My Missionary Experience (25 minutes)

This talk was given by invitation at a Sunstone Symposium in Washington DC organized by Mike Harward.  It was the basis for an article in the July 2001 issue of Sunstone Magazine.

My Missionary Experience: South Africa, 1964-66. Douglas P. Ridge

Contrary to the experience of my father's generation, who had to deal with the Depression and World War II, going on a mission was the thing to do for those who grew up with me in Provo in the 50's and 60's. Missionary farewells and homecomings were regular and important events. The farewells were announced in the local paper, and they had printed programs featuring a photoengraved picture of the missionary. Mom and Dad and maybe a brother or an uncle would tell more or less revealing stories about the missionary. He would respond with gratitude for his home and family and would express trepidation about what lay ahead. He usually seemed nervous and looked a little pale. At the open house following the farewell family and friends gave the missionary envelopes with generous checks to help with mission expenses. It was a little like a Mormon bar mitzvah. While farewells were really family events, the homecomings belonged to the missionary. They were his hour in the sun. He told funny stories about other missionaries, uplifting stories about converts and amazing stories about strange foreign lands. He was more confident and grown up at the homecoming than he had been at the farewell. He talked about the best two years of his life and looked suntanned and fit.

As I began to approach the appropriate age, my friends and I began to talk about mission plans. It was just a part of life like girls, cars, sports and planning for college. I think I was typical in hoping to find solace for adolescent anxieties about identity and place in an emotional kind of spirituality that seemed evident in missionary homecomings. It was, of course, not cool to be too religious. A put down reserved for the overly righteous went something like "Oh, he is such a spiritual giant," where spiritual was pronounced spirit-chel. Nevertheless mission plans and religious commitment were important to us all. That included girls. I don't really know what it was like for a girl, of course, but it must have been a critical part of her life. She was regularly admonished that she could only give herself to an R. M. -- a returned missionary. So as I approached eligibility for a mission I was aware that a mission changed your status. If you were an R. M. the girls would look at you differently, your male peers would look at you differently, and authority figures would look at you differently. Social standing, spirituality and sexuality were all linked to going on a mission, and in our culture failure to go represented not only a failure of faith but a failure of manhood. I was sufficiently aware of these connections that I had doubts about my motivations as I approached the time to decide about going. I hoped, however, that a commitment to service and to my convictions at least partially accounted for my interest in going. 

Atypically, I think, my parents had reservations about my going. They were concerned about reports from the "mission field" as we called it. Missionaries were under pressure to run up numbers of baptisms through programs that seemed to my parents to be irresponsible. But my parents, of course, would support me in whatever I wanted to do.

Critical for my decision to go were my first two years at Harvard. After I got over my initial terror of the big city and the distance from home, of life without my family and friends, and of the imagined possibility of attacks on my Mormon faith and culture, I rather enjoyed being a novelty. I discovered that my room-mates and friends were curious and interested in me and my unusual religion. The small LDS student community was close and supportive. Their activity and commitment made the Church seem more intellectually respectable. Their open, free questioning of our teachings and practices made me feel more comfortable about my own questions. When the bishop approached me, I was ready to set aside my doubts and fears and to initiate the procedure to go.

My call came while I was in Cambridge. I had alerted my room mates, one Jewish and other the son of a Baptist minister, that a letter from 47 East South Temple, Salt Lake City, was coming which would shape my destiny for the next two years. It awaited me on the mantle when I returned from class one day, and they stood around anxiously while I opened it. I quickly ascertained that I was being sent to South Africa. For several weeks everyone in the dorm greeted me with "South Where?" Late one night they all surprised me with a farewell party. They gave me a pen and pencil set (I was well-known to have trouble keeping track of my pens and pencils) which I found inside a series of boxes, each containing a smaller box and each bearing the question "South Where?" The friendly support of these friends and roommates had been part of the reason I had chosen to go, and remains part of the lasting memory of my mission.

Another lasting memory is of my interview with my academic advisor before I left. He was Professor Frank Westheimer, a noted organic chemist, winner of numerous awards, former President of the American Chemical Society and a rather intimidating person. I told him I would like to go on leave for two years so I could serve a mission for my church. He said he thought my career might survive this interruption. He asked what I would do and where I was going. When I told him I was going to South Africa, he said, "Well, from what I have read of the South African Dutch Reformed Church, you would be doing those people a favor if you persuaded them to believe in Baal." I knew I would miss Harvard and my friends who would all graduate before I returned. It was little comfort that Professor Westheimer would still be there. Yet I found in his implicit concern with injustice and sardonic acknowledgement of the power of religious commitment an assurance of what I had already learned from many in Cambridge: that religious commitment and Harvardian skepticism are not only compatible but that they can reinforce one another. This also helped me to decide to accept a mission call.

After the missionary farewell and painful good-byes to my family and my girl friend, I joined 200 other prospective missionaries for an intense and memorable week in the Mission Home in Salt Lake City. We were instructed by General Authorities, former mission presidents and others who taught, counseled, harangued and generally imbued us with the importance of what we were about to do, with the importance of keeping the mission rules, and especially with the importance of staying away from girls. Two statements attributed to general authorities by speakers still stand out: "I would rather my son come home in a pine box than disgraced"... and..."You will be no more successful in life than you are as a missionary." I tried to dismiss such statements as hyperbole intended to motivate, but they left me feeling abandoned and offended. A more encouraging speaker was Elder S. Dilworth Young of the First Quorum of Seventy who said that mission rules were tantamount to putting young people in prison and the imposition of such rules would be "criminal" for any purpose other than for doing the Lord's work.

Also encouraging was Elder Marion Hanks' blessing in setting me apart as a missionary which emphasized the importance of making friends for the Church and said nothing about baptizing many. The best advice was Elder Hugh B. Brown's admonition that we keep "a sense of humor - a sense of the Lord's support." He juxtaposed the two as if to him they were somehow the same. The mission home experience is still my most concentrated exposure to the leadership of the Church. It was an experience that led me to feel that President Brown's advice to novice missionaries also outlined the most constructive response to Church leadership.

The impact of my experience in South Africa was the impact of meeting thousands of people, and the shock of being immersed in a culture that was both remarkably similar and vastly different from my own. From individual people encountered one at a time I learned that each of us is quite unique. I learned that goodness and badness abound everywhere and in us all. From missionary companions and leaders I learned much about working and living with others and about the Church as an institution. In my particular case I saw the effects of political oppression in the lives of both the privileged and the oppressed.

As I grew up in Provo steeped in Mormon culture I think my youthful religious convictions were propped up in part by a belief that Mormons are better than everyone else. This tended to blind me to the possibility of Mormon faults and gave me a sort of perverse reason to rejoice in the wickedness and misery of non-Mormons. This was perhaps inadvertently reinforced by talks in missionary homecomings, in General Conference and elsewhere on missionary work that represented Church membership as the difference between happiness and misery. It was also part of the reason for my fear of leaving Provo for Cambridge. What if I discovered that there were many happy, useful, generous non-members whose lives were not obviously missing something? Would my faith survive? Both Cambridge and South Africa turned out to have many non-members whose happiness, generous devotion to service and love of life bespoke no obvious need for Church membership. Those in Cambridge were gifted and/or privileged. Most in South Africa, however, lived in modest circumstances and had no special abilities. At the end of a long, dusty day of tracting in an unreceptive neighborhood of an unreceptive town, we came to one little brick home by the railroad tracks housing a dozen members of a family including three generations. They were not particularly interested in our message, but they all gathered around and treated us as honored guests. They treated one another with remarkable respect and warmth, children happily making place for the elderly grandparents. We presented our message and they all listened attentively. We came away unsuccessful as missionaries since we had not stimulated interest in further contact, but we were somehow strengthened in our faith. Under the impact of such encounters the prop of Mormon moral superiority faded for me in South Africa, and yet oddly enough my faith seemed stronger rather than weaker.

My first assignment was to Carletonville, a little mining town in the western Transvaal. The saints in the little branch there helped me to understand that rather than turning misery to happiness finding the gospel is frequently the beginning of struggles and pain. They struggled to hold meetings in a member's living room, to raise money for a little building, to keep a missionary in the field and to deal with suspicion, hostility and rejection from friends and loved ones who did not understand their new faith. Yet the struggle bred, if not happiness, then a kind of resourceful determination that had something joyful about it. Andy, a recent convert at the time, was studying engineering at a University in Johannesburg and loved what the gospel brought to his life. Every Sunday morning Andy got up at 5 and rode his bicycle fifty miles on a narrow, two-lane, high-speed highway to get back home to teach his Sunday School class and to do his branch teaching. Early Monday morning he made the return trip in the same perilous fashion to get back to his classes. The saints in Carletonville helped free me from an obligation to believe that finding the gospel necessarily means health, prosperity and happiness and my faith was strengthened as a result.

I learned from my missionary companions simple lessons in life like the importance of washing out the bathtub when you are through, how to repair your own shoes, how to do the twist, and how to keep your sense of humor in the face of loneliness, boredom and rejection. One companion, an older missionary from South Africa, and I were tracting one evening in a community that was almost entirely uninterested if not hostile to Mormonism. It was Elder deWet's door. We knocked. A women opened the door and before Elder deWet could speak she began berating us as members of a cult, told us the Bible says we should not go from house to house, told us we should get an honest job, and followed us all the way to the front gate instructing us loudly and angrily on our various sins and deficiencies. She stormed up the walk and slammed the front door behind her as we went out the gate. I was thoroughly rattled, but Elder de Wet paused a moment, turned to me and said, "Elder, do you think I should have tried to sell her a Book of Mormon?"

One thing that troubled me on my mission was the place of personal ambition in the institutional Church. Most of us aspired to higher office to some degree. Prestige, power, privilege, a sense of acceptance and a sure and visible stamp of righteousness and success came with the call to be District Leader, Zone Leader and 2nd Counselor in the Mission Presidency. Many missionaries hungered for it, worked for it and were crushed when it didn`t come or elated when it did. I was never very comfortable with these feelings. Personal ambition, it seemed to me, does not belong in the Church. On the other hand in our culture, at least, competitiveness and personal ambition are a male birthright and obligation. It is clearly important in the functioning of the priesthood. I think that I, at least, have a church resume, a list of callings, honors and service performed that I carry around in some corner of my mind and turn to for personal validation from time to time. In fact it is tempting to look at our male priesthood as a rather clever way to turn male ambition into an inducement to do the Lord's work. This view embodies a sort of spiritual Darwinism complete with "trickle down" benefits for women.

On the other hand I must say a word about Elder Skelton, a missionary who was not called to leadership positions. He knocked on doors and got around on a bicycle for his entire mission. At the end of his mission he asked to stay in his area to the last possible minute. My companion and I went to pick him up and take him to the airport. He wept like a child all the way to the airport. It was as if he grieved for a loved one. He helped strengthen my conviction that something more than ambition and competition drives missionary work.

The visit of Elder Mark Petersen to the mission proved particularly instructive to me. My companion and I drove him around the mission, and he was most candid in expressing his views of his colleagues on the Council of the Twelve and of a number of decisions and policies that had been made in recent years. He thought the Church building committee had been making a number of expensive mistakes. In his view building a Stake Center in President McKay`s ancestral Welsh home town to serve 30 people was an outrageous attempt at flattery. He thought that the youth athletic programs used to make contacts and generate large numbers of baptisms had been serious mistakes. Very few of the young people baptized stayed active in the Church, and missionaries and members were demoralized as a result. It was my first view of the give and take that must prevail in the leading councils. It reinforced what I had learned as a missionary about the role ambition and power seeking play in the Church. The comforting thing to me was that rather than despairing over such a situation, people like Elder Petersen would work with it to make the Church effective in the best way he could. He also seemed to subscribe to Elder Brown’s view on the necessity of a sense of humor in doing the Lord’s work. His practical, unpretentious view of leadership is exemplified in an incident that occurred in the mission home in Johannesburg when he first arrived. We were all to sit down to dinner together, and my remarkable mission president with the remarkable name of J. Golden Snow insisted that Elder Petersen sit at the head of the table. Elder Petersen said he couldn't do that, "This is your home, President Snow, you should sit at the head of the table." President Snow insisted. Elder Petersen insisted. Finally Sister Emma Marr Petersen, Elder Petersen's wife, said, "You better sit down, Mark, or we'll never get any dinner." He obeyed, of course, and after we were all seated he turned to the mission president and said, "Well, President Snow, I guess we now know who really runs the Church."

South Africa was two nations living in the same land. This was evident on the streets of Johannesburg where you might see a Rolls Royce negotiating to pass a mule drawn cart, or a bare-breasted mother with nose ring and ear rings nursing her baby on the sidewalk in the shade of a concrete and steel skyscraper.

Missionaries usually stayed in boarding houses. In our boarding house in Kroonstadt, in the Orange Free State, there was a large wood fired water heater. Every morning Jan, a black man of 50 or 60 or maybe 70, got up at 4:30 and rode his bicycle 4 miles from the township where he was permitted to live and began his day of domestic chores by building a fire in the water heater so we could have hot showers. Jan had to have a pass with him wherever he went which told where he was permitted to be and when he was permitted to be there. I do not know Jan's last name. Whites never seemed to address blacks by their last names in South Africa. Jan's home was small with a dirt floor and outdoor toilet. The jobs he and his family could aspire to were prescribed by law. He could not vote. His educational opportunities were sharply limited. The only weapon he had to use in trying to shape his own fate was his unfailing cheerfulness and good nature.

It seemed to a missionary that every house in white South Africa had a fence and a dog, usually several dogs. Many white South Africans anxiously asked Americans they met (even Mormon missionaries) what they thought of South Africa. They hoped for some validation of apartheid. They wanted to hear that it was not so bad up close as it seemed at a distance. Close up it seemed to me more complex, more intractable, more tragic and more frightening than it had from Provo or Cambridge. Many South Africans felt then that they were sitting on a powder keg. An inarticulate frustration and fear seemed to underlie all of South African life.

Several of us were assigned to set up a Church display at the NatalProvincial Fair. We showed a film about the Tabernacle Choir. We put up some posters and displayed some copies of the Book of Mormon. We had been warned that we were absolutely not to distribute literature to blacks. If the government became aware that we were proselytizing blacks, all our American missionaries would lose their visas and have to go home. A tall, nice looking, well-dressed black man came into the display. He was one of only a few blacks who actually came in. He was open and friendly and loved the Choir. He spent some time looking over a handsome, large type edition of the Book of Mormon and asked if he could buy the book. I told him what I had been told and sent him away very disappointed. I felt ashamed and compromised, and I still do.

At the end of my mission on the multistage trip home, we landed first in Nairobi in Kenya. I walked down the steps from the airplane and there was a young woman in a neat, blue civil service uniform checking passports. She was black. The sudden realization that here was a black person dealing with white people as a civil authority had a remarkable effect, and I will always remember that moment. It was as though a knot somewhere inside of me relaxed and it was easier to breath.

Twelve years later I was driving home from work half listening to the news on the radio. The newsman read an item that said that President Spencer W. Kimball and the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had issued a statement saying that all worthy males including blacks were eligible to hold the Priesthood. I was so shocked that I had to pull off the road, and I found myself talking to the radio, "Wait a minute, say that again.." I could not believe what I had heard. When I got home, I sat by the radio benumbed waiting for the next edition of the news. When the story was repeated I discovered that again a knot deep inside me relaxed and it was easier to breath.

Sanctification comes to us all imperfectly and piecemeal. If it comes at all it comes "line upon line, precept upon precept." I began to learn as a missionary that as it is with each of us so it is with the Church. Sanctification comes imperfectly and piecemeal to the Church, but it does come. This realization for me is the key by which skepticism strengthens faith and which connects a sense of humor to a sense of the Lord's support. My missionary experience is still very much with me. It influences my feelings about the gospel, the Church and, in fact, all aspects of my life. Vivid and specific memories still come to mind dissolving completely the miles and years. In Carletonville there was the baptism of the impossibly red-headed and gloriously befreckled Soles children Gaby and Francine. And there was the blessing of the Alexander's baby one very bright Sunday morning, the first time I had stood in the circle on such an occasion. In Kimberley there was faithful sister Martha (Maisie) Humphrey Dalgleash, an elderly widow who regularly fed us tomato sandwiches and encouragement. Her facial cancer scars seemed to fade with laughter, ultimately disappearing completely because she found so much to laugh about. In Johannesburg there was the beam of early morning sunlight illuminating Elder and Sister Mark Petersen as they stepped out of an airplane sitting on the tarmac at Jan Smuts airport. Two hundred of the faithful were there at 6:00 to greet the first apostle in more than a decade to visit South Africa. Tired and a little embarrassed by all the attention the Petersens nevertheless enthusiastically took part in singing “We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet”, happy to join the South African saints as fellow citizens in the household of God.

From my present age my mission memories are suffused with light. Perhaps it is a remnant of the white, transparent sunlight that illuminates the huge, pure blue sky and rolling grasslands of the western Transvaal. Perhaps it is simply longing for my lost youth. Or perhaps it signifies a trace of something divine, a gift to balance my skepticism.

Finally, let me observe that by now several of our children have chosen to serve missions. My mission memories are such that I am grateful that like my mother and father I have been able to encourage and support our children as they build their own mission memories.