Memories of September 11th

When the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed, I was serving a full-time mission in California for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I remember it was a Tuesday. My companion and I went to District Meeting like every Tuesday, but the meeting didn't start on time. When the district leaders finally walked in, they told us they had just talked with the mission president, President Knudson. He told them that an airplane crashed into the World Trade Center earlier that morning and terrorists were involved. As missionaries, we weren't allowed to watch television, but throughout the day we still caught glimpses of the story.

While standing in Ed and Erica Dumin’s living room in Fairfield, California, Elder Barnes and I saw the Twin Towers collapse, as the weakened structures could no longer support their own weight. It seemed that every news station replayed the scene of a hijacked airplane filled with passengers diving into the side of one of the towers over and over throughout the entire day. As we knocked on doors, a man answered one door and shouted at us to go away. We asked for a drink of water and he slammed the door in our faces. A few moments later, his wife reopened the door and handed us each a glass, apologizing for her husband and saying, “We don’t treat people that way.” Though I soon forgot her face, I will always remember her kindness.

I saw a lot of hatred caused by the attack, which hatred seemed to last for the rest of the time I served in California. It was mainly directed towards anyone of Middle Eastern descent, since the terrorists involved in the hijackings were Islamic. People refused to buy ice cream from ice cream trucks because the drivers were Muslim. I even met a man who said he was going to buy a gun, climb to the top of the tree in his front yard, and shoot any Islamic people who came within a block of his house. For a while, I thought things were going to get like they were after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, with Islamic people being rounded up and placed into camps just like the Japanese Americans were.

As it got closer to the time for me to come home from my mission, a lot of missionaries began worrying that the United States would begin drafting people for the armed forces. The scriptures gave me a lot of peace and I realized that it didn’t matter if I was drafted and sent to Afghanistan because the Lord would protect me. If I died then as long as I was right with the Lord it didn’t matter.