God's Spicy Smite Button

A tale from my time as a Mormon Missionary

By popular demand, here’s another story from my time as a Mormon.

This one took place while I was in Brazil being a missionary¹. I was there for 2 years and during that time we focused pretty much 100% on sharing the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ™.

No TV, no movies, no internet, and most especially no dating.

Day off for laundry and futebol every Monday. Otherwise, all mission, all the time.

Missionaries always go in pairs, or sometimes threesomes when the numbers don’t work out. So I always had another guy (my “companion”) with me 24/7.² The only privacy you get is in the bathroom. It’s an introvert’s nightmare. Lucky for me, I’m not an introvert.

So we’re out there pitching Mormon Jesus to the good people of Brazil one day, and my companion and I run across a couple girls as we’re walking through the neighborhood. Missionaries are supposed to talk to basically everyone they see, but of course, some people are easier to approach than others.

It turns out these girls are sisters and they live nearby. The older of the pair is pretty close to our age (20ish). She’s also pretty interested in having a couple of charming American boys over to the house.

I don’t remember the details, but we got ourselves invited over to have lunch with the family.

When we arrive, it turns out that the family is the two girls and their mother. This is bad, because missionaries aren’t allowed to be inside alone with women. There’s supposed to be another man around. That rule is there, obviously, to prevent us from gangbanging the people we’re supposed to bring to Christ.

We suggest eating at the table they have out on a little patio in their yard so we don’t have to be inside. Orgy averted. Whew.

So we’re there, chatting with their mom and definitely not flirting with her daughters.

They serve us each a giant plate of rice and beans and sausage or beef or something. I distinctly remember it was a huge mound of food.

My companion, not at all looking to show off, asks if they’ve got any hot sauce. They do!

The São Paulo region isn’t known for spicy food, but this shit seems potent. It’s homemade: A little jar of chili peppers that have been marinating in oil for who knows how long.

Like this, but no label.

Well, my man has a plan to bring these ladies to Jesus, and he goes to town with this hot sauce. Just blasts it all over his food mountain until it’s dripping down like lava.

I, the responsible “senior” companion (I’d been out longer), show some restraint and apply a few dashes. A rare moment of reason on my part.

Now we’re all eating. The food is great. I really enjoy Brazilian food, but it also helps that we are young men and we walk 10 to 15 miles every day. We are always hungry.

A few minutes pass, and my man is getting the sweats. Turns out the aged chili oil of mysterious provenance is actually pretty hot. Very hot. He starts tearing up a bit—and that’s when he makes a critical mistake.

He rubs his eyes. He rubs his eyes with the very same hands he used to open and pour out the chili oil (he should have brought backup hands).

Turns out the lid had chili death oil all over it. So his hands had chili death oil all over them. So when he went to wipe his manly man tears the oil seized the opportunity and stabbed him in the eyes with a million tiny capsaicin knives.

“Ahhhhhhh I can’t seeeee!” He yelled in a distinctly unimpressive to ladies sort of way.

Someone guided our newly blind friend into the bathroom so he could spend the next 20 minutes trying to wash his eyes out, semi-successfully.

Some of us may have had a laugh at his expense while we finished our food. When he made it back out, he couldn’t eat any more of his lava mound because it instantly turned on the chili tears.

And that, my friend, is why Mormon Missionaries will never flirt with you—because God always has his finger over that spicy, spicy smite button.

1. Prospective missionaries send an application to the Church after getting approval from their local leaders (you can’t be out having sex and partying and then just go on a mission—you have to be living clean). After a few months, the Church sends you a packet in the mail that tells you where you will be going for the next 2 years (or 1.5 years if you’ve got a vagina). Missionaries (or more likely their parents) pay for the trip. If you go somewhere outside your home country, you’ll spend a few months in the Missionary Training Center desperately trying to learn the language as fast as possible. Then you hit the streets.

2. It’s not the same guy the whole time. You get moved around within the mission area, going to new cities or neighborhoods every few months. So you’ll be the new guy in a place for a while, then your companion will leave and a new one will join you. Then you’ll leave for somewhere new and he’ll keep things going, etc. Thankfully this means that if you’re stuck with an asshole companion, it’s temporary.