I was a missionary in NYC on 9/11, ask me anything. #DezNat

I remember that it was a beautiful day. I was eating breakfast cereal, sitting on the couch in my dilapidated Bronx apartment. The phone rang. I knew it was Carl. He was a schizophrenic member of our ward.

He lived in gov't housing and would call us to inform us of the weather every day. “ELDERS, BRING AN UMBRELLA.”

I refused to answer, not wanting to get sucked into one of his 30-minute-rants on how the gov't had planted recording devices in his answering machine. Elder ------, one of the missionaries I shared an apartment with, answered the phone.

I remember his bemused expression as he listened to Carl. “Carl says a plane just flew into one of the Twin Towers.”

We may have laughed at this. It fit Carl's paranoid ramblings. But our laughter gave way, almost immediately, to a chilly feeling. It was nearly instantaneous. I don't know how acquainted I was with personal revelation, but I felt it through my fellow Elders that morning.

We didn't own a TV, but I remembered we had an old boombox with a radio in the closet. Normally it would be unthinkable to turn on the radio and listen to it, but we all felt something was very wrong. We set it up without hesitation.

I will never forget the sounds of the radio announcers screaming, on the scene as the Towers burned. A man shouted that both had been hit. He may have described a report of another plane that had hit the Pentagon? Or maybe it was too early to know just then. I can't remember now.

I recall the shock at his description of one of the towers *collapsing.* I couldn't believe what he was saying. I don't think he did, either. I assumed it was just a partial collapse.

We were very used to the sounds of sirens wailing in the Bronx, but there were even more sirens. The wailing rose and rose, filling the air outside and around us.

The Twin Towers were visible from the rooftop of our building, but none of us wanted to go up there. I felt a very real sense of danger. That my life was suddenly, actually, at risk.

It may have been my proximity to all the actual death; I do not know. But I didn't want to go outside for fear of another attack, another plane crash. I thought more planes might fall from the sky.

We stood in our cramped kitchen without speaking. I have a memory of us discussing what would happen next, even though I know none of us spoke aloud. A war? Could it be that we'd be called upon to fight? Would there be more planes, more explosions? Would they send us all home?

I stupidly snapped a photo of the radio in the kitchen, not knowing why.

I hoped it was the end. Please send us all home, just let this be over. I am almost ashamed to remember it now, but for a few moments I wanted more destruction, more death.

I wanted the whole vast stage of the world, with its curtains and costumes, to collapse on itself, like Samson pulling down the pillars of the earth. Because I could not envision a future after this. I could not envision a world where this was reality.

I recalled walking down the street, the second week of my mission, right by the Twin Towers. They were so unimaginably vast, so immense. They reached up higher than the the summit of Mt. Everest, as if built by God himself.

My companion told me I could ride the elevator to the top. I said I'd do it some other day; there was still plenty of time.

And they were knocked down like two trees whose trunks had rotted away. They were nothing. Ashes on the breeze. I wanted this dispensation to cycle to its close, for Jesus to return in his glory, and for all of us to be done with it once and for all.

I did not want to usher in the new millennium this way.

And then, all I wanted was to go home. To just go far, far away from that place. I loved New York City so much, but in that moment all I wanted was to never see the place again.

Please Lord, let me marry, let me live a quiet and happy life in some small western town. I had dreams of doing something artistic, but no more; I pledged myself to a simple life of devotion.

The shots that rang out in the darkness outside my window, the murdered children, the drugs, the used condoms and needles and plastic baggies with white powder--just let me go, Lord. I've learned my lesson, just let me go.

We went into the apartment of a neighbor family. They didn't speak English, so we watched Univision in Spanish.

We sat on their couch, watching the replay of the towers getting hit, over and over, as reporters spoke in Spanish over the footage. I didn't understand any of it, but I didn't need to. There was nothing to understand. Nothing.

I will never forget that video of the first plane smashing into the tower, emerging through the other side like a fireball. The shouts I'd heard on the radio were now matched with the image of those people being murdered.

The absolute violence. The absolute finality of the death, of the collapse. It was over. GONE for all time.

The Spirit withdrew from the obscenity. My heart collapsed into blackness.

I have almost no insight to that day, just as when it happened. I retell this story again and again, with nothing to add. We just walked the streets. I swear I could smell burning when I walked outside, although we were too far away.

My companions and I wandered the streets of the Bronx like zombies. No buses, no subway, nothing. Everyone was gone. We didn't know what to do or how to help.

I remember sobs of people from their windows. I remember the tears of old ladies. I remember the revulsion I felt at the almost gleeful reporting on the news. An exciting happening. Images of Arabs dancing in the streets, laughing with joy.

Flashes of dark-skinned men in desert robes, people and places that I did not believe were real. Refused to believe were real. I could not. I wished death upon them all.

That night I got a phone call from a member of the bishopric. He let me know that no one in our ward had been killed, although he wasn't sure of the whole stake.

He described the aftermath so nonchalantly. “They're goin' around picking up parts of people and puttin 'em in buckets, so maybe they can get DNA tested. They found a foot, some fingers, some pieces they don't even know what.” I wanted to retch.

Then the loneliness. I loved my mission brothers in Christ, I loved my sisters. I loved them all so much. All I wanted was for them to go home to their girlfriends, their sweethearts. All those anticipated letters. All my little brothers and sisters waiting to hear from me,

waiting to hear if I was dead. My parents worried that I might be dead. All that day, that thought never entered into my head. I never thought myself important enough for such a death.

The days passed in a daze. Everything was shut down, in a paralysis. I saw people in the city waving around American flags because they had no idea what else to do. It filled me with dread, but I couldn't explain why.

I traveled to Manhattan for a special mission-wide conference. We walked by the Ground Zero wreckage. It was just a heap of twisted metal and destruction and death, smouldering in the rain. I snapped a photo in secret, even though federal agents had posted signs saying not to.

Everyone in the city just went about their business despite this smoking hole where the Towers used to be. What could we all do? Nobody stopped for anything. You cry, you hug, you hold hands and sing--and then you're expected to move on with your life.

Weeks later, I recall walking home in the middle of the night in the Bronx. Two giants appeared in the night sky where the Towers used to be. They were the ghost lights. Spotlights shining into the sky. They were the spiritual outlines of the Towers.

I have no idea what the lights meant, but they didn't need to mean anything. They were beautiful and ethereal. Everyone in the city looked and saw them. I wanted to take a picture, but the night sky was just too dark. I resolved to just remember the lights instead.

A year before, my girlfriend and I sat together in our small western town, discussing the future. I'd just sent in my papers, and was anxiously awaiting the arrival of my call. She asked if I could go anywhere in the world, where would it be? “New York City,” I said.

I don't know why the Lord sent me there. I was not a particularly successful missionary. I was still finding my testimony and finding myself. I am eternally grateful to every elder that put up with me.

My patriarchal blessing says that I will see the great destructions. That I will see fire, and I will see desolation. I wonder now whether I was simply sent to witness a great destruction. To witness fire, to witness desolation.

Two years (two life-ages) later, I enrolled at BYU-Idaho. I attended a fireside broadcast one night that happened to fall on Sept. 11th. I sat, newly returned, amid so many college students, strangers, and girls. People I didn't know. But I felt so comforted as I sat there.

This may seem insane, but in 2003 9/11 already felt like a very distant memory to me. It was so long ago, in such a far away land. But the fireside started, and the general authority spoke a few words about the anniversary of 9/11 before his prepared talk.

I remember tears coming to my eyes as he spoke. I wept silently. I remembered all those people dead, all the people falling, all my brothers and our impoverished efforts in that alien place.

It was the first time that I really cried about it. I cried for what they did to my people and my beautiful city, the violence they committed against me and my youth.

It was as if, in that moment in that auditorium in Rexburg, my role on that day became real for the very first time. Nobody knew my name or who I was, but I was indeed there. I was there and I saw what they did.

In all those images of that gray city, projected onto millions of screens, there was a 20-year-old hidden somewhere in the concrete.

I'd witnessed it, as did all the other valiant elders of my mission. My merry band of wanderers. I had the tiniest role on the biggest stage in the world that day. All the New York missionaries were part of this cast.

And all of them are long gone out of my life, but I will cherish their kinship forever. Because we share the bond of witnessing.

I don't know what 9/11 means to the Boomers born after WW2. And the Zoomers born after 2001 just see it as an edgelord meme. But for those of us who came of age on that fateful day, we remember. We experienced life before and after. And so we know what it did to us and our world.

It taught me that there is an evil influence in the world. It is banal and ultimately stupid, but it is real. And it seeks to destroy the followers of Christ. Not even twenty years have passed, and here we are with this and every future generation enslaved to sex and masturbation

Remember that we were attacked by evil r*tards and porn addicts. Like all smooth-brained imbeciles, and chronic masturbators, they blamed Christians for all the world's problems.

Remember the twisted metal and the bodies falling like ashes. I think God allowed me to be there so I could see it and testify.

So that's what I'm doing. Their violence isn't just reddit memes and pedo Netflix shows, or even Joe Biden and preferred pronouns. Their violence is spiritual, and it will lead to physical violence and physical death.

"It's alright, I convince myself
We calm ourselves with sex and games
We calm ourselves with locks and keys
We calm ourselves with store bought dreams"

"O ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord?

O ye fair ones, how could ye have rejected that Jesus, who stood with open arms to receive you?"