"Mommy! It's Jesus!"

When Wayne and I were living in San Diego county, working as slum lords in support of our chronic addiction to higher education, we lived in the seedy underbelly of Escondido. I'm not kidding when I say seedy... This place was a hole! (See THIS post if you don't believe me.)

Our church congregation in lovely Escondido consisted of some pretty colorful characters. For example, we had one lady who got up during Fast and Testimony meeting declaring that she was Mary Magdalene reincarnated. She was also forbidden to feed the missionaries because she would just give them condiments to eat at their dinner appointments. We had another lady who singlehandedly decimated the ward choir because she sounded SO BAD and was SO LOUD, nobody was willing to sing with her. Nay, nobody COULD sing with her. We would all just sound like a herd of dying moose under her influence. And then there was our Relief Society president who, without warning, walked out on her family and left the church altogether. When we were about to move out of our ward, our bishop said (...and I quote his words exactly...), "Good! You guys need to get out of this Hell Hole!"

But one of the most colorful characters we encountered will never leave my mind: Bo Greene.

We were sitting in a pew behind a young family with a sunbeam-aged child. Excitedly, he starts tugging at his mom's sleeve and pointing behind us. His announcement, he can barely contain in a whisper. "Mommy! It's Jesus!" So mom discretely turns around to see what is inspiring her son's heavenly visions (and being the looky-loos that we are, we do too), and there is Bo: a fully-bearded biker dude with tattoos up and down his arms, neck, ears, and chest. He is sporting a leather vest, stained jeans and a t-shirt, and he is sitting on the back bench between two elders, holding a blue Book of Mormon.

"Mark, I don't think that's Jesus."

"Sure it is! Look at his beard!"

But I think what Mark saw, in all his innocence, was something deeper. As it turns out, Bo ended up being one of the most stalwart members of our crazy congregation. He was our home teacher for years, and never failed to meet up with us in one way or another. A year after he was baptized, he went to the temple and later married a sweet woman with a teenage son. Soon thereafter, he became a member of the bishopric. Bo lived and breathed his new found faith. He was forever bedecked by the tattoos of his wilder youth, but it was easy to look past them with the great example he was to everyone who knew him.

I've never forgotten Mark's first impression, as it's a lesson I've carried around with me: Rough and tough on the outside doesn't necessarily exclude soft and mushy on the inside.

So Bo Greene, if you ever Google yourself, I hope you stumble upon this post. Your example was of profound influence in our lives. Thank you!