Faith Promoting Tales from our Missions
Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 10:22 pm
One of the things I am always grateful for is my training as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, unlike most mission schools or even seminaries in the broader Christian world, young men and women don’t even cross the threshold of their Missionary Training Center unless they have two criteria met; a solid testimony of the Book of Mormon and the ability to articulate that testimony forcefully, rigorously, and eloquently.
For those of us thrice blessed (born in the covenant, allowed to serve a mission, selected for a foreign mission), we get another dimension of training to prepare us for this most difficult task and in talking about it to people who have not undergone it I often equate it to a crash course in not only language, but diplomacy, cultural anthropology, social psychology, and even a bit subterfuge. I even asked Orrin Hatch to forward my recommendations to the State Department that they model the training of agents in the Foreign Service after the training conducted in the MTC there in Utah. Sadly, I never heard back either from Senator Hatch or anyone in the State department so I don’t know what came of it.
My foreign mission was Italy in the 1970s and when I arrived green around the ears and fresh faced as only a young Mormon man can be but I quickly received my own baptism by fire when I taught my first lesson to one Giovanni Tadini in the breath taking Valley of Arno. Amazingly, our lessons were to take place in a villa on the southern slopes of the Monti Pisani that once belonged to Lorenzo de’ Medici himself.
Truth be told my companion and I were in a little over our head in dealing with the dapper Giovanni who was no stranger to the erudition needed to properly tackle the truth claims of the Gospel. To throw us off our game he would engage in typical conversational cloak and dagger so typical of the passions inherent to those peoples who dwell on the Mediterranean. To give you an example of how he prepared the field of battle with psychological warfare, he started our first meeting by giving us a tour of the villa but did nothing to prepare us for the rather 19th century interior decorations he assaulted us with despite the stark Renaissance façade one is greeted with just outside the building.
He nearly drowned us in the broc-a-brae of the fin-de-siecle, certainly nothing the Risorgimento of old would have done, which is what we were expecting from what greeted us as we approached, still within eyesight of the great tower of Pisa and wrapped in the salty breeze coming off the sea. Nevertheless Mormon Missionaries are excellent cultural attaches if nothing else and we were able to solider on through the contradiction of taste and style presented to us by Giovanni and put him to the test of Moroni 10.
These sessions would last many hours, drifting in and out of English and Italian as needed by either side (I reckon 80% of the conversation was conducted in Italian, much to my immense satisfaction). On the fifth or sixth session we arrived when an obviously important soirée was still in process and my companion and I decided to busy ourselves while Giovanni entertained such important guests as Paolo Rossi (A social democrat, scholar of jurisprudence, and an important opponent to the rather anti-Mormon Mussolini).
I remember desperately wanting to go outside and wait, for there was smoke in the air and I felt an uninhibited Sidney Rigdon type spirit creep over me. I wanted to clear my head but my senior companion was resolute in staying inside and within earshot of the festivities. While we were appreciating a rather striking porcelain figure of Cavour when we were approached by trim, silver haired matron who addressed in melodious but posh English tones.
Much to our great surprise it was none other than the Queen Mother herself! Apparently she was to observed a midnight service at the Pisa cathedral tonight but was of mind to taste some of the local gins. While she had been touring the villas of Lucca and Florence she was being offered nothing but native teas which she wanted nothing to do with. Naturally my companion and I agreed with her rejection of tea, but we were aghast at her insistence on seeking out that vile “Dutch Courage” made from orange peels and juniper berries. We wasted no time in gently upbraiding her majesty and offering her an alternative to the bottle, the Gospel of Jesus Christ for this latter dispensation. Surely, we reasoned, such a majestic person such as the royal person herself could see the providence of this chance encounter. She had taken us for Americans, but she had not taken us to be trained and well equipped emissaries of Zion’s own. She ended up accepting our hardback cover of the Book of Mormon with a promise of reading some of it on her return trip home. We pressed her on meeting with us before she left the valley, but she always demurred when he pushed the issue and we always dropped it after the thirds or fourth refusal.
What a chance meeting? And to think, had I not listened to my elder companion and went outside to clear my head I would have missed a chance to witness to the Queen herself! Yet I harkened to the proper authority at that time and it paid off in dividends. Even today when I feel overwhelmed or that all my actions are for naught, I always think about that night and I always imagine that Book of Mormon with my written exhortation on the inside cover sitting somewhere in the libraries of Buckingham Palace. Seeking to be different doesn't always work out, does it? Instead of thinking about my own selfish immediate needs and doing what I was supposed to, I wasn't to be caught acting a fool.
For those of us thrice blessed (born in the covenant, allowed to serve a mission, selected for a foreign mission), we get another dimension of training to prepare us for this most difficult task and in talking about it to people who have not undergone it I often equate it to a crash course in not only language, but diplomacy, cultural anthropology, social psychology, and even a bit subterfuge. I even asked Orrin Hatch to forward my recommendations to the State Department that they model the training of agents in the Foreign Service after the training conducted in the MTC there in Utah. Sadly, I never heard back either from Senator Hatch or anyone in the State department so I don’t know what came of it.
My foreign mission was Italy in the 1970s and when I arrived green around the ears and fresh faced as only a young Mormon man can be but I quickly received my own baptism by fire when I taught my first lesson to one Giovanni Tadini in the breath taking Valley of Arno. Amazingly, our lessons were to take place in a villa on the southern slopes of the Monti Pisani that once belonged to Lorenzo de’ Medici himself.
Truth be told my companion and I were in a little over our head in dealing with the dapper Giovanni who was no stranger to the erudition needed to properly tackle the truth claims of the Gospel. To throw us off our game he would engage in typical conversational cloak and dagger so typical of the passions inherent to those peoples who dwell on the Mediterranean. To give you an example of how he prepared the field of battle with psychological warfare, he started our first meeting by giving us a tour of the villa but did nothing to prepare us for the rather 19th century interior decorations he assaulted us with despite the stark Renaissance façade one is greeted with just outside the building.
He nearly drowned us in the broc-a-brae of the fin-de-siecle, certainly nothing the Risorgimento of old would have done, which is what we were expecting from what greeted us as we approached, still within eyesight of the great tower of Pisa and wrapped in the salty breeze coming off the sea. Nevertheless Mormon Missionaries are excellent cultural attaches if nothing else and we were able to solider on through the contradiction of taste and style presented to us by Giovanni and put him to the test of Moroni 10.
These sessions would last many hours, drifting in and out of English and Italian as needed by either side (I reckon 80% of the conversation was conducted in Italian, much to my immense satisfaction). On the fifth or sixth session we arrived when an obviously important soirée was still in process and my companion and I decided to busy ourselves while Giovanni entertained such important guests as Paolo Rossi (A social democrat, scholar of jurisprudence, and an important opponent to the rather anti-Mormon Mussolini).
I remember desperately wanting to go outside and wait, for there was smoke in the air and I felt an uninhibited Sidney Rigdon type spirit creep over me. I wanted to clear my head but my senior companion was resolute in staying inside and within earshot of the festivities. While we were appreciating a rather striking porcelain figure of Cavour when we were approached by trim, silver haired matron who addressed in melodious but posh English tones.
Much to our great surprise it was none other than the Queen Mother herself! Apparently she was to observed a midnight service at the Pisa cathedral tonight but was of mind to taste some of the local gins. While she had been touring the villas of Lucca and Florence she was being offered nothing but native teas which she wanted nothing to do with. Naturally my companion and I agreed with her rejection of tea, but we were aghast at her insistence on seeking out that vile “Dutch Courage” made from orange peels and juniper berries. We wasted no time in gently upbraiding her majesty and offering her an alternative to the bottle, the Gospel of Jesus Christ for this latter dispensation. Surely, we reasoned, such a majestic person such as the royal person herself could see the providence of this chance encounter. She had taken us for Americans, but she had not taken us to be trained and well equipped emissaries of Zion’s own. She ended up accepting our hardback cover of the Book of Mormon with a promise of reading some of it on her return trip home. We pressed her on meeting with us before she left the valley, but she always demurred when he pushed the issue and we always dropped it after the thirds or fourth refusal.
What a chance meeting? And to think, had I not listened to my elder companion and went outside to clear my head I would have missed a chance to witness to the Queen herself! Yet I harkened to the proper authority at that time and it paid off in dividends. Even today when I feel overwhelmed or that all my actions are for naught, I always think about that night and I always imagine that Book of Mormon with my written exhortation on the inside cover sitting somewhere in the libraries of Buckingham Palace. Seeking to be different doesn't always work out, does it? Instead of thinking about my own selfish immediate needs and doing what I was supposed to, I wasn't to be caught acting a fool.