O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A, Oklahoma, OK!

I've known Ariel since she was ten. She and her family live around the corner from us, and they honestly may be the nicest people I know. Her mother has a remarkable ability to make you feel as if you are the most important person in the world--she showers compliments freely and is always happy.

This week Ariel received a mission call to Kennewick Washington, where she'll go and serve the Lord and the people of Washington for the next year and a half of her life. Because of various conflicts, there wasn't a Sacrament Meeting available for her to speak in church, so she talked today, first about obedience but then about how she ended up submitting papers to serve a mission.

A lot of memories came back to me.

Twenty-five years ago next month I was working at my dad's cousin's house. She and her husband had just bought the house, and the prior owner had (1) carpeted the garage and (2) operated it as a hostel for un-housebroken dogs. There is nothing quite as aromatically charming as scraping old, urine-stained carpet from a garage floor. And THIS old, urine-stained carpet was particularly well soiled.

I'd been living with my grandma since right after I'd graduated from high school, and she called to let me know that my mission call had arrived. Now, for those of you who haven't experienced the phenomenon of a Mormon mission call, it's kind of like the Masters--an experience unlike any other. Friends and family gather together and wager on where in the world the new missionary will be sent. With great anticipation the new missionary tears open the envelope and begins to read:

Dear Elder Fontano,

You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Oklahoma Oklahoma City mission....

at which point the crowd erupts in excitement, the missionary's mother starts crying (which naturally leads to a mascara emergency), and someone says "where's a map?!"

When I read those words, I was surrounded by my grandma (who had served missions in Switzerland, New Zealand, and Australia), my aunt and cousins, and my dad's cousin and her family. Two of my cousins had preceded me in serving missions--one had gone to Australia, and the other was then-serving in Spain. Two of my best friends had just left on their missions, to Brazil and Seattle, respectively. My parents were 500 miles away in Carson City, Nevada, but were on the telephone.

When I uttered the words "Oklahoma Oklahoma City mission", I couldn't hear anything. I was IN THE ZONE and the GAME HAD SLOWED DOWN, to steal a couple of football cliches, and it was like the crowd wasn't even there. The silence was broken when someone (OK, it was the little voice in my head) said, "wow, that sucks."

I had only two thoughts: (1) "people live in Oklahoma?" and (2) "We have the Church in Oklahoma?"

It wasn't Switzerland or Australia or Brazil. It wasn't even Seattle, which is a remarkably cool American city. No, it was Oklahoma. Middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma. Later my dad told me that he was afraid I was a little disappointed by my reaction. I'm not sure what gave him that idea, other than the complete lack of excitement in my voice.

After the requisite pats-on-the-back and feigned "well, that will be, um, great!" votes-of-confidence, I decided that I needed a little break and jumped in my truck and went for a ride. (I can only imagine that moment for people called to REALLY boring places. "You are assigned to labor in the Utah Wendover mission." Can the crowd even fake those congratulations? But I digress.) As I headed north on 1300 East in Sandy, Utah, sulking a bit that I didn't have some exotic or exciting world city to go serve in, my heart was filled with a calm assurance that Oklahoma was EXACTLY where the Lord needed me to be. My soul was immediatly at peace with the call, and I even felt excited.

I entered the Provo Utah MTC (that's "Missionary Training Center" for the uninitiated) in January 1991. The US had just invaded Iraq (the first time). I left at home five brothers and two sistsers, ranging in age from 17 years to 21 months. The MTC was a spiritual boot camp, with lessons interrupted only by eating. Being the health-conscious 19 year old male that I was, I didn't attempt to survive SOLELY on Captain Crunch and chocolate milk, but a high percentage of my caloric intake could be traced to those two culinary miracles. After about three weeks, I was on a plane headed to Oklahoma.

Walking through the airport toward baggage claim, I was surprised by all of the singing and dancing going on among the locals. They seemed compelled to let every visitor to their state know that their state was not something to scoff at. No, it was a place where the wind swept down the plain. In very fact, it was OK!

Confession. That last paragraph ^^ was not true. I'm sorry.

I spent two (count 'em--TWO) years in Oklahoma. My first several months were in Lawton, a small city at the southern end of the State, home of the Ft. Sill army base. Fun story, my first morning I was awakened to the sound of explosions and rattling windows. I thought Iraq had decided to fight back and had decided on a military installation in southern Oklahoma. It turns out that Ft. Sill was (and probably still is) an artillery base, and it was just a training exercise. Good thing. From Lawton I went to Oklahoma City, where I served in the worst part of Oklahoma City (I'm about 98% certain that Kevin Durrant does not hang out in NE OKC, ever), and then I was assigned to Shawnee. That place was amazing. It was small-town Oklahoma and home to a Baptist university. After Shawnee I was moved to Del City, which is a suburb of OKC and home to Tinker AFB. I spent my last six months back in Lawton.

One Saturday morning, my companion and I were knocking doors in Del City. A kind gentleman answered the door and, although he was not interested at all in our message, he took a few moments to chat with us. He looked directly at me and said, "you should be proud of yourself. Your church can't send just anyone here. It has to send the very best young men to a place like Oklahoma, because there is so much working against you here."

I kind of laughed him off, but he said it again, "No, I mean it."

I cannot claim to be the type of person he thought I was, but somehow, 19 or 20 months after those first thoughts of discouragement, the Lord reminded me that I was right where he needed me.

We said our good-byes, and continued down the street, but this time I was singing with the rest of them, "O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A, Oklahoma, OK!"

Does anyone know a song about Kennewick Washington?