Musings of a Missionary Mom

© 2007 Jayne P. Bowers. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 3/5/2007

ISBN: 978-1-4208-8892-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-6378-4 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2005908999

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

All Bible verses are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Dedicated to the missionaries…

past, present, and future.

And ye shall go forth in the power of my spirit, preaching my gospel, two by two, in my name, lifting up your voices as with the sound of a trump, declaring my word like unto the angel of God. Doctrine and Covenants 42: 6

Contents

Introduction

Old Testament

New Testament

Book of Mormon

The Doctrine and Covenants

Articles of Faith

Works Cited

Introduction

New Year’s Eve, 2001, and a few family members are gathered in the den watching the ball slowly descend in Times Square to signal the start of another year, 2002. 10, 9, 8….2, and 1. Happy New Year! My eighteen year-old son then looked at us and said, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. Yes, I’ve decided to go on a mission. What an awesome announcement and wonderful way to begin another year. As I pondered the months ahead, I wondered what was in store for all of us. Little did I realize how all of our lives would change for the better.

Months passed. He turned nineteen in November of that year and submitted his mission papers. After anxiously checking the mailbox for weeks, the letter from Utah finally arrived. I had moved to another city by then and asked the future elder not to let me know where he’d been called until I was actually at home on the front porch, an almost holy place because of the many family activities and shared memories that had taken place there. The phone rang, and as I stood gazing at the streetscape that my son had seen and enjoyed many, many times, I heard the words, You are hereby called to serve….in the Mexico Torreon Mission.

He reported to the MTC on April 2, 2003 to begin his work in the Lord’s vineyard. I’ve heard many times that having a child on a mission changes and blesses the lives of his or her family, and it’s true. The letter promised that The Lord will reward you for the goodness of your life, and while this statement was directed towards the future missionary, all of us became more spiritual as we went about our daily lives. More prayer, more scripture study, more meeting attendance, more magnification of callings, more TLC for area missionaries, and more musings about Heavenly Father’s wonderful plan of salvation became a more integral part of our lives.

Shortly after Elder Crolley left for the MTC, I was asked to speak on the scriptures, and as I gathered material for my talk, I realized what a fount of inspiration, guidance, and encouragement there was to be found in the standard works. Whether a person needed a lesson in faith, a reminder to be grateful, or proverb on the value of hard work, she could find the answer within these sacred works. As the months rolled along, I found myself drawn more and more to Bible stories of my youth, to Book of Mormon lessons and Prophets, and to the instructions and explanations in the Doctrine and Covenants. Why had I not had these insights before? After all, I had been raised in a Christian home and had attended church services regularly.

Then it hit me. The words had not changed. I had. I then began to realize that maybe others of God’s daughters might also benefit from my increased appreciation of the scriptures and their application to everyday life. At the same time, I recognized the ways in which my daughters were consistently living lives as worthy member missionaries certain of their divine worth. Hence, the creation of Musings of a Missionary Mom.

I once read that Marjorie Hinckley was tremendously impressed at how President Harold B. Lee used the scriptures to begin his remarks instead of a relying on a regular introduction. Those around him felt that it was hard to tell which words were his and which were from the scriptures. When Sister Hinckley asked him about how he had memorized them, President Lee said, I don’t think I ever consciously memorized a scripture. I guess I have just worked them through so much that they have become a part of me and my vocabulary (qtd. in Lee 59).

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get to that point? I had a few personal examples that I could quickly quip for appropriate occasions such as Wickedness never was happiness or Jesus wept. Yet if I wanted to grow beyond short passages like Love one another or Live in Thanksgiving daily, I had some work to do. I began a more diligent study of the scriptures and pondered their application to my everyday life, and the insights and revelations I received were phenomenal. President Kimball’s reminder to Immerse yourself in the scriptures, and the distance narrows between yourself and deity took on new meaning.

The more I read, the more insights and ideas I had. The more I studied, the more parallels I saw between the work of what Nephi would call goodly people, both past and present, and the words of the scriptures, the words of God. From talk show hosts to philosophers and from saints to psychologists, I could more clearly see that God uses everyone who’s willing to share truth and light.

In the words of one of my favorite prophets, Brigham Young:

It is your privilege and duty to live so as to be able to understand the things of God. There are the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon, and the book of Doctrine and Covenants….They are like a lighthouse in the ocean, or a fingerpost which points out the road we should travel. The doctrines contained in the Bible will lift to a superior condition all who observe them; they will impart to them knowledge, wisdom, charity, fill them with compassion and cause them to feel after the wants of those who are in distress, or in painful or degraded circumstance. (qtd. in Young 119)

By no means exhaustive, this volume reflects a few of my thoughts and insights during the period between Elder Crolley’s arrival at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah in April, 2003 and his return to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina two years later. What began as therapy to deal with his absence soon turned the two years into a season of learning and spiritual growth. If just one person can better see the presence of the Creator in his or her life as a consequence of reading one of the musings, then my purpose will have been achieved.

Old Testament

What variety there is in this volume! While we think of the great ones like Moses as being almost perfect, in general the people of these scriptures are shown with their warts and all. There’s Jonah who tried to run away from his mission, Miriam who doubted Moses and was struck with leprosy, and David who sent his lover’s husband to the battle front to be killed. Juxtaposed to these characters are Joseph with his forgiving spirit, Job with his unending patience and trust in God, and Ruth with her devotion to Naomi. The books themselves vary as much as the people portrayed therein. For history, there’s the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. There you’ll learn about the Creation, the Exodus from Egypt, the Ten Commandments, and Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son. Then there are the Psalms of Solomon, all so beautifully poetic; the Proverbs that are so often quoted with their pithy wisdom; and Ecclesiastes, the words of the preacher, reminding us that all is vanity and vexation. And Isaiah? How can we forget the words of this great prophet who foresaw the gathering of Israel? These people really lived, their history is rich, and their words are true and applicable to present life.

Genesis 1:31

And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

Thanksgiving Eve. The doorbell rang, and there was a friend bearing a gift, a small tin containing a mixture of edible goodies. Glued to the side was a list of the treats and their symbolic significance for Thanksgiving: M&Ms for memories, Bugles representing the horn of plenty, Hershey’s chocolate kisses symbolizing the sweetness of family and friends. Loving the idea, I sat at the computer and re-typed the list, added some creative touches with clip art and a different font, and made copies to distribute at a family gathering the next evening. Excited about the contribution, my good feeling plummeted when my niece Sarah Beth asked, Aunt Jayne, did you type these? When I took credit, she good-naturedly pointed out a misspelled word—an error. Momentarily bothered, the feeling passed when I recalled that even the Master of ocean, earth, and sky was content with very good. Not perfect, very good. Why do I expect perfection from myself?

Genesis 2:2

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made.

In the beginning, God worked to create everything. The stars and ocean and Adam didn’t just appear. One of the many things that attracted me to the church was that the values I’d been taught by my parents were actually emphasized by church leaders. I’m not just referring to honesty and kindness. I’m talking about what a person does in her daily round, her lifestyle. The principle I’m thinking of today is work. Heber J. Grant said that if there’s one fundamental principle it’s work, work and WORK. Whether rain, hail, sleet, or snow, my father would get up and go to work. After her chickies (what she fondly called her four children when we were behaving ourselves) started to school, my mother began working outside of the home and yet continued somehow to maintain an orderly household—no easy task. Whether it was preparing a well balanced meal, keeping up with the ever multiplying stacks of laundry, or sweeping the front porch, she did it. While my parents never said, Look at what we’re doing and how hard we work, we saw and took note.

Genesis 3:12-13

And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord said unto the woman, What is this that thou has done? And the woman saith, The serpent beguiled me and I did eat.

God emphatically gave instructions to Adam and Eve about eating the fruit of the tree, but they fell short. They went against his wishes and did as they pleased. And just like other humans, they were reluctant to ‘fess up’ and say, Yes, I did it, and I was wrong. Instead they both passed the buck; Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent.

Aren’t we all a little like this? Almost daily I hear someone say, If it weren’t for my children, spouse, parents, or friends, I’d have an education…or a better job. I might even move out of this one-horse town. We all have choices. We can all be proactive and act of our own initiative. True, there are consequences to all of our choices, consequences that will affect not only us but others as well. Choosing responsibly takes those consequences into account since the decisions we make today can cast a long shadow on the future, ours and those of the ones we love. Yet blaming another for our mistakes or hard lot in life shifts the responsibility of decision making onto others rather than putting ourselves in the driver’s seat. A person with an internal locus of control, however, realizes that good or bad, wrong or right, he’s the master of his fate.

Genesis 11:7

…the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

The three of us, the psychology crew, had gotten into the habit of going out for lunch together on Thursdays, the only day that our schedules provided opportunity and excuse. While we were all free on Tuesday, we were still so stuck in the helter skelter of a demanding work week that lunch wasn’t even a remote possibility. Thursday marked the end of classes for the week, and we were usually in high spirits when we arrived at San Jose’s, one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. Our waiter, a young man who always seemed to be in an upbeat mood, delighted in teaching us new Spanish words. Having taken Spanish courses many moons ago in high school and giving myself a refresher course when my son left for his mission in Mexico, I was the only one of the trio who could understand even such simple phrases as, De nada. Both of my luncheon buddies faithfully tried to repeat our waiter’s words in Espanol, but one would say Oui instead of Si, while the other persisted in using German numbers for the specials. He could never say, Numero Cinco, and finally just ended up pointing to it on the menu. Still we all enjoyed the camaraderie and sheer fun of experimenting with four different languages (English, Spanish, German, and French) during our lunch. Four languages, four people, one location, one lunch hour. It was always fun, and I couldn’t help but marvel at the myriad ways in which people use words to communicate, all because of the Tower of Babel. Had it not been for that, we would not have been treated to the host of pronunciations, phonemes, tones, inflections, melodies, and sounds of different languages.

Genesis 12:1

Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee.

Driving the 29 miles to and from work each day was becoming a drag. While I had plenty of CDs, a nice radio, and plenty of thoughts to keep me busy, I had begun to dread the drive. It was almost a physical thing, a visceral reaction to knowing I had to spend about an hour and twenty minutes in the car everyday that were, in my opinion, wasted minutes. How long could a person pray, meditate, think, plan, and sing along with the music? Then I discovered books on tape, and things changed. The drive was over before I knew it, and I often found myself sitting in the car listening to one last little paragraph instead of getting out and going into the building.

One of the first books I listened to was Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler. Certainly informative, I could actually see the deserts, mountains, and seas and could visualize Abraham and Isaac as they walked towards the mountain where God had directed them. What a man of faith! How surprised I was when the author of the book mentioned that initially Abraham was nobody—not a Jew, not even an Israelite. In fact, we know very little about him until suddenly he appears and God tells him to get on the road and GO. The moral of the story is that he wasn’t always the Abraham we think of today, the father of so many nations, but merely a man, a traveler, to whom God spoke, and when he heard God’s voice, Abraham did as he was told. Even though God was invisible, Abraham didn’t question, whine, or procrastinate. He simply did as he was told and left Haran.

Genesis 17:5

Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but they name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.

Abraham wasn’t always the man he became. Think about that. Read it again. His very name was different. When we first read of him, it’s Abram, but after 99 years, God instructs him to be perfect, tells him that he’ll become the father of many nations, and changes his name to Abraham.

Life’s a struggle sometimes. One of my former colleagues disliked teaching Human Growth and Development because in his words, People grow up, they grow old, and they die. True, but there’s a lot of living, loving, and learning going on in those years, much of which tests and refines us as we alternately laugh and cry, rejoice and mourn, succeed and flounder. Often our struggles really test our faith and make us wonder if we’ll ever find the perfect mate, get that education, finish our visiting teaching, keep an orderly house, and gain eternal life. At these times it’s good to remember that Abraham, the father of many nations, wasn’t always the man he became. Like him, we’re all in the process of becoming.

If the desert was instrumental in making Abraham and his followers into the people they became, perhaps the desert of Mexico is necessary for Elder Crolley’s character building. Despite frustrations and disappointments (or perhaps because of them), he’ll develop faith and understanding. From a mother’s perspective, orderliness and discipline would also be nice.

Genesis 19:26

But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

This story has always seemed crazy to me. Crazy and cruel. Crazy for her to look back after God had clearly told the family not to and cruel for God to actually turn her into a pillar of salt. But then again, Lot’s wife was human, a mere mortal just like the rest of us who don’t always do what God tells us to do. We try, but sometimes we slip and fall just like she did. Still, what she did seems like such a minor infraction. A backwards glance, and forever she’s a chunk of sodium.

There’s got to be an explanation. Some scientists would have us believe that it never happened, and that in fact there are salt formations all over the area near the southern tip of the Dead Sea. Others with no plausible explanation might say that it’s a metaphorical story. Perhaps it is, and yet I prefer to believe the actual Biblical account and keep asking myself why God was so emphatic about not looking back and why he meted out such severe punishment. After all, the ramifications of that act affected her entire family. Lot had no wife; his daughters had no mother.

I’m wondering if this story is oft-repeated not only as an indication of what God can and will do if we disobey him but also because looking back is unhealthy. How can one move forward if she’s forever looking longingly at yesterday? Some people live so much in the land of Yesterday that they can’t go forward. They become pickled like the pillars of salt somewhere between Sodom and Zoar.

Genesis 22:2

And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

When I was a child, this story gave me cold chills. How could a father actually kill his own child? And how could the child lie there so calmly? In the pictures Isaac is strapped to the altar, and yet his expression is one of acceptance, not sheer terror like I would feel. As an adult, the story continued to disturb me, especially when I realized that Isaac wasn’t actually a small child, but perhaps a teenager. Abraham had to be pretty old by then; why didn’t Isaac, being young and strong, resist? What thoughts were running through their heads? Then too, the scripture specifically says "thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest." What a test for Abraham.

This little scene took place in the desert of a far away land centuries ago and is almost too much for our modern mode of thinking to perceive. However, I can see some parallels that apply today. Isaac was a gift from God to Abraham and Sarah. God gave him to them, just as He gives our children to us in this day and age. Isaac didn’t really belong to them, but to God. There comes a time when we must sacrifice our children as well. While we may not offer them as sacrifices on an altar, we must let them go, let them go in faith that God will protect them, lead them, and use them for His purposes.

Your children are not your children…..They come through you but not from you.

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. (Gibran 18-19)

Genesis 28:16

…Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.

My mother had suffered from the ravaging effects of cancer for five years, and knowing that her time on Earth was drawing to a close, she requested that she die at home and that no efforts at resuscitation be administered. Hospice was notified, and so began our vigil. My brothers, sister, her sisters, and I all altered our work and family schedules so that someone would be with her at all times during the last three weeks of her life. Amazingly, what began as a hard lump in my throat dissolved into a peaceful calmness as the days ticked by.

There in her bedroom with the sunlight softly filtering through the slats of the shutters, she lay listening to church hymns, talking with loved ones, and patiently enduring the uncomfortable changing of her bandages. Someone was always in the room with her, either administering to her needs, reading quietly, or talking softly to her. Her dear friends were frequent visitors, and one night when we couldn’t get her to eat a single morsel, Sarah was able to coax her into tasting some fruit. One morning around 5:00 a.m. she awakened with a terribly high fever, and my youngest brother gently rubbed lotion on her legs and spoke soothingly to her as we tried to lower her temperature. On the Saturday morning before her death the following week, I walked into her room and saw my oldest daughter lying beside her grandmother, talking very animatedly about her experiences as a young bride. My mother lay there with her eyes closed, a sweet smile on her lips as she listened to Carrie’s stories.

Always there was a quiet, expectant stillness in the bedroom, and I began to think of the atmosphere as reverent. On the Sunday before her death the following Friday, her pastor came to visit and rendered a moving rendition of Beulah Land at her request. That same afternoon all of her children, their spouses, and the grandchildren who were present gathered around her bed and thanked God for her life and asked Him to comfort her. On the Friday afternoon that my mother left this world for the next, she was surrounded by the four of us, one of my sisters-in-law, her two sisters, and her oldest and youngest grandchildren. As I was telling her that two of her granddaughters were present and that as long as they lived, she would live, my mother breathed her last breath. It was a sweet passing, and the memories of that October afternoon fill me with peace.

Genesis 28:22

…And of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.

To me, the surprise check was yet another sign of God’s love and faithfulness. Anticipating graduation, Elizabeth had resigned from her job and had given her employer a month’s notice. Thinking of the bottom line and payroll, he decided to go ahead and take her off of the work schedule, a devastating blow to a college student with no other means of income. Especially hurtful was the knowledge that she was so easily expendable to an employer for whom she had worked for seven years. After the initial shock of the release, she told me that as she was leaving for work that morning, a man who lived in her apartment complex had run over to her car with two checks from Internal Revenue, checks she had been anxiously awaiting for weeks. Somehow they had come to the incorrect address, and since he had been out of town, they had been sitting in his box for weeks. When she opened them, she was surprised and delighted to see that they were both for several hundred dollars more than she had anticipated. Elizabeth asked me if I didn’t think it was weird for the checks to be so much more and to receive them the same day she was unexpectantly let go. I told her I didn’t think there were any coincidences and that I was glad that she had been paying her tithing.

Genesis 31:49

The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent from each other.

For the umpteenth time, I’ve been pondering how it is that a child can be so close to his mother, so close that he’s growing beneath her heart, and then as months and years go by, he gets farther and farther away. One day he’s learning to talk and the next (or so it seems) he’s speaking Spanish in Mexico. How does a toddler go from holding her mother’s hand and hiding behind her skirts to flying off to a distant state without a backwards glance or moment of hesitation? How does a curly haired infant go from being seemingly attached to her mother’s hip to living five hours away with only phone calls and emails to connect them? While a mother wants her children to be mature, responsible, and independent, she still occasionally longs for the earlier years when she could more closely watch over them. As they mature and leave the nest, she learns to rely on God to do the watching. Ever prayerful, she asks that He guide their feet, comfort their hearts, inspire their minds, and guard their bodies and souls.

Exodus 2: 3-5

And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And his sister stood afar off to wit what would be done with him.

Imagine Jochabed’s anxiety as she placed her infant son in a basket and placed him in the Nile. Knowing that her son Moses was meant to be murdered left her no recourse but to trust in God’s protection and care, and yet she couldn’t (or didn’t) watch as he drifted away among crocodiles with his sister Miriam watching. How hard it must have been to leave her son adrift in the river! God kept Moses safe in his basket until he was discovered and adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, an act that would allow him to receive an education and upbringing that would make him more effective as a prophet and leader of a nation.

While mothers aren’t customarily required to send their sons away down the Nile to save their lives, at some time children drift down the rivers of life to live among crocodiles, sharks, and other dangerous creatures. As I pondered this scripture, I remembered Brother Reynolds’ words in a Sacrament meeting as he told of his prayer when his son left on his mission: God, I’m giving you the best thing I have: my son. Please comfort him, lead him, protect him, and bring him back home safely to us. Not only will our Heavenly Father protect our missionaries, but He will also allow them to get the sort of education that will prove invaluable in their future lives. The virtues of faith, responsibility, and service will forever be a part of their character.

Exodus 4:10

And Moses said unto the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? Or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth.

Because of my job and the opportunity it affords me to work with people who are in the process of getting their education, I get to hear lots of dreams and schemes. Some of the students are young, and many are taking courses just because they feel it’s what they should be doing. Others are more aware of