The Singles Ward

I had tried to avoid this place as much as possible before my mission. Growing up in the youth we were told that dating was okay but to avoid serious relationships until we were older. To focus on a mission, college or something else before jumping into the marriage wagon. I can remember growing up with that pounded in my head over and over and over and over and over again. To the point that the thought of marriage freaked the collywobbles out of me. (real word, look it up) Me? Married to a beautiful girl forever? Having a family, being depended on to provide for my future children? Holding hands with a girl? Looking a girl in the eyes romantically? What the heck? No I'm not a 8 year old who thinks girls have cooties, but the idea of a serious romantic relationship was absurd to me. I was told to avoid them as a youth!

At least, that's what I got out of the hours and hours of firesides dedicated to helping us stay sexually pure, date safely and focus on fun and socializing than actually getting serious and married. The hours of stake youth activities involving fun dances as the place to date or avoid serious dating. The hours and hours of being told I am the chosen generation and how special I should feel, how awesome we are, how proud our leaders are of us, how special we are going to be in preparing the world for the Gospel. How we better not screw up our life and do bad things like date before 16 or skip a mission because we are the chosen generation.

Real quick: I am not mocking or disrespecting my leaders at all; I love them all to pieces. They are the ones who gave me confidence at youth activities. were willing to chat with me as a friend despite our age gaps. They will forever be awesome and amazing to me. Rather, my remarks are based upon how my 12-18 year old mind comprehended their guidance, warnings and love. Being an introverted teenager who just wanted to fit into the youth somehow, have a few friends who actually seemed to like me, this kind of teenager thought things a certain way. Not the fault of anyone, not me or my leaders. Just how my brain understood and learned things.

So the singles ward. You know the jokes about Mormon culture like Mormon standard time or the different kinds of testimonies, etc?  On my mission the Deaf culture and the Mormon culture mixed in an odd way that I was definitely not used to, but grew to love. The deaf doubled the Mormon standard time, used metaphors and object lessons as their language, and loved to socialize. We would find more deaf at branch activities than actual church. And thus it was with the singles ward. Doubled the Mormon standard time, loved to share stories and find ways to connect with gospel principles and the socializing... 85% of church services felt like that.

And you know, there isn't anything wrong with the socializing. How else am I to meet a possible future companion? As long as I've had enough time to energize myself I can go through a few hours of chatting. Take the Sunday of May 10th of 2015. I had just spent a weekend at a YSA conference with over 70 people from both in and out of state! Friday night I had used up my energy finding and re-finding a place to go bowling (See my post on that for more information) and by the time we had gone bowling, I was socially tired. I really did not feel like socializing. I wasn't upset, wasn't mad at anyone. I was just drained out. I needed time for myself, which I gave myself. Then Saturday I was able to more fully enjoy the day. And with another good night's sleep, Sunday I was able to really get involved with the members and chat a lot. I just need time to myself to be ready to chat.

And it's not that I'm unapproachable. I am perfectly fine with chatting with anyone. Sometimes my responses will be shorter than other times, it just depends on how I'm feeling, how well I know you, and if I had enough time by myself to recharge. I try to be happy and responsive to anyone. I don't want people to think I'm anti-social (as in, I hate people and talking to them) because I have no problem with meeting people. Even talking to people. I may not share deep dark secrets with you like how my week really was or the concerns and questions I have, but I'll still smile and be nice.

To sum it up, the singles ward has been quite the adventure. It has been full of days where I have had no desire to chat with anyone (and was unsuccessful at avoiding people because we have a wonderful Elder's Quorum president and sisters who notice those who are shy and alone) and days where I was the only one talking. I have nothing against the singles ward. It's the best place for me to be right now. It's just been a slower ride for me than for others. Asking girls in the singles ward out on dates (oh boy, do I see another blog post in the future?) may not be my strongest ability, but I'll get there eventually. I'm only 22. (watch time + Murphy's law abuse that one!)

10 months later; what has happened?

Pardon any ramblings, random topic changing and otherwise lack of a unified-feeling post. A lot of thoughts came to my mind during this post, many of which I had to diverge into other separate posts. There will be subtle overlapping. Forgive me.

I got released in June of 2014. Still plenty awkward and with an uncertain future, I smiled and shook hands at my home ward the following several Sundays. Many came over and said hi, others I couldn't remember but they could and were happy. And many new faces as well. The ward had many of the same original members, and the ones I could remember the most. The Bishopric had changed, and a few leaders had moved, though. Still trying to take in the fact that I had served a mission (that will be for another blog post another day) and that I had spent two years successfully doing what I spent my whole life planning for, I wasn't sure if what I was feeling was normal and how I should react to said feelings. The ward felt the same, a bit. As I said, there were old faces that brought me memories. Yet it felt different.

The best way I can explain this feeling is via an experience my MTC companion and I had. We were to stay at the MTC for ten weeks, while everyone else in our immediate district was to leave by the end of 9 weeks. When everyone left and it was just us two for a little while, I felt as though the spirit of the district had left. The spirit was still there, but the guardian angels for each missionary had departed to protect them on their two year service. It felt like most of the pie was gone, but our two slices still remained and thus we still had a bit of a familiar spirit. Then when the next district came, the remainder of the space on the plate was filled with a new pie. Still good, but different. Different families, different levels of a testimony, different expectations. It was like having our old district with us in a sense, yet obviously different.

So with my attempt to give an analogy out of the way, the home ward felt as though there were new spirits there in the midst of an old spiritual place I was familiar with. So I give my homecoming talk, bring a non member friend to attend the services, then I make a decision that will start my new phase of life: Attending the singles ward.

I had avoided this ward prior to my mission (see my Singles Ward post for more info) because I did not want to fall into the trap of dating to start a relationship before my mission. I'm not suggesting that it would be a bad idea, but being who I am, the thought of having a girl who liked me and was willing to wait while I served scared me. There is a time and a place for everything and I wasn't sure if I would be ready for such a step in my life yet. But now my mission was over and it was either my home ward, or the singles ward. And knowing that my friends would eventually migrate to that ward anyway, I decided it was my best option to progress and not fail at the whole post-mission life goal stuff.

So the singles ward. What an interesting place where Mormon culture meets... single adult culture. Where socializing and making as many friends as possible seemed to be the way to survive. I was fine with it for the most part. I had just spent two years forcing myself to get to know every Deaf person I could meet. Learning how to love people and see them as God seems them. So it should be just as easy to do so in a hearing singles ward, right? Well, yes and no. I have a separate post about living in the hearing world with love for the Deaf and sign language, but I'll give the gist here.

Being an introvert to some degree, using my hands to communicate to the Deaf meant that I was using a different language. Watching the Deaf understand me, communicate back and me understand them made me happy. I was seeing a witness of my success and improvement with my calling and mission language. Also, not hearing my voice seemed to make me feel more confident in myself. I wasn't self conscience of my voice or anything, but it was a nice change to communicate and depend on different senses.

So in a hearing ward, especially a hearing singles ward, the common language was English. Sure some people knew Spanish or German or something cool. But they never spoke it except as a joke on occasion. Same thing with sign language right? Well, yes. Except that I had just spent two years putting my heart into the Deaf culture and sign language (... yes I have a post about this as well. How the Mission changed my life [not what you think] ) and found it to be the most amazing skill and talent I had acquired all my life, so the best way I could figure out how to connect with people post-Mission was via using sign language.

But, I'm in a hearing ward. I shouldn't expect every hearing young single adult to find a fascination with sign language and/or my dedication on my mission. They would rather learn about who I am, what my interests (besides signing) are, where I'm going to school, where I work, what I like to do, what I did last week, how I am doing this week, what I thought about the talk in Sacrament and so on. Sure I talked a lot about this on my mission, but it was in sign language. This is in English. Speaking English doesn't make me feel accomplished or good about myself. It is satisfying to know that I can communicate with the hearing, I suppose. But that's just to be expected from a hearing person.

So here I am attending a singles ward with people I don't know (my friends I grew up with hadn't finished their missions or gone home yet from college). Trying to figure out how to be a single adult (because quite frankly, I didn't know how. I just knew how to be a youth and what to avoid) and not being Missionary-awkward. I do end up making some friends along the way, who were able to recognize the personal and social struggles I have always gone through in a hearing setting. They may never know how much of a difference they made.

And now it's almost summer a year later. Soon I get to celebrate the first year of being a return missionary (I survived a year without mission rules? hooray, time to celebrate I guess haha). What have I done 10 months later? (after how many paragraphs and I ask the question in the title?) Well, I've been active in the singles ward. I've receive multiple callings (and am in no ways complaining about them), and have reunited with most of my friends from pre-mission. My college plans have also developed from basically having no idea (I'll need to make a blog post about that!) to actually feeling like I'm doing something.

So here I am, typing this blog post (and diverging many ideas and thoughts into 5 separate posts, hooray!) and amazed by what has happened in my life. I think I'll end this here for now. It's a good place to contemplate. I'll consider my future plans in another blog post. This has gotten long enough for now. I hope whoever reads this, will enjoy? Or find it interesting at least? No matter. I just need a place to record my thoughts. About what happened 10 months since my mission.