Youth Conference 2003

When I was thirteen, we had a youth conference with a missionary theme.

It started on a Friday night when we met at the church and received a "call" with our destination and companion. I was "called" to Japan, but that meant absolutely nothing. Ryan Jones was my companion.

At some point the first night, we went to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. I was wearing an extra name tag my brother had given me; that made the sisters in the clothing issue ask if I was endowed. After the temple, we got lessons from returned missionaries on how you teach lessons and what you might say to people. I think I got my lesson from Kyle Gubler. My brother was teaching some people the Taiwanese sign language he learned. Jaydon Bean was amused that the middle finger meant brother. A deacon was telling me that his brother was called to Hong Kong, but I didn't believe that such a mission existed (I was wrong, of course). We were instructed to live like missionaries that night, not watching TV or listening to music. (We didn't have to have a companion.)

In the morning we returned to the church for breakfast; but even though I had been assigned to the Japan mission, I didn't eat at the Japan table (hosted by Brother Bringhurst in a kimono; they had wasabi peas, among other things). Instead we ate at the Italian table hosted by the Ulmers. (The Gublers were in the church kitchen making a southern breakfast.) The Ulmers were very gung ho about their Italian meal. They gave us hazelnut Stephen's hot chocolate (instead of coffee). I think that was the first time I ever had Nutella, on some kind of fancy bread. They gave us some kind of ham product. There was so much food I couldn't really eat it all. They also gave us pages from an Italian language book, explaining the Italian alphabet, and I think they gave us copies of the Italian national anthem. They had a miniature Michelangelo's David that had little shorts on. Laura told us that their mission president had a life-size (meaning as big as a person, not as big as the statue) replica in the mission office, wearing shorts and a tie, with a sign that said something like "Be Mormon, be modest." I had to point the little statue out to Andrew Jones because I thought it was funny.

Then we were supposed to pretend to go tracting. I was wearing an extra name tag my brother had given me, so then some other people went and got their dads' nametags. We got little slips of paper that told us doors we were supposed to go knock on to pretend to be missionaries. We began looking and figuring out the most efficient route to go, but then they told us that we had to do them in the order they were written. One of the houses was lunch, so if we did the houses in order of proximity, it might mess up lunch schedules. Our first house was the Pays, where we were able to go in and "teach" a lesson. After our lesson, Brother Pay taught us how to teach prayer. Then we went up to the Nilssons'; Sister Nilsson let us in, but then Brother Nilsson pretended to be hostile and made us leave. We went to the Christensens', who let us in. Another companionship was there. They pretended to be drinking beer out of of brown bottles, pretending to be very friendly but not religious. Breaking the fourth wall a little bit, I said, "I see you have a Mormon hymnbook on your piano"; they said they had Mormon friends who gave it to them. Caleb got out their scriptures and said their friends gave those to them as well, which I thought was going a bit too far. There was something said about an erroneous belief that baptisms for the dead meant baptizing dead bodies.

We went to the Snarrs'; Sister Snarr answered the door and was dismissive of us. Then we went to the Greenburgs', where we were supposed to have lunch, but they weren't home. Ryan took us to his house, where his mom had sandwich things prepared for the companionship that was supposed to go there, but they never arrived. At some point the conversation turned to The Simpsons,  and they seemed surprised that I watched it.

Then we went back to the church. I remember remarking at some point that I didn't like that we knocked on so many houses but only taught one lesson; they said that was fairly accurate and perhaps was too generous. (It's probably like 1 in 1,000, or less.) We had a closing meeting in the chapel, and Laura Anderson spoke at it. I think I was feeling a little depressed.