The fall of 2012 was a strange ride. Once head-hunters tried recruiting me for a job at Simmons College in Boston, all normalcy went out the window like an escaped parakeet, and I think now it’s gone for good. Christmas didn’t get its due, and here it is Christmas Eve with no gift of any sort for my mother or sister or brothers or sisters-in-law or brothers-in-law or nieces or nephews. What to do?
Well, I’m always good for a story. Not that I’ve had a blockbuster life, but I’ve had a life, and there have been turns and twists. So Merry Christmas, and I will tell you a story. I think it’s apropos of the season, even if it’s not a Christmas story, even if it’s not even a winter story. Thirty eight years and six or seven months back and I was a missionary in the city of Sendai, Japan. You’ve heard of Sendai. Recently it got chomped by a tsunami—that’s why the name is familiar to you. But in 1978 it was just where the mission home was, the headquarters of the Japan Sendai Mission. It was also where the Sendai Kokuritsu Byooin was—the hospital that my mission president, Richard Kwak, got to know and trust because it took good care of one particular missionary who got in a bike accident. Oh yeah—that was me. But that’s not what this story is about. This is, I guess you could say, a spin-off. There is the story of Elder Haehnel crashing his bike and breaking his jaw and spending eight weeks in a hospital, and that is a story in its own right. But this is a different story, tied to the first by the thread of the Sendai Kokuritsu Byooin.
So there were a couple dozen missionaries in Sendai, and I was one of four in East Sendai, near the hospital, because I was still getting outpatient care. The other three weren’t getting care—Elder Knox and the other two, Williams and Olson, were just there because somebody had to be there and they were it for the time being. Knox—he was my senior companion and also the district leader—was probably also there to make sure I convalesced okay. He was kind of fatherly. But other than that, there was no connection for the rest of them to the hospital.
That changed though, and here’s the story I mean to tell you. Transfers came along as transfers did, Olson left for somewhere, and Elder Larsen took his place. Larsen was a fairly new missionary who had been serving up north in a part of the mission that was out of easy reach, especially once winter set in. As it turned out, he had had medical problems before his mission, and President Kwak got an uneasy feeling one day. He called Larsen to see what was up. “Nothing really,” Larsen said. “A little pain. That’s all.”
So the president pulled him in and sent him to the Sendai Kokuritsu Byooin. The doctors ran a few tests and told Larsen to lie low until the results came back.
Larsen was annoyed: just those Japanese doctors being over-cautious. Well, he had a point. After my bike accident, the doctors held me in the hospital a lot longer than American doctors would have. Nevertheless, orders were orders, and Larsen was confined to quarters. “They won’t see anything,” he said. “The tests won’t show anything, and then I can get back to work.”
So Mormon missionaries are like oxygen atoms: they don’t occur alone in nature. It’s O2 or sometimes O3 but never just plain O. In other words, Larsen couldn’t stay alone; one of us had to be with him at all times. Usually the duty fell to Williams because, after all, he was Larsen’s companion, but Knox and I also took our turns.
One day, when Williams had a few appointments to tend to, I accompanied him while Knox stayed with Larsen. We rode our bikes some distance to the west and followed up with a few investigators. The bulk of the time we spent with a man who, in America, we’d call an antique dealer. The Japanese word for his vocation was more like junk-seller. In any case, we met him in a small shop with wares hanging from the ceiling and piled up like leaning towers on the floor and crammed into every corner. The man was amiable enough, but it soon became apparent that his interest was more in the novelty of us Americans than in truth from God. We kind of realized he wasn’t going to become an investigator, and he kind of realized we weren’t going to become his new best friends, so we all started leaning in the direction of sayonara. But the man was gracious; he didn’t want to end on a sour note. He took out a stack of prints and told us to each pick one as a souvenir.
They were reproductions of wood-block prints depicting Japanese rural life in the previous century. They were beautifully rendered with vivid colors. I chose one that showed two men bent under loads of sticks, trudging up a snow-swept mountainside with a village by the seashore far below. It was as fine a souvenir as any missionary could ever want. Matted and framed, it would look splendid hanging over a mantle piece.
We bowed and arigato-ed many times over, then took our leave. It was time to get back to our house, and we had a half-hour bike ride ahead. Woo-wee, I was pumped. Beautiful, beautiful souvenir.
Not more than five minutes into the ride—if that long—a voice inside my head said, “That’s not yours, you know. You came on this trip in Larsen’s place.”
I didn’t like the sound of that voice.
But it wasn’t strident or insistent. I heard it once, then didn’t hear it again. Whoever was speaking knew how to let things simmer…
“All right,” I said. “All right. I will offer the print to Larsen.”
Of course, there was the possibility that he might accept.
There had to be a way to make the offer that would both satisfy that little voice and also allow me to keep the print. I’ve always been handy with words. The right words—the right tone, the right facial expression and meaningful pause—would do the trick. I could offer the gift selflessly and yet ensure that Larsen would recognize what a sacrifice it was and insist that I keep it. I knew I could do it. I had time to figure it out: we were still twenty minutes from home. It was just a matter of the right words.
Then the voice again: “If you are going to show love, show it all the way.”
Well.
Well, the voice was God, and God was onto me… Of course He was.
What He said was true. Of course it was.
I sighed and let go. This beautiful, beautiful thing was no longer mine. It hadn’t been from the start. I opened my hand and let it go.
When we came to the house, I pulled past Williams, parked my bike and ran inside. “Elder Larsen,” I said, “the junk-seller asked me to give this to you.”
Williams came in behind me and heard what I said. He kept mum.
Larsen looked at the print and let out a whoop. He took it with both hands. “My first souvenir! Wow! That’s really cool! My first souvenir!”
You know, here’s the thing with God. He works and works and works on getting us to act halfway decent, and then when we finally…finally…catch on, He gives us a big fat A-Plus Gold-Star. Williams took me aside and said, “That was really good what you did.” Meanwhile God was filling me up with such a measure of joy that I could barely stand it. It wasn’t me! Left to myself, I wouldn’t have done it. God had had to coax me every step of the way. I didn’t deserve the credit.
But a cushion of joy had me floating for the rest of the night. Sweeter than any fruit, warmer than any blanket, more beautiful than any Japanese print, be it a reproduction or original. In the end all I could say was, “Thank you, God, for saving me from selfishness.”
In a few days, I had to thank God all over again. Larsen’s test results came back, and he was sent home on the next flight. God knew. Way back when it was just a “nothing really” kind of pain, God knew. And He wasn’t going to send Larsen home without a souvenir.
Now you might be saying, “You lied to Larsen: the junk-seller didn’t ask you to give him the print.”
No, I think he did—he just didn’t realize it. He was the giver; I was the courier. We just didn’t know it at the time. I don’t regret my choice of words: that was only part I got right without God having to steer me.
They say God is love. Yes, that is what He is. Perfect, seamless, practical, merciful, double-edged, implacable love. I don’t always get it, but that day, thank God, I did.
Merry Christmas, everyone! And a Great New Year!
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