Hello friends, family, teachers, and mentors, and welcome to Creed’s Southwest Summer Substack!
For the past three years, I’ve received anywhere from 1 to 15 weekly emails from friends and family members who were serving as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka the Mormon Church, hereafter, “the Church”) in a diverse range of places such as Taipei, Cape Verde, Argentina, and New Haven! For those of you aren’t familiar with Mormon culture, the practice of weekly letters has been, and continues to be, common in missionary life. Historically, missionaries were not able or allowed to call home throughout their missions, so these weekly letters were their one way to maintain relationships with family and friends.
While I did not serve a mission, recently I’ve felt inspired by these missionary letters (as well as the non-missionary email newsletters I’ve received from Lucía, Maia, and Anna). It is my hope that this substack allows me to maintain relationships with you all. That said, unlike missionaries, I am luckily able and allowed to talk to you over the phone as much as I want each week, so please also give me a call whenever!
The rest of this letter will be my first update on my time in Southern Arizona. Since I’m starting this substack after having been here for just over 4 weeks, this letter will be longer than the ones to follow.
Why am I in Arizona, you ask?
This summer, I am conducting ethnographic research for my thesis on narratives of immigrant resettlement within the Church, and I will soon start working part-time in Nogales, Sonora.
I spent the last 4 weeks in Tucson, Arizona volunteering at a Bishop's Storehouse and English Connect Classes as part of my research. On Monday, I arrived in Tubac, Arizona, where I will be living for the next 6 weeks as part of the Border Community Alliance Internship Program. Here, I will continue conducting thesis research by attending wards on the weekends (“ward” is Mormon lingo for congregation). I will also cross the border to work part time at one of three community organizations in Nogales, Sonora (Deijuven Community Center, Casa de la Misiericordia, or Voices from the Border), and I will participate in experiential learning programming directed by the BCA folks.
Thoughts on Tucson!
I loved spending the last ~4 weeks in Tucson. The landscape in Southern Arizona is unlike any other place on Earth—literally! Tucson, Tubac, and Nogales are all part of the Sonoran desert, which is the only place on Earth where Saguaros (pronounced “sahuaros,” they look like this: 🌵) grow. Not only have I been awed to see Saguaros in real life for the first time, but their size has shocked me! Seriously, look up “Saguaro scale photo” for reference. In Tucson, I was staying less than a mile from the Tucson Mountain Park, where I went on some of the most beautiful trail runs of my life, surrounded by saguaros. And shoutout to Auston and Rory, who have both shown me how they see Tucson, as their hometown!
I feel like I am learning to adjust to the climate. The dry, consistently-over-100°F weather is intense; my first run here was brutal. These days, I’m making sure to chug a Gatorade ideally a few hours before or right after a run, which has made running possible. That said, the heat also has its upsides. For example, clothes dry within tens of minutes of hanging outside.
I want to embed some photos of the landscape in this letter, but for some reason all of my photos are losing quality when I upload them. So for now, feel free to take a look through some photos of the summer so far in this Google Photos album.
Thoughts on my Research!
In the last four weeks, I’ve felt incredibly awed at all of the time that folks have given me.
Robust Mormon social networks are not new to me. For example, when I backpacked to Coyote Gulch with two friends in March ‘24, my family was able to crowdsource pretty much all of the material that we needed (backpacks, sleeping bags, a water filter) from our ward and neighborhood. What has been new to me is accessing a robust Mormon social network as an outsider. Although I often pass as straight and as a member of the Church (hereafter, “Member”) in Mormon spaces, folks have often asked me about my identity and relation to the church; I’ve been completely open about my identity as a queer non-Member. It can be anxiety-provoking to me to share these identities in Mormon spaces. That said, even as a queer, non-Member researcher around Tucson for about a month, I was warmly welcomed among the Tucson Bishop’s Storehouse Volunteers, among Tucson Service Missionaries, among Tucson English Connect Volunteers, and among various wards. I’ve even loved heard from folks in Mormon spaces that they are also queer, or that—while still formally Members—they, like me, practice or believe a Mormonism that isn’t congruent with what is preached by the Church.
I’ve felt incredibly grateful and inspired by how vulnerable study participants have been with me in the interviews that I have conducted so far. At the same time, I’m grappling with how ethnography is an inherently extractive process, especially in my case, where I’m inserting myself into extremely complex communities for a short period of time. Both because of how generous participants have been and because of the extractive nature of ethnography, I’m thinking about how I can produce work that will best serve the communities that I’m studying. If any of you have thoughts on how ethnography can best serve its subject communities (or warnings on how ethnography can harm its subject communities), please drop me an email.
In terms of professional support, I have been so glad to have consistent support from my advisor for summer research. I also cold-emailed one scholar whose work is relevant for my project, and she has been willing to not only meet with me multiple times, but she ended up inviting me to the Mormon History Association Conference in Ogden last weekend! It was a great experience to meet a lot of the folks whose work I’ve been reading and to get an image of what some graduate school programs might look like.
Thoughts on my Personal Growth!
For the first time in a while, I had a lot of alone time in Tucson. After using some of this newfound alone time to watch The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (which I would LOVE to discuss with anyone who has watched), I’ve pivoted to practicing mindfulness more often. This practice has taken the form of journaling, cooking, running, and doing Yoga with Adriene. I love that the slower pace (and my scarce list of friends in Tucson) has allowed me to focus more time on myself than I have in years. As I say (and have yet to fully actualize) before the start of every semester, I think that I will be significantly happier and calmer if I can keep journaling, running, and doing yoga during the hectic-ness of the upcoming academic year.
This summer has also made me feel more confident about the direction that I’m headed in professionally (toward public-service work). I’ve studied migration both broadly and specifically in the United States, most recently in a sociology seminar called “Latin American Immigration to the US: Past, Present, and Future.” While reading about and discussing scholarship on migration has enriched my understandings of and political convictions on migration, talking about migration with people who are materially involved in and affected by migration has invaluably deepened how I understand migration. Volunteering at the Bishop’s Storehouse and English Connect classes has felt endlessly meaningful as a way to contribute to a program that aims to serve folks in need, and I anticipate that whichever service learning placement I work with will feel similarly.
What’s up next?
Now that I’ve arrived in Tubac, I’ve met the 5 wonderful other BCA interns (pictured in this grocery-shopping-selfie at the bottom of the Google Photos album) and we’ll be going through orientation for the next few days. It will be meaningful to get closer with the group over the next few weeks, to see the border wall in person for the first time later today, and to cross the border for the first time tomorrow.
That’s all that’s on my mind for today. Thank you all for subscribing and for reading!
With love,
Creed
p.s. Please comment where you are this summer and what you are up to so that I can hear a little bit about what’s going on in your life!
Good to hear from you! Sounds like you’re doing some important work down there. I’m am continuing to live in Provo, and I’m currently working at a cool farm-to-table restaurant.
I am so glad you are doing this! Sounds like you are having some great experiences, and I'm excited to see where your research leads you. I'm currently in Australia studying Aboriginal culture!