You Can Make a Difference
In 2012 I was living in southern Indiana away from all of my friends and family. I was serving as a volunteer for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day-Saints and had been away for about a year. It’s hard to fully put into words what the experience was like. It was incredibly isolating in a strange way. As a missionary, you are expected to live apart from the world you are serving in. I wore a white shirt and tie with a name tag bearing my name, “Elder DeGraw”. Especially at that time, my church was heavily publicized thanks to the republican presidential candidate also being a member of the same church. Because of that, everywhere I went I was informed by others what I believed and what their opinion of my beliefs were. I can’t tell you how many people informed me I was a member of a cult. As an aside, I can firmly say that by far the closest I’ve ever been to being a member of a cult was working for a Utah based “silicon slopes” technology startup, and I’ve been a practicing “Mormon” for my entire life. If there’s one thing the Christian world seems to be able to agree on it’s that I was not in fact a Christian, despite the fact that I was volunteering my time and energy freely to go to a place I didn’t know to try and talk to and help literally anyone I could feel their Savior’s love. I saw a lot of pretty gnarly situations and just did the best I could being an inexperienced 20 year old.
You are assigned a “companion” and work in 6 week “transfers”. Each companionship was assigned an “area” within the greater mission and would typically work together for a transfer or two or three or four. At this time I had been in the area for a few months and my companion at the time evidently also believed we were members of a cult and as such refused to teach anything but generic non-denominational Christianity. To put it plainly, it sucked. We sucked. We could barely stand each other let alone be productive in any way towards our mission goals. But you’re out there just as much to help yourself and each other as you are to help others. Ideally things would be different but such is life. All this to say: I was lonely. Isolated. Alienated from the people I interacted with and myself.
One day a week you spend a day preparing for the week. Doing laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning. It was usually on a Monday if I remember correctly. One such Monday we decided we should get haircuts. Usually we were too poor to afford to pay someone for a haircut and instead relied on other missionaries or ourselves to cut our hair. The results were usually somewhere between humiliating and hilarious. This day was different. I think I had a coupon that came in the mail for a free or discounted haircut at a chain such as Fantastic Sam’s or Great Clips. It must have been winter because it was dark outside.
I received a hair cut from a very kind young lady, probably close to my same age. Remind you, I’m in a white shirt and tie with a goofy name tag on. It was easy to write me off as some kind of “jesus freak”, as most people did. I don’t know what she thought, but I remember the haircut she gave me. I felt so connected just for the 15 minutes it took. I don’t remember any conversation or any personal details. I probably didn’t say anything out of awkwardness and fear since as a missionary you don’t date and are actually forbidden from one on one communication with any member of the opposite sex who lived within the mission boundaries. I just felt that for that moment, she cared about me. Yes, she was being paid to be there. But the care I felt as she carefully and tenderly cut my hair I have never been able to forget. It sounds a bit ridiculous now, 15 years on but I think about that experience often. She cared. And it made a difference to me.
You can make a difference. To just a single person. You don’t even have to be consistent. You can care. Why should you care? You will be remembered. You will be appreciated. There’s no way for her to know or even remember that experience but I do. I remember. She made a positive impact in my life. Honestly I can’t think of another truly positive experience I had during that time in my life. To me, she made all the difference.