I say, blessed be the name of my God, who has been mindful of us, wanderers in a strange land.
—Alma 26:36
i. Provo
All is well, all is well! The winter-white Wasatch range reflected in the great glass façade of the humanities building, mountains like the arm of God holding His Saints secure in the desert valley.
There, the Brigham Young Academy grew to University. Every hour, the carillon calls out, Come, Come, Ye Saints.
Why should we mourn, or think our lot is hard? it pealed while I walked to a semantics final.
We’ll make the air with music ring, shout praises to our God and King, it tolled week after week on my way to church in the athletics building.
No toil nor labor fear, it rang as I kneeled in the snow, praying on the precipice of two years away from school, from home, from English.
ii. Haun’s Mill
In 1838, men and boys huddled in the blacksmith shop, fenced in by a local militia, bullets buzzing in between the boards. One of the boys, shot in the head: Nits will make lice, and if he had lived he would have become a Mormon.
iii. Denver
A field trip to the aquarium. I’d spent the day with a girl—the one I had dissected an owl pellet with, the one who was new to our fourth-grade class and had broken her arm in gymnastics, the one I had wanted to impress with my paper-folding prowess so I invented a crane-making business and promised to give her the first one for free—and her mother.
At lunch, the mom asked if I went to church. Yeah, I said, a Sunday School lesson about Haun’s Mill still raw in my mind.
Where? she asked. The fear of wrecking the fun, of being left behind to find the bus on my own constricted my throat. I don’t, I said, remember the name, but it’s on Eleventh Avenue.
That same Sunday, we had sung: I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! I know who I am! I know God’s plan! I’ll follow Him in faith!
iv. Salt Lake City
During my first year of college, my congregation went to Temple Square, to see the holiday displays, to watch a movie about the life of the Prophet Joseph Smith. The temple rose out of the night, a white, monolithic brightness surrounded by multicolored constellations of Christmas lights. Forty years’ work by Saints exiled to the untamed, the unwanted West—it sat, heavy and sure like an anchor. My group circled the grounds in the bitter December cold, gazing up those spires and into the star-stippled sky.
v. Abreu e Lima
My companion and I were waiting at a bus stop when a man swaggered up: I know all about you Mormons, that Joseph Smith liar you worship. What a fraud—he made it all up just to get people’s money.
My companion’s lanky frame turned to towering: Do not talk like that. I testify that he was a prophet of God—an honest and honorable man—and I will not stand here and listen to you malign him any more.
In the silence that followed, the man shrunk away into the sparse nighttime crowds, and I looked up at my companion, looked up to his quiet, terrible dignity.
vi. Corvallis
Two men came to the door, Baptists wanting to know if I went to church.
Yes, at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I caught the grimace before they asked, And do you know you’ve been saved?
Too eager to provide the easy conversation the batistas in Brazil always denied me, I responded, Yeah, that’s what we’re all working towards, isn’t it?
Then their frowns. Well, according to mainstream Christianity, salvation isn’t about works. It’s all faith in Jesus—the right Jesus.
Yeah, the Son of God.
No, no, Mormons don’t believe in the right God. Tell you what, we meet Sundays at eleven—please consider coming to visit. Remember, you have to know the right God.
So I wish them a happy Easter and shut the door, wondering just how many Gods the famously monotheistic Abraham could have had.
vii. Missouri
In 1838, Governor Boggs declared Mormons enemies of the state, calling for them to be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description.
But in 1833, Jackson County officials had made the attempt to describe the deluded fanatics, or weak and designing knaves’ outrages:
Daily increasing in numbers
They brought into our country little or no property with them and left less behind them
An article inviting free Negroes and mulattoes from other states to become “Mormons,” and remove and settle among us
Pretending to receive revelations direct from heaven
Under such a state of things, they declared, even our beautiful country would cease to be a desirable residence
viii. Jaboatão dos Guararapes
We unwittingly knock on the door of an assistant pastor for some other church. He invites us into his anteroom, we introduce ourselves, he retreats into the house and comes back with a book.
He thumbs through until he gets to the page about Os Mórmons and asks, What do you believe happens after death?
Missionaries are teachers, not debaters, and I tell him as much, offering to leave a prayer, a blessing on his home. He assents but then asserts that he will pray after us. And he does, standing up, holding his palms out towards our heads, shouting at heaven in an irreverent display, invoking the powers of the correct God to illuminate our benighted, young minds—put these young men on the right path!
We walk out of the house into the bright afternoon and continue down the dirt road, knocking on doors and publishing whatever peace we can.
