Trips to Utah
In the summer of 1999, I began hanging out at LDSChat just for casual conversation, and that was where I made a few friends who would have a lasting influence on me. One of them was Aaron, a young man who lived in Provo, had just graduated from high school and was about to start his freshman year at BYU. Have you ever met someone with whom you instantly clicked and felt a connection to? It was like that with Aaron and me. He was rational and aggressive in his arguments, just like I was, and he was in every way my intellectual equal. We even got the same ACT score. The fact that he was about my age and just as new to apologetics and debate as I was meant that he didn’t overwhelm me with the weight of his experience and knowledge like so many of the older apologists did. He was even extremely tall and skinny. Some days I felt like I was arguing with a male LDS version of myself.
Aaron was relentless in his quest to convert me, and unlike the Mormons who preceded him, he never settled for “I can’t answer your question, but God told me the church is true.” He actually listened to my complaints and questions and tried to find solid answers for them. He didn’t bear his testimony to me every time we talked or bother me to read the Book of Mormon. I told him, quite honestly, that I had read it under pressure from friends and had not been very serious about it, and he let it go for the time being. He went so far as to try and debate JP Holding to show me that Holding’s arguments were not as good as I thought they were.
The other person I met in LDSChat was Annelise,1 a woman in her early 20s from Salt Lake City who was married with a baby. She had converted to the LDS church in her teens and had gotten married to an LDS man outside of the temple, then later sealed in the temple. Her marriage had problems that I won’t go into. I guess you could say that Annelise surprised me because she was the first less-than-perfect-but-still-believing Mormon I met. She did not have a cookie cutter testimony and Hallmark card marriage, but she was sincere in her faith and down-to-earth, and I loved her.
In August of 1999, Brother Pratt made a last-minute offer to take me on a family trip to Utah because LaDonna2 did not want to go and was staying with other friends, which I accepted with much excitement. I let Aaron and Annelise know I would be coming to Provo, and we made plans to meet in person. Some of the things that happened while I was in Utah:
- I tried to go to the MTC and drop off a yellow rose and a card for Neil. I had no idea what the rules and regulations were for sending gifts to the MTC, and apparently neither did the Pratts since they took me there. The secretary I spoke with at the MTC claimed that Neil had left for California a few days before. I later received a letter from Neil showing that he was still at the MTC. To this day I have no idea what happened, if the secretary made an honest mistake or if she lied to get rid of me. I know now that bringing a rose to the MTC in person is not the way to send a gift to your missionary friend, especially if you’re attractive and have boobs, but I honestly had no idea at the time.
- Aaron and I hiked Mt. Timpanogos, but it turns out I was horribly out of shape. He practically had to drag me back down the mountain. He was a trooper. BTW, hiking with a member of the opposite sex? Very awkward when you have to find someplace to pee.
- I stayed a few days with Annelise. When I arrived at her house she told me to put my bags in the second bedroom, and I walked in to find all of her temple clothes laid out there. All. Of. Them. She came in after me and said, “Oh… these are my temple clothes, wanna see them?” It was anti-climactic. I’m not sure which one was more awkward, seeing Annelise’s temple clothes or telling Aaron I had to pee.
- I saw Temple Square (beautiful) and Legacy (blech) for the first time. Brother Pratt got a little annoyed with me when I decided to test the built-in acoustics of the Tabernacle by yelling “Woohoo!” I’m still not sorry I did it.
- Much later, when I was a student at BYU, I stayed with Annelise for a few days, when the problems between her and her husband had gotten really bad. She was scheduled to go on a split with a sister missionary one night, and my choices were (1) go with them or (2) stay home alone with Annelise’s creepy husband. I took the split. So, I have in fact been door-to-door tracting with an LDS missionary. You should have seen the eyebrows that I raised when I told potential investigators I was Presbyterian. I bet they were like, “What in the hell is a Presbyterian doing with the Mormon missionaries?!”
In October of that year, the Laurels had a trip planned to go to Salt Lake City to attend General Conference, and I was invited to attend, so I did. I almost was not allowed to attend due to some nonsense with church insurance and my non-member status, but strings were pulled and they let me go. I briefly said hello to Aaron and his uncle (who happened to be the same age as him) at Temple Square. The whole trip was also my first experience with anti-Mormon protesters, and it was fascinating.
I think it was those trips to Utah which made me fall in love with the area and helped me give serious consideration to attending BYU.
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1. Not her real name.
2. Again, not her real name.
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