Preface

The 27 months I served as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints clearly became one of the water­shed events of my life. My mission has been a blessing to my family and me ever since.

It has now been 40 years since I went to Brazil. Through the years since my return Claudia and I have regularly attended mission­ary reunions, now held each year the night before April general con­ference, and have thereby maintained treasured associations with fellow missionaries, especial­ly with Hal and Virginia Johnson, my mission president and his wife.

Each year Claudia and I drive to Orem to attend our reunion. Recent reunions have featured a Brazilian feijoada dinner, reports on what people are up to, sometimes musical entertainment, visiting with old missionary associates (some of whom are actually starting to look old), and seeing our dear Sister Johnson. We feel the absence of Presi­dent Johnson, who passed away in December 2004, the day after Christmas. We miss him greatly.

With President Johnson now gone, perhaps it is a reminder of our own mortality and the need to transmit to future generations an acceptable record of the good things of our lives, the struggles and heartbreaks, the triumphs and joys. Surely my mission consisted of all of those and showed me growing up from boy to man and learning how to become a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Whatever the reason, I have felt strongly impressed in recent years a need to prepare my missionary journal for publication to my family. A part of me resists, since I happen to be the central character of the story. But it is a good story, one worthy of the telling, so I succumb to the promptings that have been both insis­tent and continuing.

My method of sharing the journal with my family is to post entries to this blog site exactly 40 years after they were originally written. The project will therefore take the next two-plus years.

In presenting my journal so publicly, I am taking the liberty of editing the original text of my mis­sion­ary journal. The changes are primarily of four types.

First, I am simplifying the wording and structure of convoluted or pedantic sentences, shifting at times from passive to active voice, and replacing noun constructions with simpler, more straightforward verbs. For example, on October 2, 1968, I originally wrote: “Today was interesting all the way, including attendance at our first leader­ship meeting, assignment to our permanent districts, and the gaining of new companions.” My revision: “Today was an interesting day. We attended our first leadership meet­ing, were assigned to our per­manent districts, and gained new com­panions.”

Second, I am sometimes adjusting wording to clarify what was ob­viously my original intended meaning. For example, on November 11, 1970, I had written: “This afternoon I wrote a letter to President Johnson nomi­nating Edmilson as worthy and ready to be ordained an elder. I even sug­gested it be taken care of next week when he is in the North even though it could not be voted on until January because of the needs of the branch.” The vote in January had nothing to do with the needs of the branch, so I corrected the wording in the second sentence: “I even sug­gested be­cause of the needs of the branch that it be taken care of next week when he is in the North even though it could not be voted on until January.”

Third, in the interests of readability I am occasionally altering para­graphing, usually dividing long paragraphs into two or more shorter ones; adjusting punctuation to be more in harmony with currently accepted usage; and treating titles of books, magazines, and movies more consistently, placing them all in italics rather than sometimes in italics and sometimes in quotation marks.

And fourth, I am incorporating into the text copies of letters that I had written to my family or others, or received from them. Of the 39 existing letters or excerpts from letters from the years of my mission, 13 of them were originally quoted in the journal; 2 of them I decided to leave out because they simply contained procedural instructions (one from President Hal R. Johnson dated July 1, 1970, about the branch conference held later that month, one from Sister Virginia Johnson dated July 4, 1970, telling me how to order supplies to sup­port the Primary we had organized in the Maceió Branch); the re­maining 24 letters have been added.

I have tried to avoid any changes that would either add to or delete from the intent of what I originally wrote.

The months of initial work on this project have brought a flood of pleasant memories and moments of overwhelming saudades for a land and a people I came to love dearly. Brazil, and particularly Maceió, where I presided over the branch for the final seven months of my mission, is where I left my heart.

I call it the Waters of Mormon principle, referring to the place where Alma taught and baptized the people of wicked king Noah. “Behold, here are the waters of Mormon,” Alma said unto them, “and now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light;

“Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as wit­nesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be num­bered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life—

“Now I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will served him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you?

“And now when the people had heard these words, they clapped their hands for joy, and exclaimed: This is the desire of our hearts” (Mosiah 18:8–11).

And thus it is in special places that become sacred to us, hallowed by the spiritual experiences we have had there: “The place of Mor­mon, the waters of Mormon, the forest of Mormon, how beautiful are they to the eyes of them who there came to the knowledge of their Redeemer; yea, and how blessed are they, for they shall sing to his praise forever” (Mosiah 18:30).

Maceió—indeed, all of Brazil—is like that for me, as my work on this journal has re­minded me anew.