Stories: Randy Bott in Mormon Times
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By Jacob Hancock
Mormon Times
Friday, Nov. 20, 2009
PROVO, Utah -- Before one of the most sought after religion professors at BYU stands before his lecture halls each day, he spends some early-morning time in his office.
Alone. No calls. Few interruptions. Just silence.
"Then I turn on my computer," Randy Bott told a crowd of several hundred returned missionaries Thursday, Nov. 19, at BYU during a lecture titled, "Is there life after a mission?"
As a portion of tranquility tiptoes from his office, a sort of commotion creeps in as he opens a batch of e-mails, brimming with questions from an array of young Latter-day Saints Bott has taught during his 40 years in church classrooms. Some messages are so despairing his 64-year-old hands tremble at the keyboard answering.
Ironically, though, Bott says it's this daily routine of losing himself in other people's troubles that's kept him from having much of his own.
"I figure all mine out while I'm helping you," he told the crowd.
Bott's overall theme of advice for newly returned missionaries, to metaphorically not come home but to continue mission practices -- such as losing themselves in service, was a targeted strike against the common mistake for missionaries to return their focus completely back to themselves after they get released.
"The greatest tragedy is the missionary who tries to return," the white-haired professor said frankly. "Don't go back (to pre-mission life)."
He said the MTC, and ultimately one's mission, is a pre-game warm up for life, not just a brief spiritual intermission.
"You don't go to school to get you bachelor's, master's and doctorate to walk away and say, 'Ok, it's done, I can forget that stuff now...' How stupid would that be?"
He wishes missionaries would remember, and more importantly, use their spiritual knowledge and good habits when in school and throughout life.
It's the kind of responsibility BYU sophomore Garrett Frame says he learned on his mission and what he's continued to implement from his mission six months ago. But he admitted with a smile he's still "got a lot of growing up to do..."
In a stark warning, Bott quoted Isaiah where a watchman is commanded to observe any enemy danger from a watchtower during susceptible hours of darkness.
He paralleled it to the kind of attentiveness missionaries need in order to recognize the powers of the adversary that are especially working on them after their mission.
"Watchman, what of the night?" he quoted. "Watchman, what of the night?"
Then he asked, "Do you think the night ended after you mission?"
As a young man on his own mission, he reminded himself to watch out for such after-mission dangers by writing himself a letter he would open in the near future that inquired about his own future habits and spiritual state. He opened the sealed letter six months after he returned home. Even though he was "generally doing OK," he said it was a "swift kick in the pockets" for him to repent and do better.
Returned missionaries should avoid sliding back into old habits and instead step from one grace to the next, Bott said. He named four areas: Spiritually, by staying active in church and paying tithing; intellectually, by studying diligently; physically, by exercising and eating right; and socially, by getting out and dating.
Bott didn't miss a chance in his 50-minute talk to push the audience into a few serious places of reflection, telling them they may be the so-called "chosen generation" -- and he assured them they were -- but that it didn't mean entitlement, it meant being blessed with potential in this unique era. He reminded them they were literally in a last-days showdown with the forces of the adversary, who aren't encumbered by a veil. And comparatively speaking, students are answering the final question on the final page of a God-given test they can't stand to fail.
"That was my favorite part," said Jullie Ford after the lecture; her mission ended six months ago. "It's true, we don't have the right to fail... It means too much."
In the same firm tone a coach might use in a locker room pep talk, Bott said, "This is a blood and guts battle... No other generation has been given such a charge to prepare for the Savior like you."
He'll admit to being a bit "graphic" sometimes, perhaps because he's used to connecting with the special-effect, violent-video-gaming generation. "But," he told Mormon Times with a smile, "they'll never have to wonder what I'm thinking, either."
Bott's popularity among his students, partially for his sincerity and his witty no-nonsense style, earned him the highest spot in the nation on a Web site where students rate their professors.
Perhaps many students, at one time or another during Botts counsel Thursday, felt as if they were back in their own mission president's office having that final one-on-one chat, the proverbial talk about what to do next in life.
To which Bott would likely reply, "Don't return." |
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