Clint Collins

Elder L  Sister Y and Elder Collins
The 3 of us were together in Dillon, Montana for a couple of months.

I need to start this post by saying I was not or ever have been "in love" with Clint Collins.  I have no idea what being "in love" with someone is like.  I have never had that particular feeling and I resent the fact that I couldn't just love someone for opening my eyes to the possibilities.

Have you heard of people saying, "I knew as soon as I saw him that we were going to get married."  Well, that very same thing happened to me.  Only reverse.  I knew I would never marry Collins.

I didn't even like Collins when I first met him.  He was just another stupid number crunching Elder that I had to deal with, but I am getting ahead of myself.

I went back to another winter in Montana after 3 months of freedom at home.  This time I was sent to Dillon with Sister M.  It was awful being back and I realized what a horrible mistake I had made.  I needed to go home.  The problem?  My home life was imploding.  I was allowed to call my mother, who then gave me the bad news.  My grandparents had come to visit her and now both were suffering in the hospital.  My father was out of work and the family was struggling to pay the bills and have enough for food.  They couldn't afford to take me back.

I tried with Sister M. but we didn't seem to click.  I wasn't into the work.  I refused to knock on doors ever again.  I had paid my dues already and I didn't want to struggle.  Sisters were brand new to this town and we didn't have anything established.  I was once again clueless.  And then since I wasn't fulfilling my companions emotional needs she decided she was "in love" with the other Elder in the town with us.  It wasn't her fault.  She had been brainwashed by the members of that screwed up little town.  It seems that in that area the Elders(male missionaries) would "hook up" with teenage girls all the time.  It was seen as a normal event and many encouraged it.  Well, that is breaking the biggest of rules.  You can like a person.  You can write, but you aren't allowed to act on your emotions while on your mission.  When you are done with your promised time you can do anything you want.  Unfortunately, when these emotions bloom they can become very distracting from the work.

Sister M didn't even bat her eye at Elder B before the members told her it was destiny that they two of them had been called to the same mission.  It turns out that they lived a block away from one another growing up and never met.  I had no idea what to do or say when she started conversations about her wedding colors.  I mean come on!  I was suffering so much during our companionship that I didn't know how to concentrate anymore.  Luckily for me Collins was transferred into the area, saw the situation and took matters into his own hands.  He drove an hour to the other sets of missionaries and switched comps!  Suddenly we were dealing with Collins and Elder L.  He managed to endear himself to me with that action.  I guess the President believed Collins about my problems because Sister M was also transferred out.  On the car ride to get my new comp, Sister M then told me of all the bad rumors she had heard regarding me.  It had poisoned our relationship from the very beginning.  She warned me to talk to Sister Y.  So, I did.  I laid it all out in front of her while we drove back to the apartment.  I thought things would be better now.

He had an impressive talent of making intricate paper snowflakes.  He would cut one out while talking to us.  We had them hanging around the apartment
for Christmas.

I was a mess.  I hated everything.  It was awful knowing I was the anchor between the 4 of us working in that small town.  Collins kept butting in.  I didn't want to have anything to do with him and he seem to know that and bother me
even more.  We shared a car and instead of just dropping of the keys, like everyone else he would try to get me to talk.  Slowly he gained my trust. 

Now, please don't get me wrong.  Collins has quite a list of attributes on the negative side of the column.  He hated responsibility.  He hated being in charge and he wasn't very keen on the rules, but unlike any of the males I have every dealt with before or after, Collins treated me like I existed. 

I have a very hard time with most people and I found the 19 year old missionaries a specially harsh thorn in my side.  They were so limited in their views of life.  Most had a normal, loving home-life coming from Utah and were used to getting what they wanted.  They had no idea what I had experienced before meeting them or how to deal with me.  I was broken in their eyes.  I didn't fit the mold or fit the stories that they had been told their whole lives.  I felt belittled by them.  I felt invisible.  I felt a joke in
their eyes.  And I didn't have the energy to deal with the condescension.

We gathered together on Christmas eve for a game of "Skittles" with a ward family. 
We have packed jaws of unchewed candy in our mouths.

 Collins didn't treat me like that.  He asked me my opinion.  He asked my feelings and unlike everyone else he paid attention.  The simple acknowledgement of me was what I needed at that time.  This story is an example of what a difference he made in my everyday living.

The game is really fun.  You pick two skittles.  If they are different colors you have to hold them in your mouth.  If they are the same you can chew, but only until another person gets matching pairs.  Then you have to stop.

As missionaries you work in pairs, then the missionaries in your area are called a district and the districts make up a zone with the zones making up the mission.  Each of the groups had a leader and each have a different set of meetings to organise, support, work and bond with on another.

I started the game a normal color, but that soon changed.  Its hard to see, but in the 2nd picture it looks like I got a sunburn after a couple of rounds.  Collins kept saying. "Kill me. Just kill me now,"  It was quite entertaining.

I had met the other missionaries in the District before Collins arrived.  They were just more of the same to me, nothing very special.  In fact I had done a quilt as a Christmas gift for the president and let the other missionaries in on it by having them sign it.  So they knew who I was.  Well, Collins, his comp, Sister Y and I lived an hour away from them, so we didn't have much to do with the other missionaries, but had to go up once in a while for meetings.  When we arrived I was surrounded by the other Elders and we started talking without any of the usually difficulties.  I noticed this difference right away and after a bit I blurted out the question."Um, no offense, but why are you guys talking to me this time?"  "Oh". One of the Elders answered. "Collins has been telling us how cool you are, so we wanted to find out for ourselves."  To be totally honest I had a burning flash of anger burn through me.  I thought. "How dare he.  I don't need...." but I quickly changed my tune.  Yes, I did need help.  I needed every good thing he had said about me.  The prep work he had done made all the difference in the Elders attitude towards me and I had a positive relationship with those young men.  I was so grateful.

And that was what it was like.  He paved the way for me to be successful.  He treated me with kindness and consideration.  How could you not love someone for doing that?  But what really sealed my feelings toward him was his help in changing my heart.

I continued to struggle.  My esteem was in the toilet.  We were having terrible trouble with the church members.  And I was so depressed.  I remember talking to the President and he asked if I should be on Prozac.  I shouted, "Yes! If you think it will help!"  But nothing was done.  I was having a very bad night and Sister Y asked Collins for help.  I didn't want to listen to him.  I was sure that he would give me the same BS from the same script as the other boys.  I didn't know what was wrong.  I didn't know why I was doing so badly and getting a lecture from an unknowing prissy boy wasn't going to help.  But once again Collins surprised me.  Instead of attacking me like a bull seeing red, he came into our apartment looked at the situation and said he needed to think.  I was completely taken aback when he left the three of us standing in the kitchen, with our mouths hanging open, to be alone in our extra bedroom. 

When he came back to talk to me he was blunt and to the point.  "Peck, either you don't know what your core desire is or you haven't choosing a very good one.  You need to decide what you want more then anything in the whole world.  Everything you do is to fulfill that desire, so it is a very important choice."

He was absolutely correct.  He had said just the words I needed just when I was ready to hear them.  I began doing some very strong soul searching.  What did I really want?  I wanted to be loved.  I wanted more than anything else in the world to feel loved/understood by one person, but I realized what a pitfall that thinking was.  I could get into some horrible trouble with that as my only goal.  It meant being used, debased and abused.  I didn't want that for myself.

I changed my core desire.  I decided that I wanted to feel God's love for me.  I had felt it earlier in my mission when I felt the acknowledgement by God.  I felt that he knew who I was, despite the thick concentration of humanity and that was the purest sense of joy and happiness that I had ever experienced.  I wanted that to be apart of me again.  I wanted to not only have faith, but I wanted the knowledge.  I will always love Collins for giving me that gift.  

Is there a happy ending? No, not really.  He was transferred out of Dillon and then a month later I was sent to Kalispell, Montana.  Loved that place.  I went there a completely different person.  I didn't care what people thought about me anymore.  We wrote a couple of times.  I didn't want to be accused of anything inappropriate, so I backed off.  Meanwhile, I became the top baptizer for the month.  It was quite funny.  The zone leader had made a bet with the Billings, Montana zone saying that the littlest zone could beat the biggest zone in baptisms.  I came in with only 2 weeks left in the bet.  There was a large teaching pool and I just asked anyone we met if they wanted to be baptized.  To our shock and dismay they all said yes.  It was a crazy flurry of activity, but we managed to teach and get 11 people baptized in the 2 weeks.  The Elders were very happy to crush the other zone.

I went home on a good note, since my reputation was a rocky one.  I tried to keep in touch with the 3 other missionaries from Dillon.  When Christmas came around I had a strong feeling that Collins wasn't going to get any packages.  That is the worst thing in the world for a missionary, so I organised a gift box for him.  He must have called or sent a note because I remember he thanked me.  I was correct in my feeling.  His comp was getting all kinds of packages and Collins had received nothing until my box arrived.

So I tried to keep up contact.  Then one night the phone rang and I answered it to. "Peeeeecccckkkk.  Are you sleeping?"  It was Collins telling me he was in town and he didn't want to sleep at the beach again.  I told him he could come and stay at my home.  That night Collins and his friends slept out by our pool.  I was very excited to see him.  I wanted to continue being friends.  I had a very hard time transitioning  into the real world.  I was used to people with my same moral standards.  I was completely lost at home after I had changed my thinking so dramatically and I thought of all people Collins would understand.

I was wrong.  He didn't have any interest in me.  I sat at breakfast coming up with suggestion after suggestion of what we could do that day, but he shot me down on everyone.  My heart sank.  He was treating me with the same cold indifference as everyone else.  I didn't want to accept the rejection, but when he leaned in to give me a hug good-bye I knew I would never see him again.  I knew he had made a choice.  I don't know what he based that choice on.  I believe he thought I wanted to be his girlfriend, that I wanted to marry him and I didn't.  It was never my intention.

I have wanted to get in touch with him at different points in my life.  I wanted him to know that he was the reason that I had my success, but it wasn't to be.  I found his address in some old records, but the letter came back, it always comes back.

Now there is no point.  We both have our own lives.  I wouldn't know what to say to him anyway.  The memory is too important to be spoiled by the reality.  What is funny and frustrating to me is reading through this post I notice how the words fail to give the impression of how important those short 2 months were to me.  The stories sound normal, like everyday day life. 

But I had never been treated normal.

Let me rephrase that.  I am treated the same as everyone else.  The problem is I don't responsed like the average person.  Collins seem to know that.  He responded to me in the way I needed to feel attached to the environment.  A part of me really hates him for giving me that perspective.  I crave the connections I was able to make in that town.  I felt that sense of belonging each of us is searching for.  His abandonment was a deep betrayal to me and one that I have tried very hard not to become jaded from.

I just try to hold in my heart the possibilities.  Between the depression, between the anger and other negative feelings I held in my hand the perfect moment.  It all came crashing down, but I did hold  it.  From that shinning example I have known what I wanted and I struggle to reach for it.