The Next Crazy Guy

Haines will forever remain enshrined in my memory as the repository for the majority of the crazy people I met on my mission. Yes, I met a lot of people of varying sanity over the course of the mission, but many of those simply held differing viewpoints from my own and therefore do not automatically earn a high place on the crazy scale, no matter how far out their views may be. However, I'm certain that in Haines I met a significant number of certifiable nutjobs.

Elder W and I were referred by the local ward to a less-active member, a Mormon who rarely or never came to church. In some other faiths, infrequent attendance is tolerated without too much of a problem, but we like to think our message's importance is such that lost sheep need to be tended to with the utmost care and sensitivity.

I hope you won't find me too hypocritical, then, when I describe this particular less-active member with something less than sensitivity. Our encounter with him was just too funny.

No sooner had we entered his home and talked with him for a few minutes than this good man, whom I remember as Brother Smith, informed us that he is of the tribe of Elijah. This may seem crazy to those not of our faith, but to us it is especially inexplicable. We believe that everyone in the Church is descended (through blood or by adoption) from one of the twelve tribes of Israel, each of which has a specific role to play in the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As you may recall from your reading of the Bible (or at least your last viewing of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat), Elijah is not among the twelve tribes. Perhaps sensing our skepticism, he offered to produce his patriarchal blessing (a customized blessing every member of the Church can receive that declares, among many other things, your personal Israelite lineage) to prove it.

Unfortunately, Brother Smith remembered, the Devil had stolen his patriarchal blessing a week earlier, along with jacking up his phone bill and killing his dog. While I do not doubt that the Devil has the power to do these things, I think the Prince of Darkness has better things occupying his evil time. Elder W and I were about to wrap up our conversation and report back to the bishop when Brother Smith changed his story; actually, he said, he was a descendant of Jesus Christ.

The claims made in The Da Vinci Code aside, we doubted his story. We gave him a polite farewell and departed. The life of a missionary is rarely dull.