Arts and Humanities Commons^™

What Her Missionary Son’S Letter Didn’T Say, Darlene Young

BYU Studies Quarterly

Rain hangs in the air. Even my underwear feels wet.

I listen to the tapping fingertips of the bodies of bugs hitting netting at night. Gray water. Bare floors.

Aguas Vivas, Thea Jo Buell

BYU Studies Quarterly

"So, was there anything you just couldn’t find there?” I asked the newly returned missionary. He had been home from Guatemala for a few months, and I would be leaving for the same country soon.

He looked puzzled at my question and thought for several seconds before answering. “Balloons,” he said.

Lost Sheep, Lost Coins, And Lost Meanings, Jenny Rebecca Rytting

BYU Studies Quarterly

Three of the best known and most loved of Jesus’s parables occur together in the fifteenth chapter of Luke as a response to the Pharisees’ disapproval of Jesus’s association with sinners: the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin (also known as the lost drachma or lost groat), and the lost (or prodigal) son. In the teaching and preaching traditions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, these parables (especially the first two) have primarily been interpreted as a call for missionary work, particularly reactivation. For example, President David O. McKay suggested that the three parables represent …