The deed is done, the oath has been administered, and witnessed world-wide, so if your are an American, Donald Trump is your president. Never, in the 240 years of our history have people gone to such extremes to attempt to invalidate a Presidential election. Such whining and sniveling I have not witnessed in my lifetime, and hope to heck I never have to live through another... and that's just the Network media... Some a-hole actually immolated himself in the entry of Trump Towers... The only thing accomplished was a little less stupid in the gene pool.
Okay, enough on political crap.
I have taken on the Calling to teach two lessons a month to the men over 50, second and third Sundays, every month. This year, the lesson material is in The Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Gordon B. Hinkley. President Hinkley was a major reason I decided to become a better Latter-day Saint. Whenever he would speak, or write articles for the Church magazine, even before he became President, I felt like he was reading from my life history, and giving me, personally, directions on how to do it. Reading through the book, I can hear him speaking the words in my mind, and I miss him all the more.
We are approaching the 44th Anniversary of my baptism and Membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and though I have written on parts of my experience as a Mormon, I have never put it together in one piece. To tell the whole story, I have to go back a little further, however. I will try to be as brief as possible, but it goes back to the 1950's, when I was a kid in Vallejo...
Dad was retiring from the Navy, we were living in a house that wasn't a rental, or on-base, and I started going to St. Paul's Lutheran Church, with my mom, on Sundays. The Pastor was a former Russian Orthodox Priest, who turned Lutheran after the Russian Religious purges in the early 20th Century. The movie Fiddler on the Roof illustrates what happened from the Jewish perspective, but Christians, as well, were being exiled from Soviet Russia. Pastor John Zeltin had a thick Russian accent, which required me to pay extra attention, to understand what he was saying. Since everything he said (ok, a little hyperbole, here) was interesting, I paid a lot of attention to him. Our relationship was good enough that I could ask him about things in the liturgy, church tenants, or even something he said in a sermon, and we would talk about it. To make a long story short, I have been a religious person since boyhood. I have grown up as a Christian, so my downfall was a hard one.
When we moved to Vacaville in 1965, we tried making the drive into Vallejo on Sundays, but tired of it pretty quickly. We started going to the various Lutheran Churches in Vacaville, but never got "hooked" by any of the Pastors or congregations. As a kid, I had planned to go to Pacific Lutheran University, in Pullman, WA, and take theology classes to become a Lutheran Minister. Now, spiritually adrift, it didn't take me long to find trouble. Anyone who says that Evil doesn't exist has his/her head so far up their rear, they can't hear the screaming...
Shortening more, I went into the Navy after graduation, and identified myself as a Lutheran, but took an almost instant dislike for the Lutheran chaplain, and only went once. Since it was either go to church, or work in the barracks, during Boot Camp, I began my search for "The True Church". I think I made every Christian church service available, and when I moved on, I put my search on hold.
Finally, a combination of drug and alcohol abuse had me seriously considering suicide, and I caught my first break. I got 10 days of leave, and was told that I didn't have to go home, but I wasn't to be on the ship. During the 10 days, I got reconnected to an old girlfriend, Mary Gardner, and realized that the happiest moments of my last six years all involved her. I had loved her before, and found that I still felt the same way. Two months passed, and I convinced her to marry me, with just one catch... our wedding would be in an LDS Temple.
I won't try to hide the fact that everything I did, up to my baptism, was to try to make that happen, and that I was doing it all for her. Okay, maybe not all... As I learned about the Church, I started praying again, for the first time in years. The more I prayed, the more I began to believe, I read the Book of Mormon in a week, I didn't understand it all, but I believed it to be scripture... I knew that my life depended upon this choice, either I would join the Church, or I would lose Mary... I knew I couldn't lose her, every really happy memory I had had her in it... was I going to go back to what I was before, drunk, stoned, and suicidal? I was baptized on April 20, 1973.
Shortly after, the family that offered their house for meetings with the Missionaries, and played host to Mary and one of her BYU roommates, Marja, moved to Utah so Jim could go to UofU and get an electronics degree, and become an officer. Mary and Marja left on April 25, to go back to school, and my friends left on the first of May. I suddenly felt very lonely. Jim was the only other LDS guy in my Division (I thought), so when he departed, I had to take busses to Church, and it seemed like, since I'd already been baptized, the people in the Ward weren't all that friendly. I never put the "Norfolk hates the Navy" thing together until years later, but I was, pretty much, left alone. I had a ton of questions about my new religion, and not a soul who could answer them. The closest I could get was a "Born Again," who hated Mormons.
Just before we left on a six-month deployment, an LDS Group Leader was called for each of the ships in our Task Group that had more than a handful of LDS sailors. Ours was a Lieutenant from one of the Squadrons assigned to the INDEPENDENCE, a "spook," and intelligence analyst who worked in the IOIC (Integrated Operational Intelligence Center). I was pretty amped about that, finally someone I could talk to, and learn from. I waited until he had unpacked, and set up his cubicle in Mission Planning, and was going to introduce myself to him, and ask when and where Sacrament Meeting would be. I suppose I was wrong, but I came up behind him, and saw an open porn catalogue, and him writing numbers on an order form. He must have sensed my presence, because he covered the catalogue, and gave me one of those, "Can I help you?"
I wanted to, with all my might, answer, "Hi. DP2 Martin, I understand you're my LDS Group Leader..." I didn't, though, I just said, "Hi Lieutenant, got any S & R requests?" S & R were Storage and Retrieval requests, parameters for a computer, microfiche, microfilm search in 1973. We would go to a list, find a 1/2 inch magnetic tape that had the information, and we would print 11.5 by 14 inch pages with the information they requested. I didn't go to any of the LDS meetings on the ship for the remaining 5 1/2 months. Fortunately, I met the Branch President of the Athens, Greece Branch, during our time in the Mediterranean, and we got pretty close. Close enough that he played host to my parents for a week, when they came out to visit me. I learned a lot about Service from him.
For most of the first 12 years of my membership in the Church, I felt like I didn't quite belong. I'd get a calling, get no help on how to do it, and fail. I would go to Church, then I wouldn't go, then I'd go... I kept finding faults in the Church... stuff like, if I smoke, I'm not living the Word of Wisdom, but if I keep stuffing my face, weigh 340 pounds, I'm OK, despite the urging to use moderation in the use of foods. Stuff like that still baffles me, but I don't think about it much anymore. Once I figured out that I was as guilty of judging people as the jerks who were (in my mind) judging me, I really stopped doing it. That and a year in a Bishopric convinced me that a smoking habit was way, way, way down the list of sins.
Through most of my growth in the Church, President Hinkley was there, telling me how to be a better me. Just before he passed away, Mary and I got to attend a General Conference, which turned out to be his last. He spoke in each of the three meetings I attended, and it was like he could see into my heart, and knew everything about me. He talked of the Church moving ahead, and made me feel a desire to be a part of it. He talked about Repentance, stressing that it wasn't a one-time deal, and outlining how the process works. He helped me understand what it felt like to be forgiven for my sins, bringing great calm to my life.
My point? I am grateful to a loving Heavenly Father for allowing me to focus on one of the truly great men this world has known, and to be able to pass that on to the group.
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