Chapter 3 : Max

Not all white shirts and ties look nice. It would be like saying all blond girls are beautiful. Dressed to be accepted like a seller in a shopping mall. These were the missionaries’ men they have sent to me. If somebody like an Old Testament prophet would have come to my place I would have thought he was completely out of his mind. Maybe they too were completely out of their minds, but if so they were out of their minds in a polite and social acceptable way.

These young missionaries invited me to their institute, a multi task building. They wanted me to be to taught with the presence of somebody more experienced. We met there and then they asked me if they could sing a song for me. Men that was hard. Maybe for you if you are a mormon you are used to it but a normal guy like me and four young men singing for him…That felt weird, and the song was terrible. At the end they asked me how it was. And I said the song was really bad but you sang ok.
They talked a lot and calmly. I immediately realized they were strongly suggesting in their acting that I should make the analogy calm was spiritual. They exposed to me their visions and the older guy that really did a good job in his exposition after about 20 min. asked me: do you feel this is true? I said : no.

To know who is God you have to know who is the devil first if not you are in trouble.
They were the kind to think they could pretend to be able to recognize the devil and the evil like an average men think he could detect a serial killer. Only at the end there is always the surprise when it has been discovered that that monster was next door polite clean looking well dressed and serious men. The history is full of this evidence, but there is nothing to do: for the average man the evil is impolite, bad looking and loud and maybe tattooed too.
So what they were doing was reinforcing a convenient cliché. Me, I don’t eat at that table.

At this point somebody could think why I kept on going to the meetings and receiving missionaries in my house. The answer that I give today is: I don’t know. I just had to. I was overdriven by something.

I say this also to make clear that the existence of my internet contact - support was absolutely of the primary importance. Let’s put it in a word: if was not for him I would have never kept on the way the ghost voice suggested or to say better stated to go.

But nevertheless I was very disciplined. I was reading everything they were telling me to read and more. I have red in a couple of weeks the book of Mormon for the first time and then I started reading it again. And I started reading the bible too. I have to say that I felt in love with the New Testament.

Each Sunday I went to their meetings. I was annoyed since the time for me was unusually early for Sunday to be acceptable. And the meetings where unusually boring. But the worst of all was the first Sunday of each month. That you had to fast was not a problem at all. The big problem was people testimony. That was a time of torture for me. You listened to people personal experience that reinforced their faith. You hear of any kind, but more of the kind that Lord exists since after you have prayed He allowed you to find your lost very important cell phone. And then there was too much crying for me. Sometimes I was really close to a psychic collapse. And this is not a joke. I immediately exposed my difficulties. I have been told I was not ready to feel the Spirit yet. It is something I had to work for. So I listened and kept on going.

One day, at the beginning of the year a missionary took me apart and told me I had to change time. I had to stop coming in the morning and start coming in the afternoon. I told him: forget it. Before you force me to get up early and now that I have accepted the idea you tell me to come in the afternoon? Forget it. Either I keep on coming at the same time or I just don’t come. He answered that this shouldn’t be a problem; the most important thing was for me to keep on coming.
And this made it possible to me to meet again with my “she is your wife , you are her husband and…”. It was Sunday, she has her time changed to come early and I kept my “wrong” time. In front of me I saw a young girl from the back. I remember I said to myself she had the most beautiful hair I have ever seen. Let’s make it clear. We men we don’t care about hair that much. I know women gives them an exaggerated importance but we look at other things. You women you have to accept it. Men that are reading this should know what I am talking about. We never report each other how magnificent were the hair of a certain woman.
So I thought she had the most beautiful hair I have ever seen and… and that’s it. I didn’t care that much. I just made an observation.

Then I went to attend some doctrine lessons and she sat in front of me. Her face didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t remember she was the one that came to my place. In my mind she was much smaller, and she didn’t have long hair and that she had dark hair. But then for no reason I asked her: it was you that came to my place? She answered: yes it was me.

The days were passing, and for sure something was changing me. Inside I constantly had a strange feeling like a burning, a deep burning. Sometimes I couldn’t get to sleep, I started becoming a believer. I started to accept to believe in God. And my reaction at this happening was ….not calm. I didn’t want to but I had to do it. I was trying to resist to something that was gently bending me. A war started inside me. The kind of war you don’t resolve with a compromise of any kind. I remembered once I even punched myself so strong on my leg it hurt for half an hour. I wrote to my internet contact to ask what the Spirit (in the meantime I started learning how to give names in spiritual world) wanted from me. And like always he had the right words for me. I was really, really mad. I couldn’t have a rest. Apparently I had to do something unknown to me but clear. There was no way of doing another thing if I wanted to have peace.

I couldn’t stop thinking what the ghost voice told me the first time. “She is you wife, you are her husband and…" it was the end of the sentence that now was starting to trouble me. At the beginning I couldn’t care less about its meaning, . But now the more I was getting involved with mormons the more troubling the end of that sentence felt to me and the more confused I was about it sense.
I wasn’t allowed to see the all picture. I was steadily overdriven by something that made me to accept what appeared logically absurd at that time. Only after all the happening was in place, everything became very clear and coherent. The picture was absolutely perfect. Everything would have combined like a puzzle. You couldn’t have taken away not even a piece to complete it. It wouldn’t have worked. Even the slightest detail was necessary. Like giving to the missionary girls at my door a wrong telephone number. If I would have not given them a wrong telephone number I would have never searched on the internet, and I would have never found that special contact without who everything would have stopped very soon. He was the one that had me keeping on this road.

But for now I was sure I had to be baptized mormon.

In the meantime I was always having a good time with my visiting missionaries. I started saying I was going to get married the same year, even though it was very unlikable since me and my wife were separated but not legal procedure for divorcing was started yet. Another problem of apparently minor importance was that I wasn’t in love with anybody yet. It is true that I started to find that young lady that came to my door very nice looking and I was happy to see her whenever we met on Sundays meetings, but nevertheless I felt her and seen her still too young to believe the idea she was really going to be my wife. Once for joking a missionary asked me: “you say you are going to get married this year; you also know the name of your future wife?” I waited no more than few seconds and said: “her name is Christina…no, it is Chloe…no, I don’t know but for sure her name starts with Ch.” I think the elder to which I have told this still remember it. Then I said to him that he instead was going to get married in two years and the name of his wife would have been Elisabeth. Also this last thing happened. I just missed her name a little. She just has the short version of this name. Why I was able to do that? I don’t know, but it was neither my fault nor my will. Things just escaped from my mouth.

I kept on going to meetings and starting to live in a different way made me appreciate my resolution of being baptize mormon. I started paying less attention to what troubled me in the last part of the ghost voice message, this trouble started being diluted little by little for the interest of my new way of living since this was convenient to me and made everything else easier.

Mormon life makes it easy to feel good. You don’t drink neither coffee nor alcohol you do your assignments and the paradise doors are opened for you. It is quite easy and simple and makes you feel good. It gives you that kind of satisfaction of having a job done. That you are somehow in control of the situation. It is affordable spirituality. I was becoming a good mormon and I was accepting that life with pleasure. I was happy to go to Sunday’s meeting and apparently I wanted more of that since I even went to a weekly doctrine class that I was enjoying a lot.

I chose the date of my baptism. The choosing of this date of course was important. One week later this date wouldn’t have been the same because “she is your wife, you are her husband and…” would have finished her mission and went back home. But of course I didn’t know about it back then. She would have missed the speech the bishop would have given for my confirmation. It was important since in that speech she was waiting for something.

To be continued: next Sunday the 9 January 2011