Life in Mormonland

The day you have been waiting forever has come. You open your e-mails and with excitement you realize that the agency you’re going to leave for America for a year with sent you the famous “Placement Letter”. You can’t wait anymore, with your shaking hands you click on it and…

American Fork, Utah.

Your first reaction is: “Oh.”

The second one is: “So, people really live in Utah.”

The third thought that crosses your mind is: “What am I going to do in Utah for ten months?”

At this point, you are unsure about what to do. You could either laugh until you break one of your lungs, or cry until your eyes are worn out. But you are brave enough and you choose to give a chance to this unknown state.

You start looking for some informations on Wikipedia (God bless Wikipedia, really) and while you are scrolling the page, something comes up to your attention: Mormonism.

At first, you think it is a new kind of diet like veganism or the gluten free one, but then you realize it is a religion.

While you are reading words like “Joseph Smith” or “LDS”, a thought starts to come up to your mind. You are going to live with weird people who are not allowed to drink coffee, tea, are not allowed to smoke, have prematrimonial sexual relationships and they can't swear.

But are mormons really that crazy? My answer is: it depends. In this five months I’ve had some moments in which I wished I could leave this state and go somewhere else and honestly, fitting in this community wasn’t easy.

My name is Laura and I’m currently living in Saratoga Springs, Utah. In this post I am going to talk about Mormonism and I’ll give you some advice about how to survive and get along with this different culture.

During my second week here, I spontaneously decided to go to church on Sunday, ready to spend three hours there, as Mormons usually do.

The first hour was actually pretty interesting, some people told stories about their lives which were surprisingly meaningful. After we had done the “sacrament”, during which they passed some bread and water around, to represent the body and the blood of Christ, they split us up in classes. During the second hour we were taught a lesson about our ancestors and the importance of knowing our own origins. The third hour, though, was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the one that made me ask myself “Where the heck did I end up?”

Boys and girls were separated in two different groups and we learned a lesson about relationships: how to start dating a boy, what is right to do and what you should not do. I started to feel really out of place and uncomfortable, I was almost ready to leave the room, pretending that I was having a stomachache or something like that, when a seventeen year old girl said “I want a boyfriend who loves God more than he loves me”. At that point, I couldn’t help but laughing, thinking that she was kidding. From the way everyone was staring at me, I realized she was serious.

As soon as I got back home, I started crying hysterically, wondering how I was going to survive the next ten months with those crazy people.

However, after going to school, I realized that not everyone was like that and that even though they believed in something different, it didn’t mean it was wrong.

In these five months I’ve learnt that, even if they have their weird and strict rules, even if Mormons can be hypocrite sometimes, some of them are actually amazing people.

Honestly I believe that, in order to survive in Utah, you just have to get in the mormon mind and see things with Mormons’ point of view because it is a totally different culture, which doesn’t mean it’s crazy or wrong. It is just different from the way people are used to living in Europe or Italy.

Of course, I’ve been judged by someone, because I was different, because I wasn’t used to the Mormon tradition, because I’ve always said everything I thought even though it was mean, sometimes. I decided that I’d never talk again to those people that were so ignorant that they didn’t realize that not the whole world is Mormon.

Nevertheless, I was still able to meet amazing, wonderful people, that didn’t care if I believed in another religion, or if I didn’t believe in God at all. Those ones are the people that are making my exchange year, the best experience of my life, that I always call and hang out with when I’m feeling homesick, because trust me, you will have sad and difficult moments.

So, if you ended up in Utah for your exchange program and you’re desperate, my advice is to always keep your mind wide open and to understand that it’s just a different way of living. Don’t give up guys, don’t let this ruin your experience, just enjoy yourself and who cares if you won’t be able to go to clubs every Saturday/Friday night, to drink or smoke or whatever, you’re going to live in your host country only for ten months and after that you will have your whole lives to have fun the European way!

And besides, I have a shocker news: you can have fun even without alcohol!

Laura Callegari

This is the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City, Utah.

(This is the Mormon temple in San Diego, California. As you notice, there are Mormon people also outside Utah, but Utah is where the religion was founded.)