I was chatting with a friend of mine and she told me that her son was about to embark upon his mission. I've always felt that wisdom belongs to all and so I wanted to impart to the young man from my meagre store.
There is a saying that experience is a harsh schoolmaster but a fool will learn in no other. That pretty much sums up what should be written on my tombstone. My wife thinks it should be..."And a good time was had by all" We'll see...knowing my wife's penchant for squeezing a nickle so hard that Jefferson wets his pants, it will probably come down to which epitaph is the cheapest to carve. (That's if I even get a funeral or a gravestone...Kerry keeps threatening to stick me in a hefty bag and put me out at the curb on big trash day)
But enough of the morose.
From 1977 to 1979, I served in the Italy Rome Mission. There are a lot of tough missions. I'm sure that there are even some tougher than Rome. As you can imagine, mormons aren't real popular in Italy and so while I was there....(mothers with missionaries in the field, skip down to the next paragraph) ...I was spit upon, beat up, had gypsies steal everything from me but my pants, had dogs sicced upon me, got drug by a bus, and was shot at. (Although I'm not entirely sure I can count getting shot at as persecution because technically, the man thought he was shooting at a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses.)
But aside from all that, My first year in Italy was nothing but mind-numbing tracting. I taught very few lessons and I saw no baptisms. When I say that I saw no baptisms, I don't mean that my companions and I did not baptize anyone. I mean that I literally saw nobody get baptized. Every month we would get a newsletter from the mission office and on the back was a list of 25 to 30 baptisms throughout the month. So, apparently there were people getting baptized in Italy, I was just never able to witness one. Once I accussed the mission printer of just making up a bunch of names each month. I would get transferred into districts that were baptizing regularly and suddenly the baptisms would dry up. I was becoming something of a pariah in the mission. Nobody wanted to be my companion or have me in their district.
As I got to my anniversary mark on my mission. I looked back and assessed just what I had accomplished. Aside from a new scar on my left knee, I couldn't think of anything I had really gained from my experience. Apparently, I was wasting both my time and my parent's money. No...it's true....they would write me each week and complain....my mom's letters went something like this:
"Your father and I took a trip to Mexico this week. We redecorated the kitchen. We took delivery of your dad's new Trans Am . We're thinking of taking a cruise next month. I have to run but you're spending too much money"
(editorial note....what kind of father goes and buys a Trans Am while his son is on a mission and then sells it a month before he come home?...that's just cruel)
So, while I fixated upon my lack of accomplishment and on all thing things I was missing out on at home, the idea began to form in my mind that it would be best for all concerned if I just left my mission and went home.
I floated this idea past my mom and dad who weren't too keen on having me return just yet. My mission president was similarly discouraging of my plan but I persisted. I don't know why I never insisted on going back home, I guess I just needed someone in authority to agree with me that me being on a mission probably wasn't a good idea after all.
While I was in the process of trying to convince anyone who would listen that I really had no business being a missionary, zone conferences came up. It was our mission president's habit to give every missionary an individual interview during each zone conference. As it happened, at this particular zone conference, we were to hear from Elder Didier, the Seventy who was assigned to preside over the missions in our part of Europe.
I walked into the room for my interview and, instead of President Coletti, I was surprised to find that Elder Didier was to be my interviewer. It seems that he had learned about my efforts to convince everyone that we would all be better off if I just left the mission field and he wasn't too happy with me.
Elder Didier isn't one of those "warm and fuzzy" General Authorities. As a matter of fact, when he's peeved at you he can be quite intimidating. I retreated for a while until I got my footing and then I stood my ground. All the complaints that I had compiled up to that point came pouring out and I told Elder Didier that I was tired of wasting my time and my parents money on the off chance that I might be lucky enough to stumble on to someone willing to join the church.
"You think baptizing someone is all about luck?" asked Elder Didier. "Hasn't anyone ever taught you the way to find baptisms?"
Every month since I had been in the mission field we had a zone conference and at every zone conference, the assistants to the president would trot out a new "inspired" program for us to increase our baptisms. I never really had the chutzpah to ask what happened to last month's inspired program. Apparently the shelf life on inspiration in the Italy Rome Mission was 30 days.
Elder Didier smiled when I told him about the programs and said that there really was no trick to finding someone to baptize. The Lord knows who he has prepared to enter into the Kingdom. The 4th Section of the Doctrine and Covenants claims that the field is white, already to harvest. "All that is required", said Elder Didier, "is to cleanse the inward vessel and then, when you are confident before The Lord, go to him and claim the blessings of baptism"
Elder Didier could see instantly that, like Naman who balked at washing in the river Jordan or the rebellious Israelites who refused to look upon the brass serpent, I was skeptical that it could be that easy.
"Would you accept a challenge?", asked Elder Didier. I said that I would.
"Can you find ten investigators?", he asked. "I'm not talking about ten contacts but ten people who are actively studying the gospel"
I thought for a moment, ten investigators would be a stretch but I could see it being possible. I told Elder Didier that I believed I could.
"I promise you, in the name of The Lord that if you get ten investigators, you will have a baptism"
I accepted the challenge.
When my companion and I got back to Pescara from zone conference we went to work on getting those ten investigators. We worked like we had never worked before. We were diligent about observing every rule in the mission. There was no idle time waiting for buses. We talked to whomever was waiting with us. We raced each other to the top of apartment buildings. We opted to stay out in the field for lunch and talked to businessmen making their way home.
At the end of two weeks, we had taught a lesson to a family of five. Each of them was excited and of age and accepted the challenge to read more and investigate The Book of Mormon. Together with the five investigators we already had, they made ten investigators.
We could barely contain our excitement as we knelt down in prayer that evening and asked The Lord to tell us which of our investigators we should challenge to be baptized. (oh please...oh please...let it be the family of five)
Nothing.
We studied the matter out in our minds and again took it before Heavenly Father
again...nothing
Frustrated and wondering what I had done wrong, I took an internal inventory. It was one of the few times in my life that I could honestly say that I was confident I had done all that was required of me. I knelt down for my personal prayer that night and, in confidence, I told Heavenly Father that I had done all that he had asked and I felt I was ready to recieve the blessings that came from obedience.
The familiar tuning fork went off in my soul and I was warmly assured by The Spirit that The Lord's promises would be kept.
The next day, my companion and I were out tracting. Our tracting zone was on the farthest reach in our assigned area. It took forty-five minutes of bus travel to get there, so we were anxious to finish up that zone and get another one closer to town.
As we started on the last street in the zone, an overwhelming sick feeling came over me. I felt I was in danger and I should immediately return home.
"No", I said to myself, "you're just being a weenie" It was two hours before the mission rules would allow us to go back for lunch and we could accomplish no good sitting in our apartment. We started down the street. The further we got, the stronger the feeling of dread grew.
Finally, my companion turned to me and said, "I don't know what it is but something is wrong. I don't feel safe out here"
We returned to our apartment. I tried to busy myself by writing a talk. We were there for ten or fifteen minutes when a knock came at the door. I opened the door to find a ragged little man. I thought him a beggar so I reached into my pocket for some coins. He held up his hand to stop me.
"Are you the mormon missionaries?", he asked.
I told him we were. The tiny little man in the ragged clothes introduced himself as Paolo Spegne. He said that he lived in Ancona but that he worked in Bari.
A little geography lesson might be in order here. If you can imagine the boot shape of the Italian penninsula, we were in Pescara which would be at the back of the knee. Ancona would be located mid point on the back of the thigh and Bari would be at the tip of the heel.
"When I was back home in Ancona a few months ago, I met your missionaries and they gave me this", Paolo held up a ragged and dogeared copy of The Book of Mormon. "Since then I have tried to find them and have not been able to"
Our missionaries had tried to open up Ancona but had found little interest in the Gospel and, most importantly, could find no place to stay. It got too expensive living in hotels and so they closed up the city; apparently, however, not before meeting Paolo and giving him a Book of Mormon.
"I've read this book", said Paolo. From the looks of it, he had read it several times. "I know that it's true, but I had no idea what to do about it or even if I should do anything about it"
He continued, "Last night, as I travelled home on the train, I fell asleep and dreamt that I got off in Pescara. In my dream, I met the missionaries who gave me this book" Paolo looked past me into the apartment. "Are they here?", he asked.
Six hours later, after some lessons and a few phone calls to the zone leaders and the mission office, Paolo and I dressed in white and waded out into the clear blue waters of the Adriatic. Paolo held onto my left arm as I raised my right arm to the square, and having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I dipped Paolo into the warm waters of the sea and baptized him for the remission of his sins...just as I was promised by Elder Didier two weeks earlier.
What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same
We put Paolo on the train and said goodbye. I never saw him again and many times, over the next few decades, I wondered how he was and if he was faithful in the Gospel.
But the lesson Elder Didier wanted to teach me was learned. There was really no secret to baptism. All that was really required was to make sure you were doing what you should do, take your personal inventory and, if you could go before The Lord in confidence and claim the blessings of obedience, you would baptize.
The average baptism per elder in my mission was three for the two years he's there. I went my first year without ever even seening a baptism. My last year I baptized thirteen people. I never tracted out one of them. They all came to me in one way or another. We would be walking down the street and a member would come up and say, "where have you been? I've been teaching my friend about the gospel all day and they want to learn more" or someone would stop us in a store and ask us where our church was. After giving them a card and some tracts, we would find them sitting on the front row the next Sunday. Every single one came about in non-conventional methods and as a result of having gone in confidence to The Lord to claim the blessings of obedience.
Obedience isn't easy, especially for me and so it's not quite as easy as it sounds. It's a whole lot more difficult to accomplish outside the mission field but I've even been able to get the very same results three times since I was a missionary.
Twenty five years after I baptized Paolo, my son opened up his mission call to discover that he was going to serve in the Italy Milan mission. We were excited but my own excitement doubled when I learned that the missions had been redistricted and, instead of Ancona being the northernmost city in the Rome mission, it was now the southernmost city in the Milan mission. I hoped and prayed that my son would be sent to Ancona so I might learn what had ever become of my first baptism.
As it happened, John-Ross was sent to serve in Ancona. He inquired about Paolo and was informed that he was in a hospital, suffering from the infirmities of age and dementia. In spite of the fact that there was little chance that Paolo would even know his own name, much less remember that he was a member, John-Ross went to visit him so that he could report back to me.
My son told me that Paolo was indeed in very bad shape but that, when his eyes fell upon my son's name badge, they lit up and he exclaimed, "Anziano Boyce! Anziano Boyce!..the gospel is true, the gospel is true". Before slipping back into his dementia, Paolo was able to ask my son if he had brought
some oil with him so that he might get a blessing.
And so it happened that, after twenty five years of wondering what had happened to him, the very first person I ever baptized bore his testimony to my son...and my son was able to impart a blessing to the very first person I ever baptized.
I recieved the news about Paolo with bittersweet tears. I would have wanted to be able to write to him and tell him about all that had happened in my life and learn all that had happened in his. But I was grateful to learn that, despite his condition, his testimony was strong and that he was able to bear it to my son, "the gospel is true...the gospel is true"
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