This World's Good

He was just an old man, an average, ordinary man dressed modestly, even for Argentine standards. He hadn't shaved in a few days and he wore an old Fedora-style hat from the 40s that matched his old, torn overcoat. I didn't even know his name, and still don't, but he was a man who changed my life forever.

Zapala is a small, dusty town nestled comfortably at the base of the Cordillera, Argentina's portion of the Andes Mountains. Back in the early 1980s it was an even smaller town than it is today, and I loved it. There were probably no more than 10,000 people living within its confines, but they were good people, some of the best, most humble people I've ever known. And in my five months there, I think I may have met every one.

I'd been in Argentina for a little more than three months when my bus pulled into the station there. My first two months had been spent in a plains town called Carmen de Patagones at the southern end of the Buenos Aires province. After that I'd spent one very long month in Dolores with my first Argentine companion. From there it was off to Zapala for the best months of my mission.

Located at the terminus of the Bahía Blanca and Neuquén railroads, it lies no more than 50 miles from the Chilean border. Many of the residents of the town have Chilean ancestry, and you can tell from looking at them that they have Lamanite blood coursing through their veins. They didn't have very much money, but they supplemented that lack with an abundance of charity and joy.

I can't count the times I spent sitting in a house made of tin cans on an old, aluminum kitchen chair on a dirt floor with chickens running between my feet. On one such occasion, bouncing a toddler on my knee as my companion taught the discussion, I noticed my knee begin to get very warm. Needless to say, I had to change my pants when the discussion concluded.

My companion and I lived in a 60-year old, 7-room house on the corner of Martin Etcheluz and Candelaria Streets. That house also served as our chapel. An elaborate bathroom sat just off of our bedroom, complete with toilet, sink, shower and an unusual contraption I'd never seen before, called a bidet. We called it an Argentine foot bath.

The shower didn't work so we had to bathe in the outroom, a ten-foot square room attached to the back of the house, complete with shower nozzle and toilet. There was a drain in the middle of the floor and a squeegie in the corner. We had to walk outside to get to it, even in the Winter. I realize now that we had much more than most people in that town.

In the front of the house were several tall oak trees, one on each side of the yard. A narrow brick walkway stretched from the front door to the wrought iron gate that stood majestically on the corner. A stone wall, made of bowling ball-sized rocks collected from a local valley, stretched from one corner of the property to the other. Stretching the length of the wall was an iron trellis, corroded by years of Argentine weather.

My companion, Elder Soloa, was from Rosario, a large city to the north. He'd been in the mission field for about a year and a half when he first came to Zapala. I had to go to Neuquén to pick him up because his bus didn't go all the way to Zapala. On the way home he rested his head on my shoulder and fell asleep, immediately softening my heart toward him. It's not that I held anything against him initially. I'd actually just met him. But he was replacing my favorite companion.

Elder Wilson was the second in a string of four Argentina companions I'd have. He was from the capital, Buenos Aires, and exuded that big town confidence and swagger. He had a great sense of humor and seemed to love me despite my obvious flaws. He looked like an American, but he spoke absolutely no English.

We'd worked hard together, baptizing several people in the month or so before he got transferred. Without bicycles or public transportation, we'd left considerable shoe leather on the dusty streets of Zapala, but it was just the way we liked it.

In the two months I spent with Elder Soloa, we baptized more people than ever again on my mission. He was bold without being overbearing. He was good looking, so the people naturally gravitated toward him. And he was a hard worker, a trait I'd develop under his tutelage. Lamentably, I recently learned that Elder Soloa died at a relatively young age in a traffic accident in Rosario many years after we concluded our missions.

On this particular day, we were home for lunch. We'd eaten at the home of one of the members and then had come home for the siesta. In Latin American countries, the siesta is a given. Lunch is eaten, then you go to sleep for an hour or so. As missionaries it was almost counterproductive to work during that hour, since you'd have to wake people to teach them. Instead, we always went home and studied or read the scriptures. Irregularly we would also sneak in a couple minutes of sack ourselves, since after all we were still teenagers fighting the 6AM rise and shine time.

I was not very good at memorizing while on my mission. We had what were called The Rainbow Discussions, gospel lessons we were supposed to memorize word for word. I'd been wrestling with them now for five months or so and still hadn't memorized them all. The C, G and H discussions were easy. They were the Joseph Smith Story, the baptismal challenge and Keeping the Commandments of the Lord. We taught several of those every day, so with familiarity came memory. It was the rest of them that caused me trouble.

Pacing the walkway from the front door to the gate while memorizing was my siesta tradition. Every day after lunch I'd kick off my shoes and "walk the bricks." I was working on the F discussion, Truth vs Error. I'd been working on it for weeks and still felt no closer to being able to quote it word for word. I could teach it, but in my own words. Back in the late 70s, that was not the way we were supposed to do it.

I could feel the glowing warmth of the bricks beneath my feet. The beauty of the day escaped my teenage mind then, but looking back I realize how God had taken particular care in creating that day. The sun was out, an azure sky blazing behind it, and as dry a day as the Simpson Desert. It was almost perfect.

I'd been beating this path for nearly a half hour when, as I neared the gate, the old man stopped in front of me just beyond the wrought iron. His face was lined with wrinkles, like an ancient road map of the passing years. His hands were sunk deep into his overcoat pockets, a finger sticking out a hole made by years of hard work. His blue eyes were sad, telling the story of myriad years of being beaten down by poverty.

Though I'd only been in the country for 90 days or so, I'd met my share of bums. Each town seemed to have its own "town drunk", and Zapala was no different. We called him "El Lobo Ibanez", and from time to time he would come to our home asking for bread, alcohol or money. In his earlier years he'd been a rich, star soccer player on a national team. Influenced by greed and fame, his wife had left him for their attorney and he'd throw himself into a bottle of booze and had never come out. My first impression of the man who stood in front of me at this time was that he was more of the same.

"Do you have any bread?" he asked me in Spanish, his accent belying the fact that he'd lived in Zapala his whole life.

I looked him over and judged him, harshly, on the spot.

"No", I said. "But I have something much better. I have the gospel of Jesus Christ."

He looked at the ground, as if it would crumbled beneath his gaze. "I need bread for my family," he said. "I am going to pay my electric bill and I have no money to pay for bread. My children are hungry. Do you have any bread you can spare?"

Despite what they may tell you, missionaries always have food they can spare, and our situation was no different. We'd just been to the store a few days before and our larders were stuffed.

"No", I lied again. "But we would like to come to your house to teach you and your family about Jesus Christ. Would that be all right?" I felt a twinge of guilt, but I swallowed it back down, like a bad piece of blood sausage.

"No", he replied. "I just need bread. Thank you."

He turned away, his head hanging low, and walked toward the plaza at the end of the street.

I, too, turned and walked back toward the house. Almost immediately I felt the Spirit touch me. "This man needs your help", I seemed to hear it say. The same guilt returned, impacting my soul with a searing energy that wracked me with anguish.

Wheeling quickly around, I raced back to the gate. No more than five seconds had lapsed since I turned the man away, but racing through the gate I looked down the street. He was not to be seen.

I quickly turned the opposite way. He was not there.

I ran out into the middle of the intersection and quickly turned from side to side, desperately searching for him in every direction. But he wasn't there. He was gone.

Puzzled, I walked back through the gate and onto the brick walkway. It was then I heard the Spirit with my physical ears for the first time. "People don't want to hear what you have to say unless their bellies are full." It was gentle, but it felt so condemning.

I stopped, frozen in that agonizing moment for what seemed like hours. Tears welled up in my 19-year old eyes and I wept uncontrollably as I realized how selfish and judgmental I had been. I sat in a heap on the rust-colored bricks, hiding my head in my hands. Elder Soloa had to come to out of the house and help me in, not even knowing why my strength had been taken. It would be many days before I was able to even look at bread without the man's haunting face being emblazoned on my conscience.

That night, I sat in bed and read the scriptures before retiring for the evening. Most nights I would read The Book of Mormon. After all, it was that book that I was there to teach. But this night I was in the books of John the Beloved. They were short books and I figured I could read them all in one sitting. Scanning through his words, my eyes fell upon words that caused me to cry myself to sleep for the first time since my first night in country. They've been indelibly seared on my mind ever since.

"But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth." (1 John 3:17,18)

Maybe he was a man sent from God to test me in my ignorance. Maybe he was just an old man looking for some help. Maybe he was someone I could have gotten to know very well and learned to love like a father. I don't know, and I may never know. But one thing is sure. For someone who passed through my life so quickly, like steam from your mouth on a cold winter's day, he was there and then gone.

And he changed my life forever.