Steve Crandall

Feb. 1980-Feb. 1982

I was intensely disappointed when I received my call to the Bolivia La Paz mission.  I had found Spanish in high school to be too easy, and I wanted something more exotic and challenging for my mission experience.  Still, my disappointment lasted about two minutes, and I began eagerly learning all I could about Bolivia.  It was Christmas eve, 1979, and my traditional visit that night to my grandparents' house added to the excitement, as I was the first of all the cousins to receive a mission call.  

If you knew me, you won't be surprised that some of the most special experiences of my mission involved music.  There were 7 elders in my MTC district, and all of us had some music in our backgrounds, so singing together was a daily highlight.  The first night of my mission, our instructors told us that, if we desired, we could include hymn singing with our opening and closing prayers for class.  I wanted to do so, of course, and was pleased when the others seemed also to want to sing.  As we sang that night, first all in unison, and then splitting into full harmony as we realized the talent around us, my heart was lifted up as it has rarely ever been in my life.  I still am touched when I remember singing 'Permaneced, es noche ya' with my brothers in the MTC as we would finish a day.  

During my first Christmas in Bolivia, Pres. Hill gave us permission to have several elders and sisters gather occasionally to form a choir.  We practiced Christmas hymns and carols, and sang around the city a few times, including once at a radio broadcast program at San Francisco.  I particularly remember one time when we were caroling on the Prado.  We were actually singing in one of the underground shop areas.  A woman and her son, about 10 years old, stopped and listened to us for several minutes.  I remember the boy mouthing the words to a couple of the songs we sang, and for a moment, his eyes moistened and a few tear drops slid down his cheeks.  I'll never know what he was thinking or what in particular touched him, but I know that at that moment, the Spirit was there strongly.  

A defining Bolivian moment for me came just about one week after I arrived in the country.  My first area was Uncía.  It was Labor Day, May 1, and my companions and I were visiting branch members who were celebrating the holiday.  At one home, it was discovered that their young son, about 7 years old, was missing.  When a quick search of the area was unsuccessful, we and some of the people in the house split up to look further.  I went with my senior companion, Elder Ed Brown, to an area just on the edge of the city to look.  Just as we reached the place, all the lights in the city went out, a total black-out.  It was late and dark, and the sky was completely cloudless, and moonless.  At that altitude, so secluded, with no ground light, no clouds, and no moon, there was nothing but starlight around us.  And what a sight it was!  It was as if the entire sky had been carpeted with a diamond carpet, the earth was wrapped in a blanket of jewels.  My feelings were varied.  I was awed.  I felt small but strangely powerful.  Mostly I felt safe and secure, certain that being there at that moment was the exact right place for me, and that I was an important part of God's universe.  (Just so you know, the missing young boy was safe.  He'd tagged along with an older neighbor boy to the movie.  When the power went off, the movie stopped and they went home.)

Numerous other people and moments come to mind as I remember my mission, most of them wonderful but a few of them intensely challenging.  Playing 'Uno' on a freezing train to Tupiza; indoor rain in our new pension in Ciudad Satélite; overlooking a cloud-filled 'bowl' from La Ceja; baptizing at the warm springs outside of Uncía or in the river at Entre Rios; Monday night Family Night at the orphanage in Tupiza; blessing an elderly convert with intense eye pain, then taking him to a clinic, which eventually led to him losing his eye but being rescued from the pain; waiting every Wednesday in Villa Adela for the Lufthansa flight to land; playing frisbee at a ward picnic with a young investigator who almost immediately had an amazing knack for it; filling out a baptismal recommendation and learning that the couple (with one son) that we were baptizing also had five other children who had died before the age of three; walking back home from Quiriza; waiting for weeks as letters from home were lost time after time; feeling so far away from the world as we walked in the eucalyptus grove at Pura Pura; shouting on weekly phone calls to the mission office from the phone company in Tupiza; learning that our mission was just a small part of life as Elders Bons and Drennen were called to another place; spending a wonderful few days in Cuzco and Machu Picchu with Elders Brandley and Marx, and Sisters Fisher and Greenhalgh.  I wouldn't change a minute of it.  

Life after my mission took me to BYU where I graduated with a degree in psychology and Spanish. I've changed careers a few times, working as a counselor for abused adolescents, a retail business manager, a high school teacher, and now as a professional dog trainer.  Shortly after graduation, I married a wonderful woman, but as I came to terms with myself as a gay man, it felt best to separate and then divorce.  We are, however, still friends and among each other's strongest supporters.  I am no longer a member of the Church, but I have great respect for it, and I am grateful for the things that my association with the Church has brought into my life. 

Outside of my work, a wonderful community choir in Philadelphia called Singing City occupies much of my time and attention.  Founded in 1948 as one of the first integrated choirs in America, it continues to provide wonderful music for places like prisons, rehabilitation facilities, etc., that often do not have access to musical connections.  I've been honored to be a member and board member of this choir since I moved to Philadelphia in 2005.

I think often about the foundation that the Church and my mission created for my life.  Without them, and my family, of course, I would be such a different person than I am.  More than anything else, my mission helped me understand and value people.  Prior to my mission, I was shy, perhaps even a bit reclusive.  But I found as I served, I could feel comfortable being myself but still interact with others, recognizing and appreciating who they were and how they felt.  I like to think that this has made my life, and the life of others around me, richer and more full of joy.  

Enrique Kidman Wayne Johnson