A Place to Be Young

by Clyde Hollinger

The place was solemn and forgotten as only an old graveyard can be. It was a grotesque, weedy pause between railroad tracks and decaying buildings, a shabby plot where crumbling cherubs tilted above sagging gray monuments. Grass grew high there, and the chiseled epitaphs had disappeared under a slow tide of moss. It was a good place to ignore.

That’s why it didn’t make much sense one morning when a squad of bright-faced young men and women showed up at the rusting gates with hoes and shovels and clippers and mowers, and went to work. Heads appeared in the windows of the surrounding buildings, and the questions flew. Who are they? What are they doing here? What’s in it for them? And the answers didn’t make much sense either. The young people sweating among the tombstones weren’t even from the neighborhood; no one had asked them to come, and they weren’t getting anything out of it. For all anyone knew, they might have been so many ghosts come back to spruce up their own exclusive little subdivision.

And when they left, with the weeds out, the grass mowed, and the monuments standing straight, everyone knew that the neighborhood had become a nicer place to live, but no one knew who the mysterious band of “ghosts” were, and it’s not likely they ever will.

And that suits the young men and women of the Richardson Ward in Dallas, Texas, just fine. They’ve discovered that being doers of the word instead of just hearers isn’t merely a scripture—it’s a beautiful, happy principle of life. It means doing the yard work of widows in the area, helping to maintain the chapel, working on community projects, and even cleaning up an abandoned graveyard—just because they need doing.

Dallas is a beautiful place to be young in. It is a land of level stretches and gently rolling hills forested heavily with oak, hickory, elm, pine, pecan, willow, and a legion of other trees. There is water for canoeing, boating, and fishing, forests for camping, and all the myriad recreational opportunities a big city offers, including a professional football team.

The priests and Laurels weren’t camping or fishing or playing ball the day a New Era photographer happened into town, however. They were working on the grounds of the stake center of one of Dallas’s two stakes, and they were doing a good job—until they saw the camera! Then all their roadshow and one-act-play experience came rushing to their aid, and they became seasoned Texas hams, as the photos will attest.

They were kind enough to give the photographer a running commentary on what life in Texas is really like, too.

“Some people think everybody in Texas wears a cowboy hat and cowboy boots, but that’s a myth!” said a young man in a cowboy hat and cowboy boots.

“Everything in Texas is BIG!” boasted a huge young man flexing his king-size biceps.

“Not everything,” corrected a diminutive friend in a one-gallon hat as he emerged from behind a shrub with a handful of weeds.

“If you want to describe us,” a girl suggested, “just say that we’re strange, fun-loving people who live the gospel the best way we know how.”

“And don’t forget the strange part,” added a priest who was in the middle of a dandelion digger duel.

Later, everyone got together for a more serious discussion about themselves and the gospel.

But first they wanted to make it very clear how they felt about Texas. “I think it’s great,” one Laurel said. “It has great weather. You don’t have to worry about shoveling snow. You can go swimming in the winter and play golf and tennis year round. It’s the greatest!”

“People down here are very Christian,” said another. “They respect your religious beliefs.”

They were asked, “Do you think of yourselves as Westerners or Southerners?” and they replied with practically one voice: “As Texans!”

Another thing they all felt strongly about was the closeness and friendliness of the LDS people in Dallas.

“Mormons are closer out here because there aren’t as many to do the job,” said one young man, “and not everybody next door to you is a Mormon, so you’re constantly aware of what you’re doing. There’s a strong youth group down here and strong leaders. I don’t think you could go anyplace and find the gospel any more loved.”

“The companionship and togetherness here are remarkable,” said another. “The first week I was here I attended a big party, and I immediately felt like a long-standing member of the group.”

“I came down here and I was just amazed at how friendly everyone is,” said a recent arrival in the ward. “I walked in the chapel and about five people had their hands out ready to greet me, and they’d never seen me before. I couldn’t believe it!”

“There’s so much fellowship here that you can’t help loving everybody,” said an enthusiastic Laurel. “From the adults right on down through the kids, we’re always doing something together. When the missionaries bring a new investigator to a meeting, it’s really cool because everybody just accepts him. I think that’s part of the gospel too.”

It is a reciprocal arrangement. The Church needs everyone’s talents, and in return everyone’s talents get developed.

“There are a lot of guys in our quorum,” a priest explained, “and I think we’re pretty close together because we always have a lot of guys out for sports and all the other activities. It’s great doing things together!”

A friend agreed: “The ward brings out all your talents. There’s something for everybody—sports and roadshows and talent shows, and singing, and writing, and jobs of all kinds. If you have talent, you can’t help develop it because it’s needed. As a result the people are close in spirit, and everybody works together.”

A quorum officer gets specific, counting the days on his fingers: “Monday we’re together with our families. Tuesday there’s usually home teaching. Wednesdays we have activity night. Thursdays we have ball practice, and Saturdays we have parties or dances.”

“Sundays,” a girl interrupted with a flash of dimples, “we even have church.”

“We spend most of our time with the group,” the officer finished with a smile, “and our best and closest friends are in the Church.”

“And we have more spur-of-the-moment parties than any other group in the whole world,” the girl with the dimples added, as if that somehow put everything in perspective.

Such closeness implies some inspired leadership, and the implication is borne out by fact.

“We’ve been blessed with really good leaders,” a young man said, “and not only as far as activities are concerned. They also really know how to help us with our personal problems, and they’ve taught us how to have fun without being rowdy.”

At school the Mormon youth are a rather small minority, but their influence is felt. It is hard, it seems, for a good Mormon to be invisible.

“A few days ago in a health class we were taking a poll on drug use,” a young priest reported. “We were asked to raise our hands if we had ever tried liquor or tobacco and so on, or if we used them frequently, or if we’d never touched them. I kept raising my hand for never having touched them, and the teacher kept looking at me. Finally he said, ‘You’re a Mormon, aren’t you?’”

Another student recalled, “In a social studies class we were talking about the distribution of different religions, and the teacher asked the class, ‘How many are Catholics?’ and ‘How many are Presbyterians?’ and so on. Then he looked at me and said, ‘I know already that we have one Mormon in the class.’”

A third young man related, “I have a teacher who isn’t very religious, but he seems to be impressed by my attitude and the way I act, and we’re pretty good friends. I was talking to him the other morning, and I used some language he didn’t think was fitting for a member of the Church, and I got a ten-minute lecture on how a good Mormon should talk.”

“You’re kind of watched over by people,” a girl said. “Someone will come up to you and start suggesting something, and someone else will say, ‘Oh, she can’t do that, she’s a Mormon.’”

One of the priesthood holders added, “Just remembering that you have the priesthood makes a difference. You watch yourself more carefully. I think you hold your head higher. We don’t think we’re any better than anybody else, but we have something nobody else has, and we act like it. That’s natural. We may not get a chance to use the priesthood in any spectacular way, but just knowing that we have the truth and the true priesthood is something to hold our heads up about.”

With that kind of a foundation, it’s obvious that some missionary work should be happening, and it is.

“I love being in the mission field,” a Laurel said. “I take a Book of Mormon to school with me everyday and put it on top of my books, and people say, ‘What’s that?’ And I get to talk to them about the Church. It’s a thrill to get nonmembers and inactive members out to church. Some of my inactive friends are coming out now.”

An observant young man noted, “There are some missionary approaches that I’ve noticed don’t work, and some that I’ve noticed do work, and one that doesn’t work is saying, ‘This is what you believe, and it’s wrong.’ I did that a few times and wrecked some good chances. But now my younger brother and sister are taking a couple of Jewish friends to Primary with them, with the permission of their friends’ mother. So far they haven’t asked much about the Church, but we think that if we just don’t jump on them and try to push too hard that maybe they will come around.”

One young lady had a missionary experience that started on a shopping spree.

“A couple of weeks ago my mother and I were talking to the owner of a dress shop, and my mother was hinting around about how I had to wear my dresses long, and the lady didn’t say anything. Then my mother said, ‘It’s really cold where she’s going next fall.’ The lady said, ‘Oh, where’s that?’ Mom answered, ‘Brigham Young University.’ Then we talked a little bit about the Church, and the lady asked, ‘How does a person go about becoming a Mormon?’ My mother answered, ‘It’s easy.’

“We were interrupted right then, but we went back the next day so I could try on an outfit I had liked. We were trying to think of a way to start talking about the Church again when the lady walked over and said, ‘Do you remember what you said yesterday about it being easy to become a Mormon?’ My mother tried to look nonchalant and said, ‘Yes?’ The lady said, ‘Well, will you please explain that?’

“So we sat there talking for about three hours about the Church, and she just kept asking questions. She and her husband had gone to church after church after church, and nothing satisfied them. Every time we answered a question, she said, ‘That’s just what I’ve always believed.’ I think she had a testimony already, before she ever heard about the Church. So now she and her husband are taking missionary lessons, and I think she wants to be baptized. It’s pretty exciting.”

Real missionary work is, of course, based on real love, and an experience of these fine young Latter-day Saints proves it. They worked for a long time to reactivate a member of the priests quorum, but it soon became clear that he wasn’t interested. They made it equally clear to him that they still wanted to be his friends, and recognizing their sincerity he was happy to have it that way. When he was in the hospital some time later, they visited him often, not to activate him, but just because they loved him. He got the message without their having to give it to him and took the first steps toward becoming active again.

Dallas is a good place to be a good Mormon; so is anywhere in the world, but these young people have truly taken the opportunity to heart.

Whether cleaning up a graveyard, staging a dance festival, or spreading the truth, they have discovered where happiness is at. It’s at home—wherever you are—if you’re living the gospel.

Photos by Clyde Hollinger