Politics and a Mission

When I left on my LDS Mission to Minnesota, Bill Clinton had said he had not had sexual relations with Miss Lewinsky, but I knew he had lied. I watched him tell the truth in St Cloud during a dinner appointment. My companion, who had been on his mission about 18 months, had not heard anything about it (I think he was in Canada when it first broke). I watched the final vote tally in the Senate impeachment trial at a nursing home in Faribault during our service. I also, the following "P" day, gave my companion, who was from Mexico, a primer on the US political system.

I was also in faribault when some guy went off on us about the Church stealing the Olympics. I told him I didn't know anything about that, he told me it had been all over the news, to get a clue, then threw a dirt/manure mixture on us.

The thing that brought back these memories is a post at a new blog by Davis Didjeridu on his political leanings, and some tales about his mission:

My mission was a very important experience because it really made me a Democrat. I entered the MTC on September 12, 2001. On September 10, because I was so politically interested, I worried that I would constantly be distracted by politics, even in Australia. On the 12th, I had confidence that I could ignore politics and the news and give my full effort to the work. I figured that Bush would assume a FDR-like mantle, rallying the nations of the world together to fight a common enemy and no one would disagree with him because it was so obvious the reasons that we had to fight and other nations, including Australians, would be glad to help. For the first few months, it was good. Most Aussies were kind and understanding when they found out my companion and I were Americans. That started to change after the first missile strike on Afghanistan, and slid further downhill as Bush became more and more obsessed with Iraq. I distinctly recall one door where the woman would not talk to us “because your President wants to go to war.” I had no idea at the time (around October 2002) what was going on, but it soon became apparent.

-Bob