MISSIONARY

Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m blogging about the propagator not the position.

Late Thursday evening, as I was enjoying my privately chauffeured transit ride home (truthfully, there was one other passenger on the bus, but he was tucked away in the back), three young (19-20ish) men encroached on my exclusive ride. They were very well groomed and decked out in suit-n-tie.

Mormons.

Immediately, they engaged in their divide n’ conquer tactic. It’s funny how at ease I was with them commandeering the bus. Surely, I would have been put on edge by this action with any other trio of boys.

As each of the boys pursued a conversation with, the bus driver, the other passenger and myself, I couldn’t help but smile at the play that was unfolding before me.

He politely asked how I was, where I was coming from and where I was going. I openly told him, playing the part that was scripted for me. We made small talk as the bus rolled on. In between our conversational pauses I overhead segments of the other conversations, the same questions were being answered.

At this moment I decided to adlib, I wanted to deviate from the predictable script that lay before me.

“Are you Mormon?” I asked.

He was thrown, but only for a moment. He nodded.

It was my turn to control the direction of this conversation. I became the interviewer.

He was from Utah, one year into his two-year mission, the boy with the bus driver was six months in and the boy at the back was a year in. He learned Spanish for his mission. He’d been to Mexico once, on a family trip, but was not fluent in the language then. He was “called to service” after his first year of University, and he would return upon completion of his mission.

I could hear talk of scripture and God emanating from the back.

I was open to conversation, but I was not open to aggressive proselytism.

I believe that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. However, I do not believe the bible (or any other Religious Resource) should be used a weapon against people's differing beliefs.

I am fully aware of my rights - The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 18 states: No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.

I pulled out my trump card, Elder Schulzka, my distant familial connection, through marriage, to the Mormon religion. The subtext of the Schulzka conversation was to make my new acquaintance aware that I understood his religious beliefs, respected his religious beliefs, but would not be converting to his religious beliefs.

Here’s my motto on religion: Don’t tell me that I’m going to hell, and I won’t tell you that you’ll be reincarnated into a worm.

I shook his hand and wished him good luck on his mission. I realized how impossible being a missionary would be in a metropolis like Toronto. I’m not saying that what he is doing is fruitless, just extremely difficult.

I felt for him, he was a very nice boy.