Withering and wilting away

Despite some struggles, I think the first nine months of my mission really built me up, and then the second half kind of tore me down.

There was one really bubbly sister, Sister W, that was pretty popular. I liked her. I helped arrange a birthday surprise for her. I was surprised to find out that she had a problem with me. 

It turns out that she was really into Taylor Hartman's The Color Code, a personality test from 1989 where she had discovered that she was a fun-motivated Yellow. She had assessed that I was a power-motivated Red. Yellows don't get along with Reds; we harsh their mellows.

As this was coming out, one of the my companions, Sister S, said she saw some Yellow in me too, and Sister W was like "I don't see that."

Shockingly rude, if you think about it, but shortly after this was Sisters' Conference and the mission president's wife had chosen "What Color Are You?" for the theme. That felt pretty crummy. I can't imagine Sister H writing me off by a color; the point was supposed to be about finding your strengths. I still did not get anything out of it.

In general, though, my companions liked me, and I liked them. We worked well together, especially during that first half of my mission.

It started with obedience again.

We were wasting a lot of time finding people not at home, sometimes even when we had appointments. This was in Modesto. In Fresno there were some concentrated areas where even if you missed one family you could probably find someone else nearby to talk to. I felt that if our first few minutes after study were phone calls to confirm appointments or ask if we could visit, we would be doing better. 

My companions (there were two at the time) wanted to focus on being 100% obedient. That to them meant leaving the apartment on the dot after study and prep time. They apparently felt my phone calls were bringing them down, so they would stand outside the door waiting for me, with my recalcitrance therefore not affecting their obedience.

I did have some hard feelings about that, but what came after that was worse. 

There were three of us at a time because new sisters were being brought in one at a time while other sisters were going home. Remember, on average there were only four Lao sisters at a time.

Sister De had entered the field just before me, so she did the training of Sister M and Sister Da. I got both of them right after her.

I should backtrack and say that my trainer had a weird relationship with her trainer. I only know because I was my trainer's final companion before going home, so I was with her while she fretted about going home and tried to find a dress she liked for it. Her trainer came out to visit and gave my trainer one of her dresses and then everything was okay... it just seemed overly dependent. Anyway, it is possible that idealizing your trainer is common.

Both Sister M and Sister Da adored Sister De. They thought she was perfect, and exactly the way they should be. When I was their next companion, I was a poor substitute. 

This is not saying that I didn't think Sister De was a good missionary, but me being different didn't make me a bad one. Frankly, I found her kind of annoying; she's the type who prays for so long that your knees start to hurt, and missionaries pray so many times a day. 

I was not created in her image.

I also remember being kind of great when Sister M was stressing over passing off teaching the discussion in Lao. We were scrubbing the baptismal font for our service, and it was easy to talk about baptism and commitments anyway, and I started asking her leading questions in Lao and it turned out that she was perfectly capable of teaching that discussion.

There was something else that did not go well.

Without meaning to, I corrected her about something the exact same way that my trainer had corrected me. It did bruise me at the time, but I'd recovered. I did not know that she'd had a problem with it right away; that came out later. Because other things were coming up for her, and I already was not Sister De, she started really working against me. 

She complained about everything I did, even when some of those things were corrections of previous complaints. One night we were driving and she turned the heat all the way up in the car. It couldn't have been comfortable for her either, but spite is funny that way. When I tried to talk about it, she threw up her hands in frustration like she could not believe how exasperating I was. Yes, she meant to be hurtful.

I had to threaten to call the president; we could not accomplish anything good like this. She divulged the thing I had done, and I apologized. There were also things that had nothing to do with me, and she got some counseling for those. We worked things out and became very close. She helped me get through the depression when it hit. However, I swallowed a lot of insults while I was trying to find a way to help her, and they built up inside. Maybe I could have brought them up later, but our peace still felt fragile, so I shoved it down.

Then I got transferred down to Sister Da, who never learned to love me. 

Her bonding with Sister De was more mutual, where in addition to her trainer becoming her ideal, they were clearly going to be friends forever., like my MTC companions. It was wonderful for them. 

At some point there, a black cloud dropped over me. I could make myself function to go to discussions and do duties, but I was miserable. I had accumulated so many snubs by then, my sense of worthlessness had developed an unbearable heft.

Enough people had decided I was wrong and bad that I was ready to agree.