Chapter 18
SAMUEL
The first week with Kempton felt like living inside a tomb.
Kempton monitored everything. How long I spent in the washroom. Whether I looked at women on the street. If my prayers sounded sincere enough, broken enough, repentant enough.
"You're doing well," he said after the first week. "I can see the Spirit returning to your countenance."
I nodded. Said nothing.
Because the truth was I felt nothing. No Spirit. No warmth. No conviction.
Just emptiness where Eli used to be.
The second week, Kempton took me to visit the Moreno family.
Sister Moreno opened the door and her face lit up. "Elder Price! We've missed you."
"We had some companion changes," Kempton said smoothly. "But Elder Price specifically requested to visit your family before your baptism."
Sister Moreno’s baptism. The reason President Dalton had pushed me so hard. The statistic that proved I was a faithful missionary.
We sat in their small living room. Kempton led the lesson on the Holy Ghost—the gift she would receive after baptism. The constant companionship that would guide and comfort him.
I watched her face. Eager, trusting, full of hope.
"Do you have anything to add, Elder Price?" Kempton asked.
I opened my mouth. Tried to find the words I'd said a hundred times before. The testimony that had once felt true.
"The Holy Ghost will testify of truth," I said slowly. "But sometimes... sometimes the truth isn't what we expect."
Kempton's eyes narrowed slightly.
"What Elder Price means," he interjected, "is that the Spirit will confirm what we already know from the scriptures and the prophets. It brings peace and assurance."
Sister Moreno smiled. "We've felt that peace. That's how we know this is right."
After the visit, Kempton pulled me aside on the street. "What was that?"
"What?"
"You almost derailed the entire lesson." His face flushed. "If you can't bear testimony without inserting doubt—"
"I wasn't inserting doubt. I was being honest."
"Honesty without faith is just apostasy, Elder Price." He stepped closer. "I know you're struggling. But you cannot let your personal failings contaminate investigators. They deserve better."
I thought about Sister Moreno. About Maria, who'd asked about gay people and eternal families. About every investigator I'd ever taught the plan of salvation—that beautiful, terrible diagram that left no room for people like me.
People like Eli.
"You're right," I said. "They deserve better."
Kempton nodded, satisfied. "Good. Let's get back to work."
The third week, I stopped sleeping.
I'd lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, replaying every moment with Eli. His hand covering mine at the planning table. His forehead resting on my shoulder. His voice saying you're not broken.
The feeling of his mouth on me. His body moving against mine. The way he'd held me afterwards, like I was something precious instead of damned.
I'd pray. Beg God to take the memories away, to restore my testimony, to make me feel something other than this crushing grief.
But the heavens stayed silent.
And slowly—painfully—I began to realize why.
"You need to bear your testimony in district meeting," Kempton said on Sunday morning. "Public declaration is part of the repentance process."
We sat in the chapel basement with Elder Moss, Elder Brown, and two new missionaries I didn't know. Everyone looked at me with a mixture of pity and curiosity.
They knew. Not the details, but enough. That I'd been "led astray" by my previous companion. That I was rebuilding my testimony under Kempton's watchful guidance.
"Elder Price has something to share," Kempton announced.
I stood. Walked to the front of the room.
Looked at their faces—young, faithful, convinced they were doing God's work.
"I..." My voice cracked. "I've been struggling."
Kempton nodded encouragingly.
"I lost my way for a while. Let myself be influenced by someone who didn't have a strong testimony." The words tasted like ash. "But I'm working to rebuild my faith. To remember why I came on a mission."
"And why is that, Elder Price?" Kempton prompted.
Why had I come? To fix myself. To pray away the part of me that wanted what I wasn't supposed to want. To prove to my father, my family, my God that I could be worthy.
To earn love that should never have been conditional.
"I came because I was told it was the only path," I said quietly.
Kempton's smile faltered.
"I came because I believed if I was obedient enough, faithful enough, perfect enough, God would change me into someone my family could be proud of." My hands shook. "Someone who could want the right things."
"Elder Price—"
"But He didn't change me." I looked at Kempton. "Eighteen months of perfect obedience. Prayer, fasting, scripture study. Baptisms and lessons and sacrificing everything I wanted. And I'm still the same person I was when I arrived."
The room had gone silent.
"The only thing that changed," I continued, "was that I met someone who made me feel like maybe I didn't need to be fixed. That maybe God made me exactly as I am. That maybe love—real, honest love—was holier than any doctrine that condemned it."
Kempton stood abruptly. "That's enough."
"He sacrificed everything for me," I said. "Took full blame for something we both chose. Let himself be destroyed so I could be saved. That's Christlike love. That's what we're supposed to be teaching."
"Elder Price, sit down."
"And I repaid him by staying silent. By letting everyone believe he was a predator.
By choosing my reputation over his truth.
" My voice broke. "So no. I don't have a testimony to bear.
Because the only holy thing I've experienced on this mission was loving someone the church says I'm not allowed to love. "
Kempton grabbed my arm. "Outside. Now."
I followed him into the hallway.
"What the hell was that?" Kempton's face had gone red. "You just admitted to homosexual relations in front of four missionaries!"
"I admitted to being in love."
"It's the same thing!" He paced, his shoes squeaking on the linoleum. "President Dalton generously offered you a path forward. A way to salvage this. And you just threw it away because you can't let go of some perverted—"
"Don't." My voice came out harder than I'd ever heard it. Low and dangerous. "Don't call it that."
"It's what it is, Elder Price. Sin. Abomination. A violation of everything we've covenanted—"
"Then maybe the covenants are wrong."
Kempton stopped pacing. Stared at me like I'd struck him.
"Maybe," I continued, the words spilling out hot and fast, "a God who condemns love isn't a God worth serving.
Maybe a church that destroys people for being honest about who they are has lost its way.
Maybe the only sin here is making people hate themselves for wanting connection and intimacy and someone who sees them and chooses them anyway. "
"You're having a crisis of faith," Kempton said slowly, his lip curling. "This is what happens when you give in to temptation. It corrupts your ability to feel the Spirit."
"I felt more of God with Eli than I ever have in a chapel."
"That wasn't God. That was lust. Deception. Satan masquerading as—"
"It was love!" The shout echoed in the narrow hallway, bouncing off the cinderblock walls. "It was the only real, true, unconditional thing I've ever felt. And if your God condemns that, then your God is cruel."
Kempton stepped into my space, his face twisted with a self-righteous sneer. "It wasn't love. It was just two perverts using each other to get off. It was filth, Price. And deep down, you know it."
The snap inside my chest was loud enough to hear.
I didn't think. I didn't pray. I didn't weigh the consequences. My hand curled into a fist, the movement instinctive and violent.
I swung.
My knuckles connected with Kempton’s jaw with a sickening, satisfying crack.
Kempton stumbled back, his eyes wide with shock, and slammed into the opposite wall. He slid down to the floor, one hand flying to his mouth, blood already blooming on his lip. He looked up at me, for once utterly speechless.
I stood over him, my chest heaving, my hand throbbing in a way that felt incredibly, undeniably real. It was the first honest thing I had done in this building.
"Don't," I whispered, my voice trembling with adrenaline, "ever speak about him again."
Kempton scrambled backward, fear flashing in his eyes. "I'm calling President Dalton."
"Fine," I said. "Tell him I'm done."
I didn't wait for an answer.
I stepped over Kempton’s legs, walked down the hallway, and pushed through the double doors into the bright Barcelona morning.
"Elder Price!" Kempton's voice followed me, muffled and wet. "Get back here! You can't just leave—"
I kept walking.
I didn't have a plan. Didn't know where I was going until I found myself on the Metro, riding toward the Universitat stop.
Maria's apartment was near there. I'd memorized the address from our teaching records, back when Eli and I had been so excited about her as an investigator. Back when I'd thought converting people to the gospel was the most important thing I could do.
Back when I'd still believed.
I got off at her stop. Walked through streets that felt different now—not mission territory to be worked, but just a city. Beautiful and indifferent and full of people living their lives without needing saving.
Her building was old, with colourful tiles around the doorway. I pressed the buzzer for apartment 3B.
Static, then her voice. "?Sí?"
"Maria? It's Elder Price. I... I'm sorry to bother you, but could I talk to you for a minute?"
A long pause.
"Where's your companion?"
"I don't have one right now."
Another pause. Then the door buzzed open.
I climbed three flights of narrow stairs. Maria waited in her doorway, wearing paint-stained jeans and a oversized sweater, her dark hair pulled back in a messy bun.
"You're not supposed to be alone," she said.
"I know."