joined the church in Seoul 35 years ago because
of the missionaries whom my father met in the bus on his way to work. Kam-sa-Ham-ni-da!
Ironically, the missionary who baptized my family became a
tax lawyer. ;-) So, there must be some correlations.
I have served my mission in Korea Pusan Mission 20 some years ago.
My parents served their mission as the very first
missionaries in the far eastern Russia for a couple of years
between 1994 and1996.
A few days ago, my first son was called to serve in California Long
Beach Mission (English speaking) although we really hoped that
the church would call him to serve in Korea or in a Korean
speaking mission ;-(
Upside is that there are lots of Korean in that mission.
So, that is a little comfort to us. ;-)
Was that back in the Spencer Palmer jidai? (Note the introduction here of the Celestial language–Japanese.)
“I like to remember the fact that Mormonism is basically run by people who don’t really know what they are doing.”?
I think we can be very sure the prophets know exactly what they are doing.
Aaron, I agree with you! Why should we doubt our leaders this way??
Aaron & Jenn: I was referring to the elder in the mission office, and the rest of us who slog it out in the trenches of Mormonism. I have faith and trust in the prophets, but generally speaking it is not they who are running the ward but me and thee, and while I don’t know much about thee, I am pretty sure that I am clueless…
Sorry Nate! (I didn’t think you’d respond to unknowns like me…)
But let me ask you — doesn’t this comment of yours (‘humanizing’) our leaders lead us down a path of not giving our local leaders proper respect? And isn’t it weird somehow to establish different standards for respecting Church authority?
Jenn: I don’t think that I am leading or going down the path that you seem to fear. I have a great deal of respect for my local leaders and believe that they are inspired. However, I think that one of the consequences of having a lay clergy is a certain amount of amateurness in how things get run, particularlly as one pushes down the org chart. I see nothing wrong with this — sometimes it is even funy and amusing. Indeed, I suspect that this is one of the reasons that the Lord has structured the church as he has.
I don’t think the Lord is playing games with us. We’re not here for his amusement. Whom the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies, says Pres. Monson. That applies at every level.
Aaron, lighten up a bit. In participating in Church government, we’re like little children that are just learning—like Cub Scouts who are actually allowed to make a mess of their pinewood derby cars, instead of their fathers doing it all for them. Allegedly, that’s the way we’re learning. Just as we might chuckle at our children’s foibles, so might Heavenly Father chuckle at us sometimes too.
“I don’t think the Lord is playing games with us.”
There are scriptural precedents. See, e.g., Job 1.
Isn’t that part of Job considered apocryphal, Nate?
I never had one of those office elders send me home the wrong way, but the last two months of my mission the financial secretary must have done something wrong because I got twice as much money as I normally got. I thought about giving it back, but instead I bought a bunch of souvenirs. I’ve felt pretty crappy about that ever since…I guess it wasn’t so much of a happy ending…
I’m certain that the Church leaders know exactly what they’re doing. The question, of course, is whether they know that they’re doing precisely what the Lord would do if He were here.
I am inclined to believe Paul when he confessed to seeing through a glass darkly. I believe that the Lord allows those who lead in the Church to struggle to understand His will, and to use their best efforts as they try to conform to that will–but I also think that He allows room for growth, which occurs in the struggle to understand and conform.
This in no way suggests that the leaders are uninspired, or not worthy of our sustaining–I sustain them wholeheartedly in the overwhelming challenges that they face. That does not mean, however, that I think they see as clearly now as they will then, when, as Paul says, they are face to face with God.
43: Jenn… just that one part?
FWIW, I’m of the opinion that Job is a metaphor/fable.