Why a Missionary Risks His Life to Save Another’s Soul

Peter Knecht came out to Southern California 16 months ago from the farm country of Fort Wayne, Ind., one of nine children growing up in a Mormon family. Farm kids are supposed to come to California looking for the bright lights. Now 21, Knecht has a hard time recalling a time when he wasn’t thinking of how he could do God’s work here on Earth.

“There was a constant focus on Christ in my life, and a central part of that was how I could follow in his way,” Knecht says. “Ever since I was in primary classes and heard the songs about missionary work and how important it is to help the rest of the world and how important Christ is in your life and his great plan of salvation, it’s always been a desire of mine to help and to serve.”

Evangelizing is about knowing when to laugh with a potential convert and when to get serious; when to hold someone’s hand and when to look them in the eye and ask them to commit.

It isn’t necessarily supposed to be easy. But neither is it supposed to be deadly.

And so when I told Knecht that three deeply religious Orange County young men, all about his age, were murdered last week in Colorado by another young man they had tried to win over, he sighed. He hadn’t heard about their deaths, about how they were shot execution style by an 18-year-old parolee. Nor had he heard this week about the Los Angeles man, who in another variation of doing God’s work, went to an ATM machine in the wee hours Sunday to take out money for that morning’s collection plate and was shot dead.

He hadn’t heard those stories, Knecht says, because as a Mormon in the midst of his two-year mission work, he is instructed not to divert his attention by watching TV or reading the newspaper.

What I wanted to know was whether Knecht understands the passion the dead men had, even without knowing them, and if he can explain why so many friends and relatives seem so accepting of these kinds of deaths.

As he listens to the details, Knecht seems to understand intuitively what he has in common with the dead men, only one of whom was a Mormon. Like them in their way, Knecht also has hit the streets to talk, to preach. That means talking to strangers, and not always the polite and well-scrubbed ones. Offering friendship in the name of God, Knecht is guaranteed nothing when it comes to personal safety.

When he used to work the streets for 12 hours a day, Knecht says, he might meet as many as 100 strangers a week. Now that he is the assistant to the president at the California Anaheim Mission, he does less street work but still makes about 20 to 25 contacts a week.

He went calling in some of Orange County’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods. Yes, he knew of the potential for danger. No, he did not let it deter him.

“There wasn’t a day that went by when I was out there, worried,” Knecht says. “I was thinking that what I was doing was important and I love it, and I love the people, and things like that [violence] happen. But my conviction in the church is so strong that if I lose my life in work, that I’ve actually saved it.”

Say that again, I ask him.

“In the sense,” he says, “that if I physically lose my life, I’ve actually saved it. I love the opportunity to serve people. Those who lose their lives in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as we sacrifice we come closer to God. If something like that ever happened to me, and I had the chance of living with him again, that assures my faith and helps me overcome any fear.”

I ask if he or anyone he knows ever had any close calls.

“Generally, they’re warmly received. Then you have the extremes, where people slam a door in your face, sic the dog on you or threaten to shoot you. That’s not the majority. We say we’re sharing a good message and if they’re interested, we’d like to share a brief message with them.”

I ask Knecht if he feels a bond with the young men from Orange County.

“I understand what they were doing,” he says. “When someone has the desire and conviction and faith that is really important to them, someone will do about anything for it. Because they understand the help it can bring other people.”

Even, I ask, when dealing with a parolee like the Colorado man who shot the Orange County trio?

“It’s faith,” Knecht says. “It’s absolute faith that we’ll be protected to the degree the Heavenly Father wants us to be. If he calls us home sooner, it’s just faith that he’s in charge no matter what happens.”

Can you picture yourself, I ask Knecht, helping a violent ex-con?

“We do that all day,” he says. “That’s one of our roles as missionaries, to help serve people and their needs and not just teach them what to believe, but to help and serve. That’s our prime purpose. That’s great. I love the fact that they were doing that. That’s wonderful.”

People not as steeped in faith as Knecht and the martyred victims have trouble grasping families’ forgiveness and seemingly accepting nature of their loved ones’ deaths. The more cautious among us might ask whether it’s worth it to risk saving a lost soul.

I know the answer, though. It’s all about the payoff. The junkie risks all to get his heroin. The evangelist will risk it to win a soul.

What’s it like, I ask Knecht, when you win someone over? What makes you risk knocking on doors, stopping people on the street?

“Wow. That’s the most amazing thing to see, someone come to Christ and seeing their life change because of an effort you put into the work. And to see how they actually do the changing. It’s not what we do. We’re just the instruments in the Lord’s hands and doing as he would, if he were here. It gives the greatest joy and happiness that can be achieved in this world, to see someone’s life changed through Christ.”