January 4, 2008 - Gift of Glasses

Let's start with some photos. Sister Bayarmaa and I are standing with all the young adults who got all dolled up and did a dance (a waltz to an ABBA song) for the talent show at the branch Christmas party.
This is my MTC group just after our mission conference. It was the first time we had all been together since the MTC. There are three Mongolian missionaries in our group, too.
It's the Balli and me! [Sister Balli and Sister Johnson were companions in the Missionary Training Center.] I had contemplated getting a cool stylish deel for the party this year as opposed to the "grandma" deel that I got with Sister Hunt at the zakh last year two days after arriving in the country. But I didn't. I wore the one from last year, and it was still pretty smashing, grandma or no.

We found another ger in Selenge (#4 so far) at the top of a mountain, and this time we got to go inside! It was only for about 2 minutes as the lady was about to hop in the taxi she called to take them down off the mountain to visit someone in the hospital. It doesn’t matter, ‘cause I got my ger fix, and she told us to come back later so I think it'll be alright. Anyway I...HEY!!! You can get taxis to come get you down off the mountain??!!?? If I had known THAT I wouldn't have spent half my mission wrrhfrmurmurlamanlemuelgrrr...

There are very few Young Men in the Selenge Branch so the first week (last week) we had a combined mutual to introduce the youth activity program. We shared Mosiah 18:21 for the opening scriptural thought and challenged the youth to make “unity” their mutual theme for this year. Then we split up into teams and played “Two Truths and a Lie” as a get to know you game. It got a little too competitive, and I had to remind them of our theme at one point, but other than that it was good. We had about 12 youth show up.

This past Wednesday we had just a few Young Men show up again, but we still split up for the activities section. Sister Bayarmaa and I shared the scripture from 1 Corinthians 12 where it talks about how we all are parts of the body of Christ. We had the Young Women perform some simple tasks like picking up and moving a piece of paper and then had them do it again without using a crucial body part: hand, eyes, thumbs, etc. Then we played one of my favorite Girls Camp games: everyone stands in a circle and closes their eyes. Then everybody reaches in both hands and randomly grabs other hands. When every hand is paired up you open your eyes, and everyone’s arms are in a tangled mess. Then you have to untangle everybody without letting go of the hands. We played this through a couple times, and then had them do it again without speaking. The girls had a lot of fun. There were about 8 or 9 girls who came.

My companion and I were checking a contact’s address, and it turned out he was working in the countryside at the time, but his wife invited us in. We taught the first lesson and gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon and a Restoration pamphlet to read. Another time we were visiting, when she called her daughter over to zip up her jacket. She pulled her in unusually close. As she squinted and worked to do up the zipper, I immediately empathized with the mother. I have unusually bad eyesight with a prescription that makes people gasp just looking at the numbers, and if I happen to be without my glasses I have to pull things just as close as this young mother was doing in order to see with any amount of clarity. I knew that glasses were a financial impossibility for this family, and my heart went out to her, knowing what it must be like to try to run a house and raise kids without something as essential as clear eyesight.

Right at that moment the impression came to me that if I let her try on my glasses, our prescriptions would be exactly the same. I have never met anyone with eyes as bad as mine, and the chance that our prescriptions were even close enough to help her was slim. The next time we met with her I asked her to try on my glasses. She put them on and gasped, “Everything’s so clear! It’s like seeing with eyes!” As the miracle of the situation unfolded before my eyes I knew exactly what I was going to do. At that moment a package with a new pair of glasses was making its way to Selenge from the mission office. It was a Christmas package from my family, but I opened it as soon as I got a hold of it. I took out the new pair of glasses and carefully placed my old pair in the case.

In the meanwhile, we started seeing some problems with the woman’s family. As we came by for our visits it was always her father or her mother who came to the gate, and they wouldn’t let us in. We found out that her younger brother’s wife was an inactive member who was now very anti-. We just wanted to meet with her face to face and see how she was feeling about everything. I wanted to give her the glasses, but we just couldn’t seem to get the opportunity.

One Sunday morning we went over before church to see if we could get her to come with us. Her young daughter came to the door and told us that her mom wasn’t there. I knew she really was there, and I couldn’t wait any longer. Even if she didn’t want to meet with us anymore, I wanted her to have the glasses. I gave the glasses to the girl and told her to give them to her mother. She ran inside right away and sure enough a few minutes later our investigator herself came out to talk to us. She told us that she was very busy and that her husband was coming back into town in a few days. I could tell she was nervous about his coming and didn’t think he would approve of her investigating the church. Then she nervously took the glasses out of her coat pocket and said thank you before turning back to go inside.

It wasn’t the joyous reception that I had been envisioning, and later that week we stopped by and were met by our investigator at the gate. She told us that her husband had come in from the countryside that morning but that he was drunk, implying that she didn’t really want us to come in. Going on the hope that her husband was the original contact and knowing that we may not have another chance to meet with this family, we told her that we didn’t mind and asked if we could come in anyway. She reluctantly let us in.

It’s a hard judgment call speaking to a drunk person, always wondering how much of what you say is actually getting in and also wondering if what they’re saying is coming from the heart or is the product of the alcoholic influences. There was only one thing that kept this conversation going for almost an hour and that was my firm belief that, drunk or no, this was a child of God led astray by substances and things that his loving Heavenly Father would have him leave behind, and the knowledge that if we didn’t help this family, no one else would. At one point he turned to me and said, “I need to thank you for giving the glasses to my wife. Glasses are so expensive. I really want to say thank you.” He expressed a desire to stop drinking, and we assured him that if he really wanted to stop he could do it with our and Heavenly Father’s help. We invited them to church the next day and then returned home.

We’ve been back to their house a few times since then but we haven’t ever been allowed in. I don’t know what will become of the family, I’m just glad that I was able to give of what I had, even if they weren’t ready to receive the message that we have which is more precious that sight.