The Good, the Not So Good, and a Moment of Forgetting

Seth Twitchell

Psychology 101-01

21 October 2011

Memory Paper

The Good, the Not So Good, and a Moment of Forgetting

Here’s a good story for you. This is one of the happiest memories of my life. I was on my mission in an area called Ralma and had been there for about four months. We hadn’t had much success in this area up till this point. My companions and I had been working very hard during all this time, but the people we were finding were just not progressing as well or as fast as we would have liked. Well, they would’ve been lining up at the door to the chapel to get baptized and then marking down the days to be able to enter the temple if we had had our wish, but you know what I mean. Anyway, one day, the bishop comes and tells us that another bishop friend of his on the other side of town wanted us to find a certain young couple and teach them. This was cool because Bishop Aybara usually didn’t even give us the time of day. 

So we went and found this family, and they let us in. They told us that the bishop friend of theirs was actually her uncle if I remember correctly. So we began to teach them and find out that they were legally married, a rarity in the Dominican Republic. They basically already lived all the commandments, and easily accepted the concept of the restoration into their hearts. I know, they were golden, right? In fact, within three weeks they were looking up old conference talks on their own, had decided they loved Pres. Hinckley (who had passed away a year and a half previous to all this), and were holding family home evening. The one problem is that when we talked about baptism they said that they needed more time. So at one point we decided to invite our mission president and his wife to come sit in on a lesson with us.

So the day came when President and Sister Antivilo were coming with us to teach them. We had decided on a lesson about faith and the courage to do what was right. We got to the house and began to teach the lesson when the husband stopped us and looked at President Antivilo and said, “Look we know this all true, but we just can’t pay tithing right now. We’ve made a down payment and are just waiting for it to be completed. In a year, when we are more financially stable, we’ll be able to pay tithing and then be baptized.” He went on to explain that they hadn’t shared this with us previously because we were young and hadn’t had to deal with problems like this in our lives yet. He figured that President had lived through these things before though. President had my companion and I share about the blessings of tithing, his wife taught wonderfully about it, and then he shared that he had a masters in accounting was a CPA and had been a director of temporal affairs for the church for many years. “I can tell you definitively, that tithing is not an economic principle. In fact it has very little to do with the actual money. It is is a principle of faith. One that if you obey, the Lord will open up the heavens and pour blessings upon you,” he explained. The Holy Spirit was so strong in that room, I wouldn’t have been surprised at all to see angelic manifestations. The young couple agreed to pay their tithing from that point on.

Within a few short weeks, Angel and Yasmelin were baptized, which is another great story that I wish I had the room to share here. They immediately became strong members of the church and took another investigator family under their wing and helped them prepare for baptism too. A year later, they were sealed in the temple with their infant son. Every time I see the temple, hear about somebody getting baptized or read about tithing, I can’t help but to think about them. 

Now a not so good memory. To start off I should say that when I was nineteen, I nearly died in a car accident. That isn’t the story, but it’s important to know about it. Three months later, when I was finally becoming physically able to be active again, my brothers and I went camping. Just as we were about to leave cell reception, my mother called and told me that a lifelong friend of mine, Beau, had been drinking and driving and died in a car accident. The whole camping trip is a blurred  memory of tears, father’s blessings and mosquito bites. I questioned God why my friend, who obviously needed more time to repent and return to the church had been taken, when I, who was for the most part living righteously had been spared in a car accident where I should have died. I think the hardest part was when at one point when his mother, in her despair had told me that if I had been a better friend, he would have lived. For months I anguished over my doubts and sorrows of the loss of my friend. Eventually, though, through the counseling of my father, grandfather, bishop, and a certain cousin, I was able to repent of my lack of trust in the atonement and regain peace in my heart. I know it’s not my fault and that the Lord needed Beau back to help him and needed me here for other purposes. To this day I still feel sad thinking of him though. In fact, I’m tearing up at the thought of him, and occasionally when I hear songs from bands that Beau had introduced to me or on his birthday or the day he died, I will feel a pang of loss. 

Finally, a moment of forgetting. In high school, I sat right next to this one guy in spanish class. I know for a fact that I had heard his name, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t remember it. So whenever he would say, “Hi, Seth!” I would respond with, “Hey buddy! How’s it going?” Everyday for three years we sat next to each, first in spanish one and two, and then in precalculus and it wasn’t until the third quarter of our junior year that I finally asked a mutual friend what his name was. It was James, by the way. But by then I was so used to just calling him buddy or pal or dude that I just kept on doing just that. Now that I think of it, I don’t even know if ever knew that I didn’t know his name. Maybe I’ll tell him at our high school reunion in a few years.