Trip to the Zoo (The Adventures of Elder Elder and Elder Benjamin)

Trip to the Zoo

January 22, 1990 (Monday)

P-Day!!! On this nice cold day, Elder Benjamin and I decided to go to the zoo. No Elder Shumway, and no Elder Riley. Just Elder Benjamin and me. We left around 10AM in our jeans and heavyish coats.

“Who could have known Taegu had a zoo?” said Elder Benjamin as we walked to our bus stop. “What don’t they have?”

“They don’t have one of our temples,” I said.

“Not yet. But just wait. One day there will be a temple here, bigger than the one in Seoul.”

“We’ll see.”

“Hey,” said Elder Benjamin. “Aren’t you excited? I just love zoos. They’ve got lions and tigers.”

“Yeah, and bears, too.” I think he was more excited about this than I was. I would much rather stay in our apartment and work on my letters, as I was always behind.

And I had already had my fill of zoos, too. My parents loved them. We went to Atlanta, Greenville, South Carolina, and even San Diego. And this zoo would be smaller than all of them. With no charge to enter, I didn’t have high hopes.

“Imagine being on Noah’s Ark,” said Elder Benjamin. “It was like a big zoo, but for survival, not for show. Do you ever wonder: when the animals received the call, how did they knew when and where to go?”

“Wait — what call?”

He suddenly stopped and turned around to explain, but then at that very moment, a car backed out of a small alleyway zooming in front of us at high speed, not pausing at all on the sidewalk we were about to walk on.

Elder Benjamin and I looked at each. “What the heck?” he said.

“Interesting. How did you know to stop walking?” I asked. “That guy would have hit us.”

“It must have been the Spirit. It made me stop. Whoa.”

“I didn’t see him coming.”

“Neither did I,” he said. “The Adversary must be working hard. But the Spirit is protecting us.”

“Or it was just a guy not paying attention. I’m glad you stopped.”

Elder Benjamin resumed walking. “Oh, so you were asking about the call?”

“Oh yeah. I thought Noah was supposed to round up all the animals.”

“Yeah. Two, and or seven of each kind. Do you know how many that would be in total? Thousands. There’s no way he could have done that by himself. That’s why God told the animals to go to Noah. In Genesis 7, it says that the animals went into the ark just as the rains were about to hit.”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “Noah opened the door and let them in.”

Again he stopped in his tracks, right as we were about to cross another alleyway, and this time a motorbike came whooshing past. But this time, it happened behind Elder Benjamin’s back, and he continued talking. “Just think about it. Those elephants walk pretty slow, and all the way from Africa. God must have called them years before the other animals. And what about the polar bears?”

He went on but I wasn’t listening. I was just in awe that he had done it again, and he didn’t even know it. Several onlookers looked at me, and at the bike that still whooshed down the street, and they stared at the oblivious Elder Benjamin. How did he not hear the bike?

I tried to interrupt him to let him know what had happened, but he was enjoying the miracle of the animals. I gave up trying to get his attention.

Eventually, he started walking again, we got on a bus, and then we arrived at Dalseong (달성) Park. Set upon a hill next to downtown, we went through an old Korean gate and entered the park. Tall buildings rose above the trees around us.

At the zoo, an circular path led to all the exhibits, and every now and then cross paths interrupted the middle area. The landscape looked impressive, but as I had expected, the animal exhibits seemed to be rather small.

We were practically the only ones there, probably because of the near-freezing temperatures. Elder Benjamin smiled and said, “Looks like we have the place to ourselves!”

I laughed, thinking about how many people were smarter than us.

We went off to the right, checking out the first exhibit. Birds in small enclosures surrounded by chainlink fence. To my surprise, there was a decent selection, representing all the colors of the rainbow. Elder Benjamin was excited, knowing what each species was, while to me they were just pretty birds.

They did have a peacock — at least I knew what that was.

Next came the monkeys. Or maybe they were chimpanzees. I didn’t know the difference. We talked with them, and they responded, seeming to enjoy our attention. They were in a slightly larger enclosure with chainlink fencing.

At this point, I could appreciate there being hardly anyone around, as we could go crazy with the monkeys. We were there longer than we probably should have been.

Next up — a water exhibit with a few birds, but not much else. Was something missing?

“So, Elder Benjamin,” I said. “Did you not see the bike that almost hit us back there?”

“It was a car,” he said.

“No. Not that. I mean after that. The second time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know,” I said. “When you stopped to talk about the animals being called to go to Noah’s Ark?”

“Oh yeah. That was some miracle, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, so you did see the bike.”

“What bike? I’m talking about the animals.”

“I see.” Maybe I could try again later.

Next up was a bear exhibit — a somewhat larger area, and no chainlink this time. Except, we didn’t see any bears.

“Well Elder Elder,” said Elder Benjamin. “Do you see any bears in there? I want to see a bear.”

“Nope. They’re probably inside where it’s warm.”

“Inside where?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Wherever they go when they’re tired? Maybe in that building behind those big rocks?”

“Oh, maybe.”

We continued walking around, but just like with the bears, there were no other big animals. No tigers, no lions, no elephants. Just a few small animals here and there. I suggested that we could go back to the monkeys or chimpanzees and play with them some more.

“I don’t know,” Elder Benjamin said. “I came to see lions and tigers and bears. Maybe we can find someone to help us out.”

That was the other thing. We didn’t see any zoo hands anywhere — just a couple of other random people, and yeah — I think we did see two other visitors who looked just as disappointed.

Elder Benjamin said, “Let’s go back to the tiger exhibit. I saw a building over there.”

“Okay,” I said. We went back, and Elder Benjamin was right. There was a mid-sized building attached to the side of the empty tiger exhibit. And no zoo-hands to be found. We walked around the building as much as we could, but there were no windows, and we couldn’t hear anything from inside. All we saw was a singular door — just a regular metal door you’d see on a shed or warehouse.

“Maybe we can find a trainer inside,” said Elder Benjamin. 

“I don’t think we’re supposed to go in there.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “If they wanted to keep us out, why would they put a door there? I’m just going to check to see if it’s locked.”

“Hmmm … the building that’s in the back with no signs saying ‘come in’?”

“I came here to see a tiger, so let’s go find someone.”

He walked toward the door, and then something hit me. I’m not sure what it was — a flash of everything at the same time. The chainlink fences everywhere? The absence of zoo hands? The fact that the building was attached to the tiger exhibit? The building’s relatively small size and the absence of some other alternative area where the tigers could be resting? The idea that we shouldn’t expect this zoo to keep dangerous doors locked?

“Elder Benjamin!” I ran past and got between him and the door. He was only a few seconds away from opening it. I said, “I had a sudden prompting that we need to leave this door shut. I think there’s something on the other side of this door, and it will not be happy to see us.”

“A tiger — right in there?” He backed away in silence, and then said, “Wow. That was close. Elder Elder, do you get the sense that something keeps trying to hurt us?”

“I’d say that’s a distinct possibility.” We started walking away.

Elder Benjamin continued, “Someone doesn’t like us doing the Lord’s work. Trying to take us out of the picture on our P-Day when our guard is down. But it won’t work.”

“No, it won’t,” I said.

“Okay. Let’s go home.”

“Sure,” I said. “I still got some hot chocolate left. We could go warm up. Maybe come back here later in the spring.”

“Sounds good, if we’re still tongbanjas.”

As we walked, I put an arm around him and gave him a quick sideways hug. “Elder Benjamin, I’m so glad you’re my tongbanja. We’re going to get a lot of work done, and we’ll protect each other.”

“That’s right,” he said.

Next Adventure: Lost in Taegu

Analyzing the Separation of Church and State

I figure that during this exciting election year, these posts may get more on the political side, but we'll see. This year the Church-wide reading is the Book of Mormon, so I may pull from that as well.

For today, though, I going to take on the Separation of Church and State, which is enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ...

Our founding fathers desired to protect the people from two undesirable scenarios. One was a government that only allowed one church (an established state religion), and the other was a government governed by a religion (a theocracy). They wanted to instead protect the freedoms of every person in this new fledgling country.

The Book of Mormon (in Alma), also describes a government with both a religious leader and a civil leader, who would each be allowed to act independently. Another instance of Separation.

And my Church's 11th Article of Faith states:

We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.

It doesn't explicitly address Separation, but it seems to be implied.

Of the three examples above, two speak to the protection of religious freedoms. And the Alma example presents the idea of government acting independently of the religious. Similarly in the New Testament, Jesus suggests we render to Caesar the things that are of Caesar, and render to God the items of God.

So, Separation appears to be very important. But what exactly does this mean?

In set theory (math), there are two different kinds of separation: Mutual Exclusivity and Independence.

The first, Mutual Exclusivity, is easiest to understand. Imagine a group of cats, and a group of dogs. Those groups are entirely separate. If you're a cat, then you're not a dog, and vice versa. So each group is exclusive. Makes sense?

Independence is a little tougher to understand, because the groups can mix. Imagine one group who belongs to Race A, and another group who has Genetic Disease B. (Yeah -- I'm thinking like an actuary here.) It's possible to be in both groups. So exclusiveness is gone.

Let's say Race A makes of 15% of the entire population, and Genetic Disease B is 3%. If being members of both groups is Independent, that means that being a member of one group has nothing at all to do with being a member of the other group.

What this means in terms of math is: if we look at Race A, we would expect 3% of them to have Genetic Disease B. And if we look at Genetic Disease B, we would expect 15% of them to be in Race A. You can also multiply the two percentages to get 0.45% of the entire population belonging to both groups.

Makes sense? But what if we do some testing and find out that in Race A, 10% of them have Genetic Disease B. This would be significantly larger than the 3% we would expect, so we would conclude that Race A is more susceptible to Genetic Disease B. So, independence is gone. We would say there is correlation.

To be truly independent, two groups must have absolutely ZERO correlation.

So, what about "Separation of Church and State"? I believe that the founding fathers were going after Independence, while many today are pushing more of a Mutual Exclusivity.

For example: should prayers be allowed in school? "No, because of separation of Church and State. School is a State thing, so there should be no Religion. Likewise, State should stay out of Religion."

But Mutual Exclusivity is NOT Independence. Remember the dogs and cats? If one is a dog, that fact by itself guarantees that it is not a cat. Where Independence is ZERO correlation, Mutual Exclusivity is 100% correlation. In other words, Mutual Exclusivity is the EXACT OPPOSITE of Independence.

Or put in simple English: you can't have true independence if you try to force things to not coexist.

Think about it: is government totally hands-off with all religions? Heck no. Churches may be tax-free entities, but they still have to follow all the laws. Their buildings need to built to code. Each religion needs to fill out their own paperwork to be officially recognized. Each religion can still be punished for fraudulent activity. And get this ... my church is famous for owning for-profit businesses in their investment portfolio -- and guess what! They have to pay taxes on all the earnings from those businesses.

In other words, no entity can exist in a government without it being subjected to all the laws of the land.

And what about restricting prayer in schools? Is that Independence? Heck no -- because that's the State telling Church what they can't do. That is, if I want to pray in school, and I'm being told No, then my freedoms are being infringed upon because of where I am. This becomes even more pronounced when one is not allowed to wear religious clothing in certain places.

In my area, it becomes especially annoying when LDS teenagers try to find a place to hold daily seminary (like a bible study class), and the schools reject any requests to do so. Instead, these teenagers must travel to some other designated far away place in order to meet. And the simple act of supplying a room for that purpose at school does not by itself connote an establishment of a religion. These kids are just looking for a central place to meet. Other clubs get to meet in rooms. What's the difference, other than the topic being discussed?

Why is it no one seems to ask: why did our founding fathers, who wrote the First Amendment, allow prayers in their meetings? Huh? Huh? ... mmmm ....?

But while we're on this topic, we must address the opposite concern. What about only allowing Christian prayers in school? Would that be Independence? Heck no -- because that would be Church telling State what to do. Despite what some would like to believe, we're not a Christian nation. Believing such a notion is in outright contrast with the First Amendment -- nothing short of establishing a religion.

But wait -- we can't allow Christian prayers, because it tempts the establishment of a religion? If we don't allow the prayers, we're infringing. If we do allow them we might be establishing. Is there really no solution here?

Actually -- HECK YES. There's a solution, and it's called True Independence -- which is exactly what our Founding Fathers intended. So, how would this solution look like?

The reason I brought up math before, is I can now show with math how this thing would work. Actually -- if we were to simply let things happen naturally, this would happen on its own, but we can math this up anyway just to demonstrate.

Say there are 30 children in a classroom, where most are Christian -- a typical American classroom. Let's say 5 of them are Jewish. If a prayer were uttered in class each day, we would expect 16.7% (5 divided by 30) of the prayers to be Jewish. Now, let's say 1 of the kids is Wiccan or Satanist. Yeah -- I know -- we don't like these guys, right? But in order to have True Independence, the math must be satisfied. 3.3% of the prayers must be Satanist/Wiccan. And perhaps atheist/agnostic children may instead recite some good thoughts or even say: let's skip the prayer today.

But what about offending other people? You see, that's the nice thing about Independence -- because once it's fully realized, we're learning about other cultures. Could I listen to a Wiccan prayer and NOT get offended? Let's see -- I've heard the prayer, and I'm still standing here. I'm still alive. I must have survived. And I actually learned something about that kid's beliefs? How is this not a good thing? It's all too easy a thing to say: all prayers are forbidden, which then infringes on all our rights.

So yeah, we'd have to actually stop being precious snowflakes that fall apart at the smallest difference, but we are more than capable in getting this all to work. That's what grown-ups do. When people of different faiths reach out to each other, they end up helping each other, sometimes even financially (as I've witnessed).

So yeah -- I totally support the Separation of Church and State, as far as it is interpreted as Independence, and not Mutual Exclusivity. Let's fix this!

The Adventures of Elder Elder and Elder Benjamin: The Rich Member

The Rich Member

January 17, 1990 (Wednesday)

Elder Shumway was right. Just give it time, and Elder Benjamin and I would build up our list of investigators. It only took us a couple of weeks — almost like they were finding us, rather than the other way around. And we enjoyed every minute of it.

Elder Benjamin and I created a system to keep track of them all, and our calendar constantly filled up. Lots of first discussions. A few second discussions, and occasionally the higher numbered discussions. Bo-yeon had received his 4^th and 5^th discussions, but still no baptism commitment.

And then there was Baek Ho-sung (백호성). Today we would meet him for the first time, and he was different. He was already a member, but he had been inactive for more than a decade. At first he just wanted to talk on the phone. Both Elder Benjamin and I took turns. Every time, he would shoot the breeze, telling jokes, speaking English, and all around being chummy. And each time when we brought up meeting with him, he would try to avoid the question and then cut the phone call short.

This is, until last night … he said it was time to meet. He asked how many missionaries there were in our apartment. I said there were four of us, and he said, “Great … how about dinner tomorrow night? All four of you. I can take you all out for sut pul kalbi (숯불갈비).” That’s Korean BBQ — you’ll see what it is shortly.

I said, “What? That’s expensive.”

“Don’t worry about it, Elder Elder. I got this covered, and you are all hard-working missionaries. You deserve a break.”

So, we moved a couple of appointments around and accepted the invitation. And of course, we were all excited. We went through the day as normal—our two companionships each going our own separate ways, meeting our own investigators, and finding more.

And then when it came to be dinner time, we all converged at the restaurant. Ho-sung was already seated at the table, large enough for six people, though there were only five of us. And he had already started cooking meat. Each table came equipped with its own fire pit, fueled by gas — perhaps propane?

The smell of cooked meat permeated the whole restaurant — a distinctive combination of spices including red pepper. At each seat was a metal bowl filled with rice, and spread across the whole table were several tiny bowls filled with different condiments: lettuce, sprouts, soy sauce, egg, vegetables, different kinds of kimchi, and so on.

Ho-sung invited us to sit down, and so we sat in proper seats, a nice break from the usual sitting on the floor when we ate at member’s homes. “The meat’s not done yet,” said Ho-sung. “Are you ready for some fun?” The meat on our grill was half cooked, and half raw.

Elder Shumway extended his hand and said, “It’s great to meet you, Ho-sung. I’m Elder Shumway.” 

“Good to meet you.”

Part of me wanted to remind Elder Shumway not to swipe this investigator from us. And definitely no impromptu flarmps across the table.

Ho-sung asked, “Which one of you is Elder Benjamin?”

“Here I am. So happy to finally meet you!”

“Good to meet you. You’re kind of short.” I think this was usually a compliment, because Koreans tended to be shorter, and taller foreigners tended to be somewhat intimidating. They never called me short. I was always somewhere in between. But yeah. Elder Benjamin was the shortest of all four of us, so Koreans tended to like him the most.

“And I’m Elder Elder,” I said. I should mention that this whole time we were speaking Korean, where “Elder Elder” comes out sounding as “Elder Changno.” So, my funny name was often lost on most Koreans.

But not Ho-sung. He said in English, “Elder Elder.” Then switched back to Korean. “That still makes me laugh every time I hear it.”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“Don’t say it!” said Elder Shumway. “Or, I’ll Elder Elder Elder you!”

Little did he know, I had the perfect joke waiting for him — one day: something like “You always do things the Shum Way.” But I was still waiting for the right time to use it, which never seemed to come up. In hindsight, that was probably a good thing.

When most of the meat was done cooking, Elder Riley asked, “So how does this work?” As the greenie, this was his first experience.

Ho-sung said, “I’ll show you.” He demonstrated as he talked. “First you grab a piece of lettuce. Then you can grab a piece of meat.” He pulled one off of the grill with his chopsticks. “Add rice, some kimchi. Maybe some sprouts. Some sauce. Whatever you want to add. And you wrap it up like this and eat it. There’s no wrong way to do it. You just eat whatever you want.”

“Cool.”

And we all dived in. It was a social smorgasbord. A lot of grabbing and passing tiny bowls between ourselves. And it all tasted great. One nice thing about the experience was that if there were a particular condiment you didn’t like — such as the tiny bowl of octopus, you simply didn’t eat any of it and let others have it.

As we took most of the meat off, Ho-sung started another round. He asked us how our missionary work was doing, and how it was like living in America. He had visited a couple of times through his business.

We were having fun, getting to know each other while eating great food. But then, as always, I wondered why he had invited us. Why did he need our company? Why didn’t he ever want to talk about church?

Our mission president told us often not to have dinner with others just to be fed, but we always had to have a reason, or get something accomplished, whether it be to teach a first discussion, to get a referral from a member, to provide a Book of Mormon, or some other way of planting seeds or meeting needs.

And here we were sitting around the table having fun with a member who had already been baptized, and who was not coming to church. What what we supposed to do? He had no need of the first discussion. And we couldn’t very well ask him for a referral. Perhaps Elder Benjamin would work his magic and figure out what to do. How could we get Ho-sung past shooting the breeze and on to the good stuff?

I looked at Elder Benjamin and he looked similarly puzzled, but he seemed to signal “patience.”

Not even a minute later, Ho-sung suddenly stopped laughing and said, “You know what, Elders? I miss church. I wish I could go back.”

The rest of us stopped our socializing and looked at each other in brief silence. What we were supposed to say? Which of us should respond?

Elder Benjamin took it. “You can come with us to church.”

Ho-sung replied, “No. Not yet. I don’t know how to.”

“If we go together we can figure it out,” said Elder Benjamin.

“No, you don’t understand. I was mean to my home teachers. I said things to several members, to get them to leave me alone. I was just too busy. Everything happening so fast. Opportunities everywhere, and I grabbed them all, and it gave me happiness. When it came down to it, I didn’t need church. It was just getting in the way. I’d be tired on Sundays and needed to rest. At first I figured I was okay. You know, God was letting me enjoy success for a reason, so I could put that money to good use. Hire other people so they’d have work, and help those who bought our products. And little by little, God started taking a back seat. It’s not that I stopped believing, but that I felt I didn’t really need Him.

“And to be honest,” he said, “now I don’t know how to return.”

In the next brief silence, Elder Benjamin said, “You should have faith that it will all work out. Trust me. Come with us to church this Sunday, and you’ll see. Everything will be all right.”

Ho-sung said, “I’m not ready. Maybe it’s too late for me.”

As much as I usually enjoyed Elder Benjamin’s uber spirituality, it wasn’t working this time. We were touching on some core issue — a deep pain or fear that needed resolving. While Elder Benjamin excelled in channeling the Spirit, he wasn’t necessarily that great in reading people. Neither was I, but I felt impressed to try something different.

I said, “Why now? Why do you want to return back to church?”

“I don’t know,” said Ho-sung. “Maybe it’s because after all of this success, I’m finally starting to miss it all — going to church and reading the scriptures every day. And I just met this girl, Soo-jung (수정). She’s perfect and I think she might be the one.”

“I see,” I said. “Is she a member of the Church?”

“Oh, no. She’s not. But she might as well be. She doesn’t smoke or drink alcohol.”

“You think she might be the reason you want to come back to church?” I asked.

“Maybe. Maybe that’s it. If I’m going to ask her to marry me, what does that mean? What kind of life are we going to have? Maybe she’ll need God? Maybe I need God? And our children?”

“So, what would you like to do?” I asked.

“I need a plan. I can’t go to church yet. But I need to do something. What’s a good first step?”

Elder Benjamin said quickly, “You can start reading the scriptures again. Start with the Book of Mormon.” Yay! Elder Benjamin was back on track.

Ho-sung paused and then nodded his head. “Yes. I can do that. Book of Mormon. I’ll start tonight.”

“Great,” said Elder Benjamin. “And then we can meet again to check on your progress?”

“Sure,” he said. “As long as you elders stay hungry. Oh, and do you have any extra Books of Mormon on hand? For Soo-jung?”

“You think she would read it?” asked Elder Benjamin.

“It’s worth a shot.”

“Okay then.” Elder Benjamin took out a blue paperback Mormon Kyeong from his kabang and turned to Elder Shumway. “Hey, do you have the sisters’ phone number?”

“Sure,” said Elder Shumway. “I’ll write down their information.” He grabbed the book, and while he wrote he said to Ho-sung, “These are the sister missionaries. Sister King and Sister Anderson. If Soo-jung has any questions, she can call this number.” And he handed the book to Ho-sung.

“Thank you for this gift.”

We continued eating, and for some reason this scripture came to mind: it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God (Mark 10:25). For me, it was a simple thing to go to church, read scriptures, and help my fellow neighbors. But for him, it was an arduous chore, a source of pain. His earthly success was great, but he had trapped himself, most of his pain self-inflicted.

As the night wore on, we went back to the light-hearted earthly discussions. We enjoyed the food. We were thankful to our host. And I wondered, was he really going to start reading the scriptures again? Would he meet with us again? Or would he rather go back to relying on his own earthly successes, marry the lady, and miss out on this wonderful opportunity to return?

Next Adventure: Trip to the Zoo