An experience like no other

“You only get one chance to serve a mission; it is your responsibility, your duty, to use it to its fullest; to give every last ounce of energy until you collapse in exhaustion at the end of it. All the hardships, all the tears, all the hard work will be looked back upon as the best thing you’ve ever done, not because you enjoyed it, not because you baptized everyone, but because you gave it everything you had, even when you didn’t think you could, and especially when you didn’t want to. Live you mission to your fullest, work harder than you’ve ever worked before. Let people know that this is the most important thing in the world to you…If you do not run until you have nothing left to give, and then keep on going anyway; cry and pray and work and sweat and plead until you are so drained that all you can do is turn to the Lord; if you don’t do this, then these people will not come to this joy because of you—their failure to come to Christ will be partially upon your head. Come out of your mission proud of what you’ve done, and this experience will bless the rest of your life.”

—Jeffery R. Holland

When most people think of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) two images typically come to mind. The first is a man married to multiple wives with enough kids to fill a basketball team. The second is typically of young men—usually in a pair—wearing suits and ties and a black and white name tag that says “Elder”.

While the church and its faithful members have not practiced polygamy since 1890, we still have missionaries going out into the world, door to door sharing the message that Christ lives and He is our Savior.

I used to be one of those missionaries. It’s been 16 years now—WOW!—but there are times when I feel like I have just stepped off the plane in Grand Rapids to return home. For me, serving a mission had been a lifelong goal since I was about 8-years-old. While most kids thought of becoming firefighters or doctors, I thought about putting on a suit and tie and heading off to some far away country to teach the doctrine of Christ. I guess you can say I was indoctrinated to the concept of serving a mission. On my Dad’s side of the family, the LDS side, I’ve had nine cousins serve a mission in various parts of the world. My grandmother, Grandma Brown, my Dad’s mom, served several missions herself in Washington D.C. and Chicago. In Sunday school I grew up belting out primary songs like “I Hope They Call Me on a Mission” and “I Want to Be a Missionary Now.” As a young man we practiced teaching—at that time—the missionary discussions. Sometimes I would be paired up with an older boy and we would have to practice teaching scripted lessons to the other boys in our group. Sometimes we would have to memorize certain scriptures or recite certain church events by memory.

It was safe to say I was exposed to plenty of “pre-mission” experiences.

But despite this apparent “grooming” I knew from very early on that I wanted to be a real missionary. I wanted to move pass the singing and the practiced lessons and get out into the field and “teach and preach and work as missionaries do.” My time finally came in 2005. I graduated in June the year prior and like most of my classmates I was preparing for the next step after high school. I went to work full-time as a maintenance technician at the nursing home my dad ran to save money. As some waited to hear about their early admission to their school of choice, I filled out my missionary recommendation application, which asked questions about where I lived and with whom; my schooling, my current occupation and how many years of foreign language studies did I have. Instead of requiring a $60 nonrefundable processing fee, my application required I attach a photo of myself dressed in a white shirt, suit and tie. At that point the ball was really rolling.

I went through a battery of physicals with my doctors and interviews with my church leaders. By the end of September, after saying my final goodbyes to my childhood friends as they went off to study at Michigan State, I was ready to turn in my paperwork.

I was now in the bull pen waiting to see which beast I was going to draw.

The wait was excruciatingly long. Like the early snow that fell that October, I felt like I was drifting with no real sense of purpose. All I did was work and come home, work and come home, work and come home. On Fridays I had some relief by having the privilege of taking (my now wife) girlfriend Gabby out on a date with her twin sister and her boyfriend. Watching a movie, going out for a bite to eat or attending the high school football games were nice distractions, but it couldn’t completely erase the tingling in the back of my head that I was ready to get the show on the road.

Mercifully the wait came to an end about a week and a half before Thanksgiving. It was Saturday and we had returned home from our weekend grocery run. After trying to unload the heaping pile of bags in one trip, I checked the mailbox. This part had become part of my daily routine. I had grown accustomed to finding it empty most of the time. Any mail that I did find were either bills for my parents or unsolicited credit card offers with my name on them now that I had turned 19. But when I opened the mailbox on this day there was a large, white envelop stuffed inside.

Greedily I pulled it out. A rush of excitement and fear rolled over me. The packet was face down with only a blank back staring at me. Could this actually be it? I thought. Eagerly I flipped it over and stamped in the top right hand corner, in a familiar blue lettering was: From the Missionary Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the middle printed in black was my name and address. This was it. The wait was over and God Himself had a message for me.

I rushed everybody inside, flinging the last of the grocery bags over my shoulder. I waved for my mom to get in the door as she tried to read the rest of the mail in the mailbox.

“Those are just bills that will make you mad,” I said. “You can yell at Dad later about them. C’mon!”

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’,” she said shuffling her feet so as not to slip on wet snow and smiling.

“Let’s get in the living room!” I shouted. I kicked one boot off on the rug and hopped halfway to the kitchen before I could get the other one off.

“Wait for me!” shouted Dad, “I got to pee first!”

Of all the times to have a small bladder!

I sat on the bench in our living room, rocking the packet in my hands. This was going to better than any birthday or Christmas present I had ever had. Mom and Brody made their way and sat on the couch. Mom had a camera in her hand while Brody plucked at his guitar.

“C’mon, Dad!” I shouted.

From down the hall I heard the toilet flush and the door open. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” He circled in, snatching a mini Snickers bar from the bowl of leftover Halloween candy, and took his seat in his favorite chair. “I’m here. Let’s do this!”

Without hesitation I ripped the back of the packet open. I pulled out a small blue and white booklet with a compass printed on the front. It read “Mission Information”. Underneath it was single page letter addressed to my by the First Presidency, the highest order of leaders of our church. It read:

“Dear Elder Crider, you are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Chile Santiago East Mission. It is anticipated that you will serve for a period of 24 months.

“You should report to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah on Wednesday, 9 February 2005. You will learn to preach the gospel in Spanish.

“You have been recommended as one worthy to represent the Lord as a minister of the restored gospel. You will be an official representative of the Church. As such, you will be expected to maintain highest standards of conduct and appearance by keeping the commandments, living mission rules, and following the counsel of your mission president.

“You will also be expected to devote all your time and attention to serving the Lord, leaving behind all other personal affairs. As you do these things, the Lord will bless you and you will become an effective advocate and messenger of the truth We place in you our confidence and pray that the Lord will help you meet your responsibilities.

“The Lord will reward for the goodness of your life. Greater blessings and more happiness than you have yet experienced await you as you humbly and prayerfully serve the Lord in this labor of love among His children.

“We ask that you please send your written acceptance promptly, endorsed by your bishop.

“Sincerely, Gordon B. Hinckley, President.”

As I finished reading the last bits of the letter aloud, I slowly realized the room had grown quieter. Brody stopped plucking his guitar strings. The camera Mom was holding had shut itself off, and Dad’s Snickers bar remained uneaten.

When I looked up eventually, Dad could only say, “Chile’s so far away.”

He was right. From where we lived Chile was 5,330 miles. There would come a time latter in my mission where I would joke with my parents that if I went any further south I would be teaching the gospel to penguins in Antartica.

The initial shock soon wore off on everyone and turned to excitement and then to realizing that the years and months of planning and preparing were going to turn into actual practice in just a few short months. I spent most of my time from then on studying the booklet that came with my letter. It had details about my mission field, that is was the smallest mission in the entire world only 20 miles long and seven miles wide. It was in the heart of Chile’s capital, Santiago, a city with a population of 5 million residents. There was a map that listed all of the different areas of the mission, its boundaries and where the mission office was located. There were also details about my mission president, a brother named Brad R. Wilcox. There was a photo of him and his wife and their four children. A few paragraphs said that he was a professor at Brigham Young University. He had served a mission in Chile, in the Viña del Mar Mission. His wife Deb was a registered nurse and also a returned missionary who had served in Guatemala, and that the family had been serving as Mission President and Companion since 2003. By the time February came around I felt I knew all I could about where I was going to serve.

We said our goodbyes on February 8, Mom’s birthday and the day before I had to report to the MTC. We decided as a family it would be easier and more economically mindful if I flew out to Provo by myself and stayed with one of my Crider cousins living out there. We also felt it would be easier to shed our tears a day earlier instead of in front of a bunch of strangers we didn’t know.

Our planning worked out perfectly. My cousin Chad picked me up. He served his mission in the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain. During the drive back to his house he told me what to expect about learning a foreign language and how our last name will no longer be pronounced as “Cry-der” but “Krie-der”. I phoned home to let everyone know I made it safely and to hear their voices one last time. The next day I went out to breakfast with Chad and his family. We met up with his brother Scott and his wife and kids. Scott brought with him a bag of old ties he had on his mission and told me to pick one out.

All of the ties were your typical block and muted color ties—missionary ties. However, there was one that stood out among them. A dark navy tie had a printed scene from “Singing in the Rain” on it. This was the tie I chose.

After breakfast things moved fast. We made it to the MTC, watching for a minute as card load after car load of new missionaries and their families unpacked and walked in through the front doors with their luggage rolling behind them. I found my way into that line accompanied by my cousins and passed through the doors to my new home for the next eight weeks.

We were directed to the front counter, making this large training campus feel more like an overgrown hotel. The desk clerk asked for my name. She looked through her computer, double checked a printed sheet and stepped away from the desk for a minute. When she returned in her hand were the two things I had been waiting for years to put on: my missionary name tags.

She handed them, gave me a few instructions about where to go next in line and to just follow the crowd as it snaked its way further back into the reception hall. We followed the crowd in a jerky motion. Stopping and then moving, stopping and then moving. As we drew closer I could see what was causing our little stop motion progression. A pair of senior missionaries (usually an older, married couple) we placing a single orange sticker on each missionary’s name tag as he or she passed by.

When I received my sticker I heard Chad laugh behind me and say to Scott, “Look, Cody’s got his dork dot!”

The “dork dot”, this circular orange sticker on my name tag, signified that I was brand new missionary—a baby-nary— and that campus security and the instructors at the MTC should keep an eye out for me in case I wandered off down the wrong hallway or needed other assistance.

We continued to follow the line into a theater where we eventually saw a video that had a series of interviews with currently serving missionaries. In the background played one of our church’s most familiar hymns, “Called to Serve”. It was designed to get us pumped up to embark on this adventure. I also think it was designed to help missionaries and their parents prepare for the final farewells that came next.

I didn’t need anymore charging. I had my suit and tie on. I had my luggage filled with extra clothes and shoe shine. And most importantly I had my name tags complete with my “dork dot.” I hugged Chad, Scott and their wives, listening to the crying and “we’ll miss yous”, and then followed as one of the ushers showed me to where I would be living for the next eight weeks.

The MTC was a challenging experience in itself. I wish I had the room to write about what all took place there, but I feel that a chapter or few in book would be more appropriate. However, I can tell you this: first, it was one of the most spiritually uplifting places I have ever been. And second, my district, district 40-C, consisted of some of the best young men I had ever had the privilege to meet. There were Elders Beckstrem and Christensen who were assigned to serve in Spain, and would be at the MTC in Provo for only four weeks before transferring and finishing their training at the MTC in Madrid. Then there was the trio of Elders Brewer, Simmons and Gale. All three were assigned to stateside missions. And finally there were Elders Larson and Teel, both assigned to serve in my mission. They would become two of my closest friends, not just at the MTC and in the field, but for life as well.

Over the next eight weeks we spent our time in classes trying to learn some form of Spanish and the newly designed missionary lessons. Gone were the days of memorizing scripture and wrote text, the likes of which I experienced in my home youth group. Now we were to truly study scripture and doctrine and teach by the Holy Ghost. The lessons in our book, “Preach My Gospel”, were more like outlines and each had various designs depending on the amount of time you had to teach. There were five-minute lesson plans, 10-minute lesson plans and 45-minute lessons. When we weren’t studying scriptures and stumbling over our limited Spanish vocabulary, we spent time listening to lectures—or as we call them in the church “talks”—twice a week. I always looked forward to those talks. Usually our speakers would be a member of the general leadership, and they knew exactly what to say to keep us going day in and day out.

By the end of my term I was ready to hit the field, and on April 12, 2005 I found myself finally in Chile’s capital of Santiago. Despite a 14-hour flight, I couldn’t sleep a wink on the way down. I was mixed with excitement and nervousness. This was it, this was the moment of truth. I was finally going to be a full-time missionary in the field doing the things that I sang about as a child. I was going to be in God’s army doing His work.

I didn’t know what to expect when we landed in Santiago. There were 12 Elders total in our group, every single one of us heading to the same mission. From the airport the city looked like any other major city I’d ever seen on TV. And with most of the signs written in both English and Spanish I felt like I was still in the United States.

That changed though when I got to the customs counter.

On the plane they’d given us a questionnaire to fill out. Did we have any fruits or vegetables in our luggage? Are you bringing any animals into the country? What is your purpose for being here? That sort of thing. As I waited for my turn to reach the counter I realized that I’d left my questionnaire on the plane. I was too distracted to remember to bring it with me. No big deal, I thought, I’ll just explain what happened and that I’m not bringing in anything that I shouldn’t be. Simple enough, only there was a small problem: I didn’t know how to explain any of this in Spanish.

The customs agent waved for me to step forward. He was a slender man with a thick mustache. “Papeles, por favor,” he said to me. I stared at him, not saying a word. “Papeles, papers, please.” I shook my head. I didn’t know what else to do. They don’t teach you how to say, “Sorry, like a bonehead I left my papers on the plane. I’m not carrying anything illegal and I’m not a terrorist or anything. I’m simply a young man here to serve a mission.”

He stared at me for another minute. Finally, I confessed to the man in English that I had accidentally left them on the plane. “Sorry,” I said.

He looked me up and down. Then, with a straight face, he ran his finger across his throat signifying I was a dead man. I felt the blood run out of my face. All I could think of was that I was going to be the first missionary in the history of modern missionary service to not make to the field because I was going to be detained. Any minute now security was going to snatch me up and it was going to be bye-bye Elder Crider. Sensing my rising panic the agent raised his hands and smile.

“Está bien, po. It’s alright. Pasa.” He signaled for me to move forward and then said something in Spanish. I only nodded and then hurried off to find my group before he changed his mind and decided to rat me out.

I had been in the country less than 20 minutes and already I had learned a valuable lesson about paying attention.

We pushed on to the luggage carousel. One by one we each plucked our belongings off the conveyor, when we heard the booming voice from above. A voice we would come to love forever.

“¡Hola Élderes!”

Looking down at us was President Wilcox with a smile as long as the day’s sun. He rushed down to us and as he neared he snatched us up in a bear hug. He read each of our name tags aloud, introduced us to Sister Wilcox and then divided us into two groups. We piled into the each of the mission vehicles and were on our way to the mission home.

When we arrived he took us into his office one by one for a quick, individualized interview. He verified that we were who we said we were, that we came from the places we said we were from on our applications, and told us to buckle up for the best ride of our lifetimes.

Soon after we were paired with our trainers. Most of these were missionaries that had been out for a year or more. They were experienced in both Spanish and teaching the gospel, and it was their job to show us the ropes.

I was paired with Elder Kingsford, and let me tell you this, he was one of the best missionaries I have ever known. I never saw him in any mood other than happy. He was patient with me and worked with me every day in developing my Spanish and teaching skills. He never got frustrated with me when I would mess up or take my time trying to pronounce the gospel terminology. And he never let me rest. He had one rule and that rule was to try and talk with everybody wherever we were. If we were on the bus heading somewhere he’d make me take an empty seat next to a stranger and try and strike up a conversation. If the bus was crowed, he tapped the shoulder of the person beside him and begin talking about Jesus Christ and God. He also always seemed to have a spare Book of Mormon in his back pocket, just for that special person.

Kingsford was awesome, and I can definitely say he helped set the tone for my mission.

Like the MTC, I could expend thousands of words and pages describing my adventures. Some day I will do that, but not here. For now let me just say my mission was everything I hoped it would be and more.

As a missionary I helped a young man follow through with his decision to be baptized in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during one of the most difficult times of his life. Cristóbal had come to the gospel through his girlfriend, Claudia. She had been a member for years and hoped to some day marry this young man. At first he treated the missionary lessons as sort of a joke, something to make his palola (girlfriend) happy for the time being. But over the weeks and months that followed, he soon developed a testimony that this was the church he was meant to belong.

Cristóbal was a rare type. He was one of those that no matter what he did he succeeded. He also made the people around him better. I liked him instantly.

The greatest memory I have of him came the week of his baptism. My companion at that time, Elder Burch, and I decided that we wanted to do one final lesson to help him prepare for his baptism interview. Usually in those, a potential member is asked if they have a testimony of the things that the are learning, and do they understand the commitment they are preparing to make. We wanted to make sure our man was solid, but as we headed toward his house we had the feeling that something was amiss.

At that time Cristóbal was studying mechanical engineering. He was at the University of Chile. Coming from a fairly affluent family, his father paid for his education on the condition that his grades didn’t drop. Unfortunately, the week of his baptism, Cristóbl tanked one of his biggest exams that would set the course for a prestigious internship. Suddenly, things clicked, and I knew what he was going to say before he even said it.

His father blamed this misstep on us, saying that all the time he had been with “los Mormones” was a distraction and that he needed to stop the visits. Cristóbal tried to defend us by telling his dad it was one test and it wasn’t because of the missionaries that he failed. The classes were hard and he had a bad week. But still his dad wouldn’t budge, and then he gave him this ultimatum: drop the missionaries and their teachings or I drop your funding.

Cristóbal told us all of this with his eyes looking at the floor. His mood matched the living room—dark and sad…and maybe a bit ashamed—but as I sat there I knew that this was a young man truly wanted to be part of this church and wanted the blessings that would come with being baptized.

Burch and I both testified that if he were willing to commit and go through with his baptism then Heavenly Father would make sure he would receive the education he desired. We also told him there were blessings beyond what he could imagine waiting for him. After a while he started to lift his head up. Soon his eyes met ours, and eventually he pulled back the curtains letting light into the room. By the end of our visit Cristóbal promised to be at his interview and he would deal with his father later.

He made good on both ends. He was baptized on that Saturday as planned, and his father did follow through and not pay for the rest of his schooling. However, that didn’t slow him down. A year after his baptism I met Cristóbal at a multi-unit conference put on by President Wilcox. He gave my companion and I a ride home to my new area. On that trip he explained that he had proposed to Claudia. I congratulated him.

“Espera,” he told me. “She has a new condition now. She wants me to go on a mission.”

I thought Burch and I were an awesome pair of missionaries, but next to Claudia we were amateurs. She knew she wanted a man that understood the gospel the way she did. She also understood the value of serving a mission and the blessings that it could bring to her future family. Cristóbal understood that Claudia was a once-in-a-lifetime type of woman, and so he was working on getting his paperwork together.

It would be almost another year before I heard from Cristóbal again. I had been home a few months trying to organize my next steps with school, work when I received an email. He had been called to serve in Columbia and he couldn’t wait to get started. I was happy for him then and I am happy for him now. On Facebook I see that today he and Claudia have two children, a boy and a girl; he also finished school and now owns an automotive company in Santiago.

Stories like Cristóbal’s are the things that I remember the easiest now that I’ve been home for so long. Every once and a while I look back at my journals from then (almost four books’ worth). Most of what is written in there is the day-to-day stuff, but then there is a golden nugget that shakes loose; something like remembering when I was a district leader overseeing a group of 10 missionaries. Or serving in the mission office as the church historian and playing games in the evening with the Santiago West Mission office elders. We played Risk back then and I was a three-time champion against the West Mission elders. These are the things that make me smile.

And yet there is something else not written in any book but engraved inside me that makes me say, “That was the best two years of my life.” That something is the fact that I served my Heavenly Father and I served Him with everything I had. I learned to love a people I had never known before. I learned to love a language that was once foreign to me but now is familiar and welcomed as my mother tongue. And if a fire were to break out in the morning and take away my journals and other keepsakes from my mission, it is the feeling of knowing I served with honor that will stay with me.

My “Singing in the Rain” tie hangs in my closet patiently waiting to be passed over to my son when he goes on his mission. I still talk with President Wilcox. Over the course of my mission he had become so much more than a leader for me. He become a mentor and one of my best friends. He helped comfort me when my parents died, and he has been an influence for good in encouraging me to follow my dream of being a writer. I follow Elder Larsen and Elder Teel on social media, commenting from time to time on pictures they post or news about exciting life events. I keep a watchful eye over some of my dear Chileans and talk with them over the phone every few years.

I know at some point I will write a memoir about my mission. It will have more details that what you’ve read here. I wish I could give them all to you now but I guess you’ll just have to wait and be patient. But I do want to leave you with this thought: on September 18 Chile celebrated its independence day. One sister whose family I had become very close with posted “I didn’t ask to be Chilean, I was just lucky!” I can say something similar: “I didn’t choose to serve my mission in Chile, I was just blessed to serve there!”