The next few days went by in a haze. I couldn’t stop trying to find ways to square the ceremony with the culture and doctrine that I had been raised with. Not long after, I was walking through a Barnes & Noble and saw a book on display on the edge of an aisle. On the cover, I saw the compass, the square, and the very same green fig apron that I had seen in the temple. I snatched the book, found a corner of the room, and furiously tore through its pages. The book was an exploration of Masonic rituals, and as I flipped through page after page of the same symbols and handshakes I had seen in the temple, a narrative formed in my mind.
I sat on the floor staring at the ceiling. Suddenly, the Church no longer looked like a divine restoration of an eternal organization but a patchwork faith cobbled together from anything that Joseph Smith had encountered and found mystical. All the challenges, struggles, questions, and dilemmas I had suddenly made sense. I leaned forward, afraid I might vomit. In a world-shattering 15 minutes, I had decided that the Church was man-made.
Should I still go on a mission? I had wanted nothing more in my life than to travel abroad, and I had purchased a ticket to Singapore. My whole life had been building to this climax, and there were more than 300 people at my church who were all proud that I would fulfill my destiny and serve a mission. I still felt like a Mormon. I determined that even if the Church wasn’t perfectly inspired, it could still be of God and good for people. I decided that I would go, despite my new conclusion. However, having determined that some of the Church rules had no moral justification short of the virtue of obedience to God, I decided that I might not need to follow all of them.
I was in a relationship with a girl in high school, and we continued to date long-distance while I was at BYU and she was at her college several states away. She was Protestant but open to discussing faith, and I had hoped that she would wait for me to return from my mission, after which she might convert, and we could get married.
I was set to fly to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, on the 16th of June, and she would be arriving home from college on the night of June 15th. I called her not long after going to Barnes & Noble, and I told her all about the ceremony, how I felt confused and dismayed, and what I had concluded. Feeling suddenly freed from the moral constraints of the Church, we decided that before I flew out, we would lose our virginity together.
The 15th came, and my parents allowed us half an hour in the living room to say goodbye. We did so, and everyone went to bed not long after. Being a resourceful Eagle Scout, I had procured some climbing rope, created hand-holds, and had tied it to my bed frame. Near midnight, I opened the window and rappelled from the second floor to the ground.
Realizing that the garments would probably not be the most mood-appropriate attire for the occasion, I had stashed a pair of boxers in the backyard. I changed into them in the backyard, stashed the garments in the wheel well of my car, and snuck over to her house and into her window. I flew out to the MTC at 6:00 AM the next morning.
The MTC is where missionaries go prior to entering “the field.” There, they spend every waking hour studying Scripture, learning the lessons that they will be teaching, praying, singing hymns, and learning the appropriate language for their mission. Missionaries in the MTC also regularly attend the temple and often take shifts responding to phone calls and online chats from Mormon.org.
Each missionary is assigned a companion, a fellow missionary, to accompany them everywhere — even standing outside the bathroom when the other needs to go. Mission rules are quite strict, and every missionary has a little white book affectionately dubbed the “white Bible” that contains most of them. Rules include a blanket restriction on personal communication, with the exception of one letter sent to family once per week and one short phone call each Christmas and Mother’s Day. There’s also a restriction on all music and entertainment except for hymns and other Church-approved materials. Exercise, laundry, and household chores are all to be done on a single day of the week. Somewhat ironically, missionaries are given the title of “Elder” while on their mission.
I was incredibly apprehensive coming to the MTC, which felt simultaneously familiar and foreign, comfortable and bizarre. I believed the Church to be good and had such strong faith in it for most of my life that I was eventually able to immerse myself in the experience and set aside my misgivings. The brotherhood that I experienced with my fellow missionary companions was incredible, and our sense of purpose was crystal clear. I have heard Mormon war veterans compare the MTC to boot camp, with the kicker of a divine destiny in addition to the collegial camaraderie. We knew without question what was good and what was evil, and we were setting out as soldiers in the army of God to save the world.
I loved being at the MTC. I was praying at every opportunity and studying Scripture 10 hours a day. The longer I was there, the more I felt my shaken faith begin to heal. I began to realize that I had been in the faith for my whole life, my parents had been in the Church for decades, and most of the people who I knew and respected were members. I asked myself, “If they all had made sense of it and stayed faithful, how could I be so arrogant and rash as to throw it all away in the course of 15 minutes at Barnes & Noble?” I began to feel reaffirmed in my divine cause and was so excited to leave Utah and get to Singapore that I soon became known as “Elder Can’t-Sit-Still.”
It’s a running joke in Mormonism to refer to the MTC as the Missionary Torture Chamber, since the missionaries are put through an emotional wringer. If you had ever done anything wrong, guilt compounded every day; we saw missionaries having emotional breakdowns on a regular basis. I began to feel incredibly guilty for having premarital sex. Every morning, every class, every prayer, the thought of my horrible transgression ate at my conscience.
Three days before my group was to fly to Singapore, I felt the need to make a decision: if this was the true faith, if my parents and everyone I loved and respected were right, then the only honest thing that I could do would be to confess my sin and bear the consequences, hoping that I would still be permitted to go. Gathering all of the courage that I had, I confided in my companion, and we walked together to the mission president’s office. I sat down in front of the president, I immediately began to cry, and I confessed what I had done. I told him how sincere my desire to be righteous was and begged him to allow me to continue to serve. He gave me a hug and asked me to wait outside while he consulted the other mission leaders. After what felt like years, he stepped out of the office and told me that I would need to return home and repent before I could continue on my mission. He handed me a phone, instructed me to call my family to let them know what was happening, and left the room.
To this day, I have never done anything as difficult as dialing that number to reach my parents. Remembering the heartbreak and disappointment in my father’s voice brings tears to my eyes even now, years later.
I walked as slowly as I could back to my room to pack my things. I wanted to remember it all — how it all looked, how it all felt, even the smells. Despite the utter confusion of the events prior to my arrival, I had found simplicity and peace in the MTC, and I knew that I would be returning to turmoil and shame. When I got to my room, I took a small piece of paper and wrote a promise to myself that I would return to the MTC and not let anything get in the way of fulfilling my divine mission. I signed it, sealed it with a prayer, unscrewed the faceplate of a power socket, and slipped it into the wall. I then said a tearful goodbye to my companions and flew home, completely broken. My parents met me at the airport and hardly said a word as they tearfully hugged me. If we spoke at all on the car ride home, I don’t remember it.