Thoughts on Mormonism

Last night at cena my host father, Sergio, asked me if I had a religion. It’s a bit of a loaded question in this country… But I told him the truth (that I don’t have one…) and he didn’t seem to mind. I told him also that my parents were a little like Buddhists (I don’t quite have the words to explain the ashram in Spanish…) and he thought that was funny. Then he launched in to a story about how when he was young, his grandmother wanted him to be a Catholic priest. He attended the seminary for 13 (I think) years, and then, when he was 18 he decided to become a Mormon. He said that some of the priests were good men, but that a lot of them were “un poco más mal”—what I gather to be his way of saying that they were corrupt, and he said that he had a lot of doubts that the Catholic faith couldn’t answer for him. He was attracted to what life outside of the church could offer him, and so he decided to take another path.

The he told me all about how much work it is to be a Mormon—it sounded to me (though I didn’t catch everything) like he was an administrator in the church in some way, and possibly a missionary of some kind. He’s traveled extensively to all parts of Mexico, and has been to the US on church business something like 11 times. These trips have been over long weekends, and he said that at the peak he was doing this twice a month. He would go and have meetings—I suppose with other church administrators in other places—but also he said that he was involved in helping families in three ways: spiritually, mentally and physically. I assume that means that he helped them to understand how to apply the Mormon faith to their everyday lives. He said that it’s been a hard life—no alcohol, no caffeine etc, and other things, but it seems that he’s come through wonderfully. He said that it was always most important to him that relations within his family were good, because otherwise, how could he go and speak to other families and give them advice on how to live their lives? As far as I can tell, seeing only brief interactions with the extended family, he’s done a very good job of achieving that goal.

Sergio continues to be a very interesting man, with a great energy and sense of humor. I’ll miss our conversations…

It's almost time to come home! I'm ready and not ready... as per usual. I feel like I'm just getting the hang of conversation, but I'm also kinda tired of Mexico. I want to come back some time to visit!