And I seal up these records, after I have spoken a few words by way of exhortation unto you.

—Moroni 10:2

Good question.

I suppose a roll call of the players in this little drama would not be out of order.

I haven't seen John Snow in person since the day we met at the border between Kingsgate, British Columbia, and Eastport, Idaho, in 1987. I attended one Canada Calgary Mission reunion a year or two after my return to Utah, mostly in the hope of connecting with him, but he wasn't there. I did chat with him on the phone a time or two in the years after our missions, and a few years ago I received a wedding invitation from him—but I had no way of getting to Fresno, California, to attend.

Full entry

My path over the subsequent year took me from Bonners Ferry to Orofino, Idaho, to Pasco, Washington, and finally to Wenatchee, Washington—the town where I was promoted to zone leader, and where I would eventually die.

My release was scheduled for August 19, 1988, and I impatiently counted the days. Early in May of that year, I quietly became a double-digit midget—an important milestone in every missionary's career.

Now, most missionaries fly home when their missions are complete, and they are greeted by a veritable flotilla of friends and relatives at the airport, often bearing banners saying things like "Welcome Home, Daniel!" or "It's All Over, Elder!" or "Welcome Back to the Real World!" This is almost a stereotype of the typical missionary's homecoming, in fact—but it didn't happen for me. No, my family wanted to drive to Spokane to pick me up, then tour some of the areas where I'd served on the way back to Utah.

Now, I wasn't exactly keen on this idea—after all, I'd been a missionary for a good long time, and I was rather eager to be getting on home—but I went along with it. They were my family, after all. Family can push you around.

Full entry

The nice thing about being dumped by the girl back home is that you instantly become a member of a tight, supportive fraternity. I mean, statistically, less than ten percent of the girls who promise to wait for their missionaries actually end up doing so. Some elders will tell you that you haven't had the full mission experience until you've gotten a Dear John.

If that was true, then I was definitely part of the club now.

But all was not doom and gloom. In July, Elder Hull was transferred out of Bonners Ferry—an answer to a prayer if ever there was one—and Elder Tim "Bish" Bishop was transferred in. Sister Sullivan was transferred out of Sandpoint, and Sister Leslie "Oy" Oyler was transferred in. Libby, Montana, where not much had been accomplished, was closed to missionary work for the time being, and Sisters Sigmon and Parker were transferred elsewhere. Things were looking up.

Bish and I became best friends. (In 1990, I was best man at his wedding—and I even spent their wedding night next door to them in a Motel 6 in Rock Springs, Wyoming. But that's another story.) Our three months together in Bonners Ferry were all kinds of fun. We baptized only one person in all that time, but since she was a 91-year-old Russian Jew, it seemed to us like a spiritual coup of the first magnitude.

Full entry

It started innocently enough. Elder Summers, as zone leader, periodically went on splits with the district leaders he supervised. One day he made plans to split with Elder Berenstein, who was the district leader in Ellensburg, a college town fifty miles north of Yakima in the foothills of the Cascades.

Summers and I drove to Ellensburg in the morning. There, Summers picked up Elder Berenstein—a tall, thin, shy fellow with homey good looks and a cowlick in his hair that made him look like a deeply tanned scarecrow. They drove back toward Yakima, leaving me to spend the next twenty-four hours with Berenstein's companion, Elder Wally Brown.

Brown was a ruggedly good-looking swinger who had a fixation on Top Gun. He wore aviator sunglasses, planned to become a fighter pilot, and wanted to be Tom Cruise. Everyone called him Wally, because there were two Elder Browns in the mission.

Wally had only been out for two months, but he had the kind of dominant personality that made it all but impossible for me not to tag helplessly along on whatever mad errand he wanted to pursue. And what we did that night was to spend several hours hanging out with the two gorgeous college cheerleaders who lived in the apartment next door. Nothing untoward happened, but I was uncomfortable about the situation all evening long—while at the same time enjoying the thrill of doing something illicit. (What a mass of contradictions I am.)

Full entry

I spent the bulk of the next forty-eight hours hauling Snow and Hering around so that I could say goodbye to investigators, local members, and fellow missionaries. On Wednesday, Snow dumped Hering off on a split with someone or other, and he and I drove around town sightseeing. I took pictures of everything in sight—including the hookers who showed up to start working the downtown streets promptly at five in the evening.

One garishly dressed pimp, spying me with my camera pointed at his girls from the passenger window of our car, started yelling and cursing and running toward us. "Go, Snow, go," I shouted, rolling up the window. "Get us out of here!"

Snow put the pedal to the metal and drove.

God, what desperate fun we had!

Full entry