Adventures in Approaching Zion

I ended my last article with the idea that not knowing how to move towards Zion as an LDS community is not frustrating, but rather exciting. We need to blend the enthusiasm and fresh ideas from a rising generation about what Zion means and how to get there, with the voices of those who have lived a committed life of working towards that lofty goal. 

This article will present one idea about approaching Zion. It is the story of how one guy and his son flipped their vacation completely on its head, giving themselves (and us) a glimpse of one possible way to work towards Zion. It may be irrelevant to your life, impossible to replicate, or innocently naive. But that isn’t the point. What is important is that real, Christlike love was offered, received, and reciprocated in a way that brought two Mormon families a little closer to Zion.  Multiplied throughout the church, conscious efforts like this to consecrate time and means cannot but help us move towards Zion. The idea is that the more Mormons there are coming up with and implementing lots of different ideas of how to move towards Zion, the more actual progress we will make.

This is a real story that happened just over a year ago. I have changed all the names. Also, I changed some of the timeline slightly to make the story shorter and more coherent.

A Vacation to Zion

John and his son Spencer had made plans for a short vacation when Spencer turned twelve. They decided on India (which was relatively close to where they were living at the time), and started to think about what activities to do when they arrived. John was an adventurer of sorts, so fast rivers and high mountains usually topped the list of ways he wanted to see the country. Spencer was usually game for whatever, as long as the occasional can of Pringles made it his way.

A wrinkle developed early on in their planning that would shape the direction of their visit. John had recently been heavily engaged in studying early LDS church history and its sometimes messy reality. Long conversations about a variety of topics were frequently had with his wife, friends and family, and many of the members of his branch. His efforts prompted a lot of introspection about what sort of Mormon he was and what sort of Mormon he wanted to be.

A kernel of an idea developed in these conversations about how traveling could be an entirely different experience; about how it could be an opportunity to connect with his fellow Mormons in a radically different kind of way.

To that end, John and Spencer looked for a place in India that was both near to some cool places and relatively close to an LDS congregation. It turned out there was only one meeting place in the city they decided to fly into (a city of over 20 million people). After coming up with a few ideas for places to visit in the area, they bought their tickets and headed out without booking any place to stay once they arrived. They showed up at church at the time and place indicated on LDS maps, and found a small, vibrant, Indian branch. The branch president, not surprisingly, had enough time for a brief hello and a handshake before a host of responsibilities pulled him away. Undaunted, John and Spencer found his wife, Ann. She was also being pulled in a hundred different directions but, like many sisters, took time to see how she could help.

It turned out that Ann and her husband were an American couple, working in India; before that, they had lived in China, Indonesia and a handful of other countries. In each of these places, they worked hard to nurture young Mormons in the faith, and they each experienced the joy and frustration of tender young testimonies born and growing in difficult temporal circumstances. In this corner of India, the majority of the small branch consisted of young and extremely poor families, occasionally placed in sharp contrast to a foreigner on a business trip or short-term work contract.

John wasted no time in describing to Ann his novel idea: he asked her if she knew anybody in the branch willing to put them up for a few nights. Ann thought it a bit presumptuous to so directly ask for help while on vacation, but her mind went to the several expatriot families who had decent places to live. She mentioned that she could introduce them to these families, but then John clarified his request. The family he had in mind was a faithful member in immediate, temporal need. He and Spencer wanted to stay with one of the poorer members of the branch.

Ann was initially confused and skeptical. The branch consisted mostly of poor members, but the word “poor” in these parts was unmistakably different than its American cousin. A halting back and forth commenced as John detailed his plan to Ann. He wanted to be introduced to a faithful, but materially poor family, and ask if they were interested in hosting them for a few nights, in return for which John would pay them what he otherwise would have paid for a hotel room.

The plan was beautifully simple. The gospel in its essence is after all a communal affair. We mourn with others, we carry their burdens, we rejoice with them. We experience life together: building, sustaining and sharing. But, the plan was also simply strange. Did John and Spencer realize that “poor” in India often meant living in a slum environment, with hygiene and sanitary conditions, sleeping situations and meal options that some Americans don’t even realize still exist in the world? Wouldn’t it be practical and more normal to simply donate some of their money to an organization working in the area?

After several questions revealed that John and Spencer would remain undaunted in their quest, inspiration sent Ann a name. The Ganesh family would be perfect, she thought, and said so to the two travellers. She made the introductions and then left them to figure things out, hopeful that something good would come out of this odd plan. The family turned out to be very excited to host John and Spencer, and they all set off after the meetings in a taxi.

The small car wound through crowded alleyways, and made its way toward a slum in the center of the city. The home was like the others all around it, and all throughout this city: a small, one room place, with barely space for one bed, no space for the corner kitchen, and no interior running water. Unwelcome rats and stray chickens seemed unperturbed by the guests, and the low ceiling hosted a decrepit fan that offered little comfort from the heat and constant source of head pain from forgetting to duck.

The Ganesh family consisted of Rajesh and Sangeetha, their four year old son, Sangeetha’s disabled brother, and four more of her extended family. Immediately upon arrival, a vigorous discussion commenced about who would sleep on the only bed that night. Despite John and Spencer’s best attempts to deflect the offers, the Ganesh family was victorious: they all slept on the floor while John and Spencer shared the bed.

Over the next few days, the two families would meld together in ways that neither of them would have imagined. It wasn’t because of any one sublime experience, or grand moment. Rather, these two Mormon families, outwardly as different as could be imagined, just plain-old spent time together. A middle-class, pioneer-stock white guy with questions about his religion sat around with his son and their newly discovered brothers and sisters and broke bread Indian style, sitting on the floor and lapping up delicious curries with naan, chatting and laughing into the night. And this small, young family living in the middle of a slum, dark and dank and sometimes devoid of hope, drank in the night with their newly discovered brothers, burning into their spiritual consciousness the truth that their newly embraced religion actually was one big family, without regard to circumstance.

The beauty of this effort at approaching Zion is hardly felt if we concentrate on the money that John left with the Ganesh family. To be clear, the whole family fought hard to decline any money from John for the room and board that they so graciously provided, even though in the end they gratefully accepted. Rather, the sublime and inherent nature of this progression toward Zion is that love was met with love, kindness with kindness and compassion with compassion.

John and his son Spencer left with a feeling that somehow their plan of giving and assistance was turned on its head. Somehow, they felt like the recipient; their cup was filled. In a moment of beautiful irony, well-meant giving was divinely enlarged to include unanticipated but much needed comfort and answers to prayers. In true religion, givers and receivers blend together to reveal that all are partakers of the heavenly gift. Sangeetha and Rajesh and their family felt similarly filled with love – they felt that God saw them, cared for them, and had sent two brothers to carry that love to their hearts. And, for a while, the often soul-crushing burden of living in absolute poverty was lifted off of them, placed onto the shoulders of their brothers in Christ, and carried for a while on the long walk to Zion.