Remembering Who We are on a Chilean Mission

I had come home after a long day of missionary work. We seemed to have a rhythm of work and people to see. We had made it back a bit later than usual in Puente Alto. As my companion went into the room ahead of me, I had barely made it into the door when I heard someone running behind me. So I pulled back out of the door and heard someone slip. The son of the family we lived with had slipped on the rug and came down hard on the door. I caught my head between the door jam and the door. Pulling out I reached up and pulled my hand over my head and come down with blood. I passed out.

The next day I remember waking to a little girl pressing a small cotton ball on my upper lip and smiling.

I couldn't remember who I was or who she was.

It took me a month to remember again who I was. I forgot all the discussions. I got up slowly, groggy and read the journal that I had worked on early in my mission. It was an abbreviated story of my life from when I was about 5 to the present. Hmm, I was a missionary.

Sometimes

it is not easy to remember who we are even when we know who we are.

I did re-memorize the discussions. Eventually, I remembered I was the senior companion and turned in a report on the incident. My Mother told me this Christmas of 2006 that the President of the mission called her saying I would probably be sent home. Hmm, I think my slow recovery and slowness to action but still my slow stick-to-it-ness kept me on the mission. I don't think I ever saw so many people join the church. I think when they saw my pain and struggle that they took the time to find the truth -- what, after all motivated me to keep waking up like a dead man white as a sheet and face each day preaching the gospel?

I saw many missionaries face illnesses, deaths of those around them, set backs, and failures; and

each time they overcame them they were stronger.

I didn't realize it at the time. I think if we all wrote these faith promoting stories down they would fill volumes.