On the sweetness of Mormon life.

Saturday you drive 3 hours east to baptize your daughter for the dead. It is her first time. You use your ceremonial voice. The temple president walks by and comes in to shush you.

Sunday you drive 3 hours west to help your sister and brother-in-law bless their first child. You drive. Your wife knits. Your children and a neighbor girl who canted to come eat home-made rolls and swap secrets. You list to the session you missed of April General Conference. In the middle of a gas-guzzling conveyance, surrounded by some of the bleakest landscape on earth, the feeling you have is almost pastoral.

Your son holds off on coming down with diarrhea until you have arrived at the church building. Your niece holds off on wailing until her father has said amen.