Sister J & Arminda, September 2013
I’m sure you’ve seen the Mormon missionaries around your town. They all look pretty much the same: young.
The boys wear suits and ties and often ride bikes and the girls are always in skirts and everyone travels in packs of two and they wear black name tags to identify themselves as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: the Mormons.
That was me. I’m a Mormon.
Sister J & Arminda, Rostov, Russia, 1994
Greensboro, North Carolina to Rostov, Russia = Really Far
That decision to serve a mission – made when I was eight years old – continues to positively impact and to inform my life today.
Recently, I flew to Dallas, Texas, to visit Margie Johnson, who was one of my companions. We were a bit atypical as far as companions go, to be sure, but the two of us were together for ten of my eighteen month mission. Margie, whom I refer to lovingly as “Sister J,” was serving a humanitarian mission and spent her days in a local orphanage. Meanwhile, I always had another proselytizing companion with whom I spent my days out street-contacting and knocking on doors. The “usual” missionary stuff.
I have enough in my heart about what I learned from Sister J to fill up multiple blog posts, but won’t go long on today’s! Simply, she is one of the greatest women I know.
Whenever I returned to our apartment she was there, anxious to hear everything about our day. She loved listening to me describe in detail every single thing we’d seen, heard, tasted, encountered and learned: every funny incident, every touching moment, every misunderstood word, and every insight gained. Sister J knew just as much about what we were doing as did we, even though her daily routine rarely intersected with ours. She knew everyone we knew and connected with them without the aid of the Russian language, which she never learned but relied on me to act as translator.
I have yet to meet a heart as generous as hers and the example she gave to me through her simple acts of kindness are still a constant reminder to me all these years later: give of yourself because you are the greatest gift you have to share.
One of my favorite recollections of Sister J was the way she would typically greet me whenever we’d been apart for a few hours. Her cheery voice smiling at me through all my layered attempts to stay warm, reaching out to me, extending a grin that magnetically pulled the corners of my own mouth upward into my own rendition of the Cheshire Cat. Every single time she said, “You’re so cute!”
And because I want to always have her smile at the ready, I recorded Sister J telling me once again: