Page 63 of His Elder

"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. "Eighteenmonths 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—"