With the Voice Together Shall They Sing

In the Michigan Lansing Mission, there were three levels, or degrees, of music; Approved, Unapproved, and Gent.

Approved Music was music by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, hymns and other reverent music recorded by LDS musicians, and EFY albums from 1995 and earlier. This was music was was valiant in its testimony of the restored gospel, and kept the commandments of not being too loud or having a heavy beat. It took me a while to get introduced to the full selection of approved music as a missionary, inasmuch as Elder Staker was not a fan of many of the contemporary LDS artists that were on the approved music list. Elder Staker did, however, have a recording of an album by the BYU Choirs and Orchestra, an album called A Thanksgiving of American Folk Hymns. Included on this album was a version of the hymn, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” as arranged by Mack Wilberg. I had never heard this hymn before, since it is not in the current versions of the LDS Hymnals, and I very quickly learned to love the message and the melody of the hymn. For your listening pleasure, here is the very version he introduced me to:

(Aside that has little to do with music in the mission field): Later in life, through correspondence with Elder Staker, he introduced me to a musician who wrote an entire album of songs inspired by the great state of Michigan. The artist’s name was Sufjan Stevens. A few years later, Jessica would purchase Sufjan Stevens’ Christmas album, which featured a beautiful version of none other than the song “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” Here you go:

Unapproved Music was music by LDS artists included on EFY albums from 1996 and later, Greg Simpson, and any music that was loud or had a heavy repetitive beat. It was music that’s glory differed from that of Approved Music, it was music that was the honorable music of the earth, but not deemed appropriate for listening to by missionaries in the Michigan Lansing Mission. I would have to wait until after returning home from Michigan to hear these tracks. Tracks such as this one:

Gent (short for Gentile) Music was music that was not by LDS artists. It was music that’s glory differed from that of Approved and Unapproved Music, like the stars differ from the sun and the moon in glory. In fact, it was music written and performed by stars of the music industry. It was music that had its place in life before and after serving a full-time mission, but was absolutely prohibited by the rules of missionary life. It was music that was as numerous as my personal CD collection back in Utah, and way way beyond. Um, as an example, here’s something by one of my favorite bands:

Then there is the not-so-frequently-mentioned Outer Darkness Music. This is music that has no glory whatsoever. It is music written in boardrooms by record producers and then pitched to different artists who then use auto-tune to record it. It has no heart and no originality. I will not force any of this terrible product on you with an example.

Three other things I want to note about music and my mission: First, at some point, President Church began to emphasize with the missionaries the power of music as a teaching tool, and he encouraged us to utilize it in teaching. Specifically, he encouraged us to sing frequently. He said that as missionaries in the Michigan LanSING Mission, it was important for us to use the unique influence of the hymns and primary songs to invite the Spirit into homes and meetings. There were so many times that this occurred during my two years there, that it feels impossible to remember them all, but I want to mention just one experience. It happened in the Grand Rapids Airport on September 21, 2001. We went to the airport to drop off the missionaries who were on their way home, and to wait for the arrival of new missionaries on their way to Michigan from the MTC. Before the departing missionaries went through security, we decided it would be appropriate to sing a few hymns, specifically patriotic hymns. We sang one or two, and then Elder Jenks, a very charismatic and inspired missionary, invited everyone in the waiting area at the airport to join with us in singing “The Star Spangled Banner.” Everybody joined in, including all of the airport employees. This was, as noted by the date, ten days after the terrorist attacks of September 11th. The Spirit was tangible.

Second, while serving in North Muskegon, we had somehow arranged to do service with a group of elderly ladies who tied quilts. Every week as we tied quilts with these ladies, we would talk with them and we discovered a number of shared common beliefs. The ladies were Seventh Day Adventists. At some point, and I really don’t remember how it all came about, they discovered that one of the other missionaries who would do service there, Elder Mahana, and I, liked to sing. We must have sung for them while quilting, because they talked with their pastor and arranged to have us come and sing as a part of their Sabbath services. These worked out for us, because they met on Saturday, so it did not interfere with our own worship services on Sunday. Elder Mahana and I decided that we wanted to sing “My Redeemer Lives,” (hymn #135), a hymn written by Gordon B. Hinckley. It gave us a lot of pleasure knowing that we were going into a Seventh Day Adventist Church and singing the words of the living prophet. We attended the service, which was well attended; it felt like a very large LDS ward, and listened to the pastor offer his sermon. When he finished, it was our turn to sing, and sing we did. When we finished the hymn, a chorus of “Amen!” echoed from the congregation. A lot of people made a point of talking to us to tell us how much they enjoyed the hymn. We were invited back two more times to sing in their meetings, and each time had a similar experience.

Lastly, during the time I served in the mission office, we held meetings called Half Mission Conferences. These meetings were similar to the once-every-six-weeks zone conferences that we held, but they had a few unique features, such as a morning session that was lighthearted and fun. As a part of the morning session, we held a mission talent show. There were some impressive talents displayed during the talent show, and one of the highlights was a companionship that had written a song about missionary life. They called the song, “Knocking Doors.” It was clever and catchy, and everybody loved it. A few weeks after the conference, President Church asked my companion and I to do him a favor. The missionaries who had written “Knocking Doors” were offered an opportunity (I think by one of their investigators) to record the song in a recording studio that was located outside of their area. President Church wanted us to attend the recording session with them. This was one of the greatest assignments of my mission, and I selfishly made the most of it. At the studio, they recorded the guitar part first, and then the vocals. While the elder was in recording the vocal part, I was in the sound booth with the engineer, and I began to sing a harmony part to the chorus of the song. The engineer heard me and did exactly what I hoped he would do, he told me to go in there and record my harmony part. The recording turned out great, and President and Sister Church made a copy of it on CD for each missionary in the mission.

Have Ye Experienced This Mighty Change?

There is an aspect of missionary life that, at least from my experience, is not discussed very much outside of missions themselves, but that plays a HUGE role in the life of every missionary. It is the fact that every few weeks (in the case of the Michigan Lansing Mission during my two years there, every six weeks), major changes take place within the structure of the mission. These changes are called transfers, and they are an extremely underrated subject of conversation of missionary life, in my opinion.

Consider this: On a given day, once every six weeks, every missionary companionship in the mission is instructed to be at their apartment so that they can answer a potential phone call from the mission president. If the mission president does in fact call their apartment, it means that things are going to change for the companionship. It likely means that one of the missionaries is going to leave that area and a new missionary will be replacing him or her. Those missionaries who are leaving an area are given just over a day to prepare for their departure; this preparation includes the physical preparation of packing up all of their belongings and getting ready to move everything they own to a new location, and the social preparation of informing those who they care to inform of their departure. In some cases, this is a long list of people, including members of the church, individuals who are investigating the church, and recent converts who just joined the church. It can be a profound emotional experience.

Sometimes on this day of receiving transfer calls, the mission president does not call a companionship’s apartment, and that means that nothing is changing with that companionship for the next six weeks. The missionaries are informed of this non-change through a phone call from their zone leader who has been called and informed by the assistants to the mission president of all of the changes that have occurred in the mission. This is how the information is communicated to each of the companionships in the mission. Or, at least, this is how it was done in the Michigan Lansing Mission over a decade ago. It could very well be different now, what with new forms of communicating and stuff. Transfers are probably tweeted now-a-days.

The feelings of anxiety felt by missionaries on these mornings cannot be overstated. Every single elder and sister knows that their lives could change dramatically in the next 48 hours, and they have absolutely no control over it. They trust that whatever happens is the will of the Lord, and that brings a measure of comfort, but it doesn’t eliminate the feelings of not knowing and of anticipating what might or might not happen.

I remember my first transfer day well. It was early February 2000, and Elder Staker and I sat in our apartment, reading our scriptures, writing letters, and talking with each other about transfers. Elder Staker had been transferred twice before, once from his first area of Mount Pleasant to North Muskegon, and then again from North Muskegon to the area we served in together in Lansing South. He explained to me what it felt like to leave an area, to have to leave behind the people who he had given so much of his heart and efforts to try and teach the gospel. He was the kind of person who felt things deeply, and these transitions were very difficult for him. I imagined what it would be like to leave Lansing and the people we were teaching. There was Bridgette, the young woman who we had been teaching for weeks and who was trying to quit smoking so she could be baptized. And there was Nathan, the man who was engaged to a member of the ward, and who was a quiet and sensitive man, and who deeply wanted to be a part of an eternal family. The thought of leaving was scary to me. Eventually the phone rang and my heart began to race. It was Elder Adcox, our zone leader. No changes to our companionship. Sigh of relief.

This experience would prove to be the exception and not the rule for me. Over the next twenty-two months, there were only two other transfers that nothing changed within the companionship I was serving in, and they both occurred within the first eight months of my mission. Also interesting is that it wasn’t until my fifth area that I had the experience of being the one in the companionship to stay in the area, instead of the one to leave. Up to that point, if there was a change to be made in my companionship, that change involved me packing my things and moving to a new area. Once I reached my fifth area, North Muskegon, that changed dramatically, as I saw five companions leave during my seven months serving there. I began to get very comfortable in North Muskegon; I was there so long (relatively speaking considering the brief stays I enjoyed in my other areas), that I felt as if it were home. I loved the ward and felt like I was around family. Therefore, it should not have been a surprise that after my fifth transfer (this is what the period of six weeks between transfer days is referred to, incorrectly I suppose) in North Muskegon, I was given a new assignment, to serve in Harrison.

That was easily the most difficult transfer of my mission. For the first few days in Harrison, I felt physically ill, and I could hardly get out to work very much because I was so devastated at having to leave my beloved North Muskegon. Eventually I got over the sorrow of having to leave that I was able to get to work, and I enjoyed my time in Harrison just as much as any other area.

When President Church made the transfer calls, he often used a little lighthearted humor to ease any tension that might be felt. The most memorable of these calls for me came when he called me to serve as one of his assistants. The conversation went something like this:

President Church: Elder Holdaway, how are you?

Me: Good, President, how are you? [Of course my heart is beating fast, as it always is when I’m speaking with President Church on transfer call day.]

President Church: I’m doing well, thanks. Elder, the Lord has a new assignment for you.

Me: Ok…

President Church: I’m calling you to come down here and be my assistant. You’re companion will be Elder Munoa. You two will do a lot of good together.

Me: [Speechless.]

President Church: Do you accept this new assignment, Elder?

Me: Yes, President. Of course.

President Church: Good! Because if you didn’t, I’d have to come up there and ring your neck!

Me: Ha!

I think I expressed to him later how much his little joke helped me with the shock I felt. The assignment gave me an opportunity to learn about transfers from the other side. Elder Munoa (then Elder Eales) and I would meet with President Church in a series of meetings in which we would consider all of the missionaries in the mission, and discuss what changes to make. We met three times total, and the last time would be at the tail end of a 24 hour fast. Once we had everything arranged, we would pray and ask for confirmation that the changes we were proposing were in accordance with the will of the Lord. Those were powerfully spiritual meetings. The impression I came away with after experiencing those meetings was that each and every one of the missionaries was remembered, and no moves were ever made arbitrarily or without sincerely considering the good of the missionaries involved.

I have tried to convey this feeling on many occasions when talking with new or prospective missionaries. Transfers can be difficult, they can be exciting, they can be frustrating, and they can be bewildering and unpredictable. But they are an integral part of missionary life and missionary work.

Elder Holdaway in President Church’s office with President’s official laser pointer. During transfer meetings, we would discuss potential transfers and President Church would point at the missionary cards with the pointer and indicate where to move them.

Unfold this Mystery

I left the zone. I was in the zone for several weeks, months even, but then I left it, and I want to get back in it. It was fun in the zone. It was gratifying in the zone. I’m going to try to get back in the zone.

But that’s a tricky thing, you see, because the zone took me through the year 1999, and that was what I originally set out to accomplish. As time went on, though, I knew that I wanted to do more, that I wanted to go beyond 1999. I wanted to chronicle my mission, but I had not found a satisfying format in which to do this. Originally, I thought I would follow a similar format to the one that I used in writing about 1999, which was a loose kind of chronology, looking for distinctive events in time that separated one group of events from another. This was an interesting exercise for 1999, because the time breaks were ambiguous and therefore had to be created literarily. I began to write about my mission with this format in mind, but I wasn’t feeling it. The breaks in time on my mission were too easily distinguishable, what with transfers that brought new areas and new companions. I chose not to publish any of the posts that I started because they just didn’t come together the way the stories about 1999 did.

So I’m trying something a little different to write about my mission. Instead of going chronologically, I’m going thematically. Each story will cover a certain theme or idea, and I will pull experiences from different times within my mission to illustrate them. I’m feeling much better about this approach, and I hope it is as interesting as I feel it can be.

What follows in this post, then, is a list of the areas I served in as well as the missionaries I served with in those areas, so that all of the experiences I write about can be placed within their respective context (and as all missionaries know, context is REALLY important):

1. LANSING SOUTH (December 19, 1999-March 23, 2000), Elder Staker

2. JACKSON EAST (March 23, 2000-May 4, 2000), Elder Sanders, Elder Nelson

3. JACKSON NORTH (May 4, 2000-July 25, 2000), Elder Gregersen

3a. Somewhere in Kalamazoo, with Elder Strong and Elder Gibson. I was in limbo between the time I was given a new assignment and actually began serving in the assignment. This lasted for two days from July 25, 2000 to July 27, 2000.

4. GRAND HAVEN (July 27, 2000-October 16, 2000), Elder Merritt

5. NORTH MUSKEGON (October 16, 2000-May 14, 2001), Elder Henrie, Elder Ashby, Elder Peterson, Elder Olson, Elder Hatch, Elder Leavitt

6. HARRISON (May 15, 2001-August 7, 2001), Elder Andersen, Elder Boyle

7. MISSION OFFICE (August 7, 2001-October 30, 2001), Elder Munoa, Elder Eales

8. OKEMOS (October 30, 2001-December 11, 2001), Elder Fagg

That’s right, 8 areas and 16 companions (not counting the brief stint in Kalamazoo). I don’t have the data to analyze this accurately (nor do I have the patience, or even the skills, to analyze it), but I’m confident that serving in 8 different areas and with 16 companions is on the high end of the average missionary experience. Probably in the 80th percentile, at least, if not higher. I don’t know why I’m bothering to mention this, though, because it really doesn’t mean anything. Looking at a missionary’s mission as a whole presents a difficult phenomenon to assess, because each of the transfers (changes of companion and/or area) is, for the most part, a self-contained event that has little to do with what was in the past, and almost nothing to do with what is in the future.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I plan on writing about transfers in a later installment (maybe even the next one!!), so for now I’ll just show you a map of Michigan with each of the areas I served in: