Going to Church in the Marshall Islands . . . in Pants

Unless there is a pants-wearing woman in the Gilbert Islands or New Zealand who has church at 9:00 am (ours starts at 10:00 am), I can say that I am the first LDS woman in the world to have worn pants for Wear Pants to Church Day.

[Update 8:11 pm: there WAS a woman who wore pants to church at 9 am in New Zealand. Alisa wrote about her experience here. And there are probably others, too; what I like is that we early pants-wearing church-goers can tell the rest of you that it's okay and we made it out alive with our pants intact! lol We'll let you know what the end of the world looks like too on December 21; if we get decimated, you'll have some extra hours to prepare for the end.]

For more about why this event was proposed, please see Joanna Brooks’ article, here. I live on Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where my husband is stationed as a Foreign Service Officer, and we are nineteen hours ahead of Utah and the first time zone west of the International Date Line.

I would like to share my experience of going to church in dress pants.

Going to the LDS Church in dress pants is not an unusual occurrence for me; I have been wearing dress pants regularly to church since 2009, when my husband and I discovered the 1971 statement by the First Presidency saying that there is no doctrine concerning dresses or pants in church. I detail my discovery of this in an essay entitled “Idealatry,” one of twelve essays written by Mormon women in a compilation called Undefining Women: Observations and Experiences by Twelve Mormon Women (with a foreword by Joanna Brooks). This anthology is currently being submitted for publication. An excerpt from “Idealatry” on the customs of costume can be found here.

I woke up, ate breakfast, played with my two-year-old son, and donned my best pair of dress slacks and the nice island shirt I bought a couple of months ago. I walked past banana trees, trash, amazing tropical flowers, and feral dogs to get to our meetinghouse. There are five wards on Majuro and quite a few members strung out all along the atoll. Most of them live in poverty. I caught up with the missionaries and asked how their week went. I served a mission myself in Toronto, Canada—a Spanish-speaking mission. We entered the chapel and I said hi (or "Iakwe") to other friends and acquaintances. No one batted an eye at what I was wearing, and they were all just as friendly as ever. They know me; they know that I serve them, that I weep for them, that I laugh with them, and that I love them. Then I sat myself down at the electronic organ and started playing prelude music. A few minutes into playing I remembered that I could play some Christmas hymns; as this is my first tropical Christmas, it is hard to remember which season is which since they are basically all the same in the Marshall Islands: 85 degrees with a likely chance of rain. Because it is so hot and many of the rooms, including the chapel, do not have air conditioning (or are broken), I usually wear very light shirts and a skirt to church, and I come home sweating profusely along with everybody else. Other Marshallese women wear the traditional guam, which is a very brightly colored mumu. Men wear dress shirts and pants, and almost everybody wears flip-flops, because that is all they have.

After a song, a prayer, announcements, watching a woman audibly slap her one-year-old daughter (hurts my heart every time), welcoming a new convert to the congregation, and the administration of the sacrament, I sat in the congregation to listen to the first speaker, who had just returned from his mission in Oklahoma yesterday. He spoke on keeping the Sabbath holy, and not once did he mention what a woman should wear to church. He then wept openly and said in Marshallese, “I pray to Heavenly Father to help you in your life.”

The second speaker, my friend Otintaii (Ocean Tide), is a large, happy, beautiful Marshallese woman, also a returned missionary. She talked about the life of Christ and how the Atonement was a gift from Christ to us, an eternal sacrifice so that we can return to God after this life and have happiness. She spoke then of the great power of agency, or our ability to choose freely in this life, and said (in Marshallese), “Whenever we have emotional swings, like when we’re mad or sad, we should follow the example of Christ and try to be worthy.” While she was speaking I watched a little Marshallese toddler, not more than two years old, chewing on some gum and putting his sticky fingers all over the battered, dirt-encrusted wheel of a Church-donated wheelchair parked in the aisle next to the pew where I was sitting. The wheelchair belongs to Brother Lamb, who was sitting on the other side of the aisle from me. He lost his leg, as many in the Marshall Islands do, to infections related to diabetes (there are 30 to 40 amputations a month at the hospital). I try to say hi to him every week. Otintaii quoted John 3:16–17 and spoke of the pure love of Christ, encouraging us to “cleave unto charity” (Moroni 7:46­–47). I felt a good, warm feeling while she was talking. The congregation stood together and sang (I played) “Angels We Have Heard on High,” in English, and because we were out of time, we also sang the closing song, “Ij Aikuij Yuk Aolep Awa” (“I Need Thee Every Hour”), and then closed the first meeting, sacrament meeting, with a prayer.

My husband and I normally take turns with our two-year-old son during church, so I took Maxwell to Primary while Andrew taught Sunday School. I use to take my son to the nursery, but he kept getting sick. Many of the children have open wounds and sores, and tropical skin infections and pink eye are very common here. So I take him to Primary, where he listens and sings the songs with us.

There were 29 Marshallese children there that day, with only two Marshallese leaders and a senior sister missionary to play the electronic keyboard. One-hundred percent of the children wore flip-flops, because that's all they have. We sang Christmas songs and talked about Jesus. Since there was some time left and the kids were very restless, I asked if I could teach them “Once There Was a Snowman,” and I had to first explain to them what a snowman was. I taught them the song and the actions, and they loved it, smiling their beautiful bright smiles at me. It was not hard for me to melt "small, small small" because I was wearing pants. Then the Primary counselor led the children in singing a Marshallese song about prophets prophesying about Jesus:

Ñililok in ta in? (What is the excitement about?)

Ekakomkion lal rainin (It’s all over the world today.)

Tirambumbum likajirjiri (Play the drums and the trumpets)

Anikien ko reman (Great sounds)

I have yet to learn the rest of it, but it was very enjoyable watching the children sing this traditional Marshallese Christmas song about Christ.

The last hour was my Young Women class, in which I teach every other week. I handed Maxwell off to my husband and went to class. This week it was Sister Johnkiepkiep’s turn to teach, and she taught from the old Young Women manual on “Righteous Living.” She struggles with the lessons because they are all in English, and many of the stories are not applicable to the culture here (stories involving mountains, trains, caves, rivers, lambs, cows, and more just don’t work). Additionally, I know that she has struggled with abuse in her life, as have many of my Young Women. Rape and incest is common here.

After opening exercises, I noticed that all the shoes except mine in the room were flip-flops; one leader did not have any shoes at all; she and the baby in her arms did have pinkeye, however, and when the baby cried, she shifted her dress so that she could breastfeed the child.

We read Isaiah 57:20 together, which the girls definitely could relate to: “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” We went on to read other scriptures and talk about integrity, and then we read together Moroni 7:16–19, which I thought was particularly poignant on this day (I’ll include it here with inclusive language, which I think needs to happen more frequently):

“For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every person, that he or she may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for everything which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God.

“But whatsoever thing persuadeth people to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no person to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him.

“And now, my brethren and sisters, seeing that ye know the light by which ye may judge, which light is the light of Christ, see that ye do not judge wrongfully; for with that same judgment which ye judge ye shall also be judged.

“Wherefore, I beseech of you, brethren and sisters, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil; and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ.”

Sister Johnkiepkiep, who struggles so much with the lessons, bore her testimony and said how grateful she was to God and for the Young Women program. She became very emotional as she expressed herself, which is something women in the Marshallese culture are not encouraged to do. We sang “Angels We Have Heard on High” again and closed with a prayer.

I love my bishop in my Marshallese ward. I know him pretty well since he works with my husband; two days ago we went to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs Christmas party together. I told him that I would be wearing pants. He said the following to me: “Customs can be very backward—I see women, and especially traditional male leaders in our culture, condemning girls for wearing skirts that even expose their knees.” He mentioned customs of times past: “It was Marshallese custom before the Christian missionaries arrive that our people wore nothing at all; they were completely naked and it was fine. That was the culture.” When asked if he would turn away someone from church who was not dressed in the traditional Marshallese guam, he said, “No. We don’t. We can’t.”

I had a very edifying day at church, and what I wore had nothing to do with it. Among the Marshallese people, where life is so different from how I have grown up, I see that this world is big enough to accept a plurality of opinions and cultural traditions. If the Church’s mission is to talk of Christ, rejoice in Christ, preach of Christ, and prophesy of Christ, then we can open our hearts to those whom we consider to be the Other. As members of the church, who are often represented as different parts of the same body, we can allow for needed differences and we can cling to Christ instead of our own biased worldviews. Let us open our hearts up wide as eternity and make space on the pew for those who are different, in whatever way, in whatever clothing, in whatever culture.