5 Years Ago My Name Became Elder

"Do you stand by what he said?"

The man with charcoal eyes, black as the pit, stared at me in the dim light of a shack in an alleyway known as Loma Lane. This was not a genuine question - our safety was at jeopardy and our lives had been threatened. At 18 years old I had a split second decision to make. To go back on our teachings would have protected us. But I would never deny the Christ.

Just a few weeks prior, on February 13th, I reached for the door handle on our Yukon. We were at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utah. Mom, Dad, all the kids, and even Grandma and Grandpa were stuffed inside. I turned and said a quick goodbye, just long enough to glance at their faces - the real goodbyes had already been said. I stepped out onto the curb in my shiny black Johnson & Murphy shoes and a tailored blue suit.

The escorts had my bags out of our car before I even closed my door. I saw the kids with all four of their heads peering over the back seat, waving. My parents were crying, but we hugged and kissed and bid each other farewell. As Elder Pritchard led me down the walkway towards the complex, I remembered a friend telling me he didn't look back at his parents. That seemed to be a badge of courage for some, but not for me. I turned one more time and waved to my parents through the closing crowd of hundreds of missionaries before turning and being swallowed up into a sea of bodies.

MTC, Provo, Utah - February 2013

A few moments later I approached the check in table.  The lady asked my name. She found my packet and warmly said, "Welcome to the MTC, Elder Martinez."

I wouldn't hear my real name again for a very long time, so long that when I did hear it again it seemed foreign, alien. Two weeks later I would board a plane to Fresno, California. One could drive there from Price, Utah, my hometown, in just a day.  Yet as close as that seems I felt like I was on an entirely different planet.

Near Fresno, California - July 2014

As an Elder, you could call home four times in two years - 40 minutes each call. You could e-mail one time a week for 1 1/2 hours. You could also write letters one day a week, and others could write you letters. No visiting, no texts, no Facebook. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I felt entirely isolated in a world I did not know.  Yet, that was what I had gone to do.  I had gone intentionally, knowing those things.

Skype Call, Mother's Day - May 2014

I was rejected by many, accepted by some. Those few, those delightful few, made it all worth it.  I felt as if I was able to share something that gave me joy with other people, my sole hope being that they learned to feel that same joy I had felt.  The joy that comes with knowing where you came from before this life, what the purpose of life is, and what would happen after we would die - to what glorious place we would go.

Oakdale, California - July 2013

They made every 115 degree day on a bike from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. worth it. They made every door slammed in my face and people telling me about what Hell I was going to worth it. They made the lone nights with silent tears running down my cheeks in the dark worth it.

Sonora, California - July 2013

Don't be mistaken - my mission was not 728 days of hardship.  There were equally as many good times.  Biking along country roads through endless miles of orchards, bright, blooming trees that seemed straight out of a painting.  Laughing with the people who we loved, and who came to love us.  Trying to play soccer against Latinos and explaining to the curious ones, in Spanish, why my skin was white and my last name was Martinez.  Sitting back and chatting with new people, learning
who they were, sharing stories and time together. Eating grapes in the church vineyard.

I knew joy. My life had been wonderful. But there was a joy there as a missionary that cannot be compared to any other joy I've experienced, and I've experienced a lot of happiness since that time. It's like comparing apples to oranges. A type of joy that you can only know from being a missionary.

Corcoran, California - July 2013

We would hear funny things.  People would say, "Don't you have six wives? You worship Joseph Smith, right? You can't be Christians, don't you have a different Jesus than us?"

Six wives?  I laugh at that still!  No, we don't have six wives, I can't even find one!

Riverbank, California - February 2014

No, we don't worship Joseph Smith, not a bit.

 We taught about the same Jesus Christ - the Jesus Christ of the Bible. The same God. The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of all of Israel. We taught about redemption and about how there is a life after this - how families are not only til death do you part, but for all eternity, how the same family structure that exists here will be in the life to come.

There were times I cried with people, there were times I cried for them. More often than that we smiled together. We helped people “find meaning where none once used to be”.

There were miracles that dropped my jaw, literally. I saw things with my own two eyes that defied any science I have ever known.

I met angelic people and maybe even more than once rubbed shoulders with unseen angels themselves.

Madera, California - June 2014

Church Vineyard, Madera, California - August 2014

Serving a mission didn't make me any better than any other person - that's not the point of a mission. It's not a count of how good you are.

Near Yosemite, California - September 2014

But it did make me a better me. It grew me, it taught me, it molded me. I learned to teach, to testify, to help people. I learned to rely on a God that some might say doesn't exist - he was my greatest ally.

Turlock, California - February 2015

Two years later the pilots started up the jet. As the plane pulled off the tarmac, I looked back on Fresno one last time, a city only I had known, experiences only I could fully understand.

As the city fell from view I prayed silently, telling Him that I had done my very best. I felt a confirmation that despite my shortcomings as a man and a missionary, I had found the people - the wonderful people - I had been sent to find. Not an hour later I had finished writing in my journal and the plane was arcing over the Salt Lake Valley.

           Fresno, California - February 13th, 2015

Flight from Fresno to SLC - February 13th, 2015

That day, February 11th, was the best day of my life.  I swiftly walked through the airport until I rounded the corner at the top of the escalator.  There was my family, my precious family.  We embraced.  They said my name.  It had a faint familiarity to it.

Mom, Salt Lake City, Utah - February 11th, 2015

Dad, Salt Lake City, Utah - February 11th, 2015

My family was so familiar.  The details of their faces, their personalities.  I hadn't entirely forgotten it, but remembering them was something that was only had in pictures sent to me, memories, and nearly nightly dreams.

I walked my house that night.  I looked in all the rooms.  It was my home.  A place that seemed like it too was forged out of just a dream, and there it was before me.

Life is good.  I've had many wonderful experiences since and expect there to be joys greater than that which I have already experienced.

Someday, after many years of life I will "cross the great divide" that separates our world from the next.  I assume I will walk the rooms and halls of my Heavenly home.  It will be familiar to me.

And my Heavenly Family, they too will embrace me.  They will be so familiar to me.  I will remember every detail of who they are, we will not be strangers.

They too will say my name.  I don't know what they will call me, but I know the Voice that calls will be familiar also.

Oakdale, California - May 2013

Don't Ever Grow Old, Little One

Every so often I walk up to my doorstep with my grey and orange Nautica duffel bag in hand.  It's usually around sunset on a Friday night, and I'm a student on break from school.  As I reach for the doorknob I can't help but smile because I know what I will hear the moment I open the door.

"Austin, will you play with me?"

If I had to rank the things I hear the most frequently, this would probably be at the top.  It comes with having a little sister who has lots of energy.  Kambree spares no time.  The second I'm home it is time to play toys.

Halloween, 2012

Playing with toys, 2015

I'm not particularly good at Barbies, Shopkins, My Little Pony, or Roblox.  I couldn't even tell you how to play those games or really what they are.  All I know is you take what toys they hand you and you just go with the flow.


It would be so easy to say no.  To say that I don't want to.  I could watch Netflix, hang out with friends, play the piano, adventure around town.  Naps always sound great.  My Mom would tell me to go on a date so I don't end up single forever - actually, my Dad would say that too.

But when I am asked to play, I try to never say no.

That's because I know that someday, I won't be asked that question again.  At least not by her.

Someday, she'll grow up and have friends and activities and those days of hearing that tiny little voice asking me to play with toys will be gone.  That doesn't mean the future is full of decay, rather the opposite - it is as bright as ever, augmented at the prospect of endless opportunities.  Yet, you have to face the truth - days like this will not last forever.

MTC, February 2013

I notice changes in everyone.  All the kids are a tad taller, voices a little deeper.  My parents aren't quite as young as they used to be, though they're certainly not old yet.

Yet, each time I wish I could say to each of them, "Don't ever grow old, Dad.  Don't ever grow old, Mom.  Don't ever grow old, Joseph. Bailee, Tanner, Colton, Kambree.  Don't ever grow old, little one," because next time I see them, they won't be so little even if that means being just a tad bit older.  Sometimes I wish I could go back and say that to myself.

Manti Utah, June 2015

I have a framed photo on my dresser.  The picture was probably taken 18 years ago.  My Mom and I were out boating at Huntington Reservoir near Price.  When I study that photograph I realize she really hasn't changed a whole lot.

Then you look at that thin little boy with the silky brown hair.  He has a timid smile.  He liked to read, a mind filled with an imagination from all the books he had read.  Dreams filled with sweet childish fantasies, toys and friends.  He probably thought about school and what he was going to do at recess or with his buddies. His most sizable worry had to have been whether he would have the peanut butter & jelly sandwich for lunch or the chicken nuggets.  Not long after that photo was taken he was about to go flying off the tube into the lake.  I remember that day well!

Mom and I, Huntington, Utah, approx. 1998

Then I look up from that photograph into my mirror and see a 6'1", 219 pound, 23 year old man staring back at me.  Hazel eyes.  Brown hair cropped and carefully swept to the right, a missionary's haircut even years later, accented by thick, dark eyebrows.  A few more scars.  Possibly a nearly invisible shadow of whiskers after a long week of finals.  A mind filled with imagination of what the future holds and reflections on what I have learned, the places an I have seen, the people I have met, the things I have survived.  Nightly dreams filled with chemical reactions, laboratory procedures, and occasionally that I've run out of bread (something college students are prone to dream about). Not sure which of those is the nightmare - maybe all the above.

Medical school interview, Cedar City, Utah, November 2017

Every time I step into my room to set down my bag and see that picture, the thought always crosses my mind, 'Where did that little boy on that boat go?'  I think about how happy his childhood was and sometimes wish, for just a moment, that I could part the curtain of time and peer back into his life, to see him - me - again.  Could that boy have had any clue what his life would bring him?  He would grow older, a bit wiser, a lot taller.  He would learn to play the guitar, then the trumpet, then the piano, then the organ, then the mandolin.  He would gain friends and lose others.  He would experience the pleasures and ills of life.  He would finish school, become a missionary, a college graduate.

In time he would spend cold nights searching dark streets and knocking on hundreds of doors for anyone willing to hear a message he had been called to carry, in a place that seemed far away from home.  Sometimes that would be in a foreign language.

He would spend nights with friends joking around and playing games.  Somedays he would find himself leaned over a laptop into the early morning hours with bloodshot eyes and class in just a few hours, other times waking up in the night on the couch with his chemistry book in hand.

He would witness "the treasure that waits for a man to find, the peaks of mountains that reach out and touch the sky...and the desert where dreams have died."1  He would have more in store for him than he ever thought imaginable.  And someday, somewhere I surely will look back at myself now and wonder if I had any idea what lied in store for me "not now, but in the coming years."2

Dad and I, Idaho Falls, Idaho, 1996

Someday my name will be Dad.  That's an interesting, nearly unfathomable thought.  In some ways I wish I could stay twenty-three forever, but I also know that there are some little children in a few years that will be my little ones.  If I stayed this age forever, I couldn't ever see them and the joy that comes with them.  I wouldn't ever experience getting married, holding them as babies and raising them up going to their games, plays, recitals, watching them grow.  I'll surely want them to stay little forever, and I suppose one day as I cradle each of those babes to sleep I'll quietly say, "Don't ever grow old, little one."  But I know they have to grow older to experience the joys I have.

Mom and I, Utah, December 1995

Oakdale, California, 2013

My entire point in all of this nostalgic sauntering is this: time is both a friend and foe and it will keep ticking by whether you want it to or not.  We can't know the joy of the future without letting go of the present.  That is why it is so important to enjoy your life right now and not let it pass you by without living it to the fullest.  That way you can look back and say that you did everything you wanted to do.  You won't be like "those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way."3

Martin's Cove, Wyoming, July 2010

A coworker recently asked me, "How many ball players do you know that are going to get up, miss the first swing, and go sit back down?"  I replied, "None, they've got at least three chances."

"Exactly. If they did that they would look back years later and wonder "what if" they had just taken another swing or two? You don't want to have regret, to let opportunities pass you by and think, years later, "what if?"

Dad and I, Salt Lake City, Utah, approx. 2005

So when the present time comes with all its opportunities, swing with all your might.

Live with no "what ifs".  What do you have to lose? Enjoy now - enjoy today.  As bright as the future is, don't sacrifice the present for it.  When it comes time for "greater things than these"4, move on knowing you've taken every opportunity and ran with it.  This year, if you don't do anything else, write every day down in your journal - even the most trying of days, even the ones you don't think were significant - so you can remember it when you're old.  You won't ever regret that.  Then, when the twilight of your life arrives and all the years of your existence flash before you, a soul ready to ascend to glorious, celestial heights - smile, knowing that you lived the life you were given to its fullest and "sing your death song like a hero going home."3


Happy New Year, all.




1. "The Pursuit of Knowledge", Zack Hemsey

2. "Not Now, But in the Coming Years", Maxwell N. Cornelius

3. "Die Like a Hero Going Home", Tecumseh

4. Mormon 8:12