Martha, Rochelle, and Me
I want to tell you a story about Martha and Rochelle, and how they changed my life. Martha Proctor was the stake young women's president in the Columbia Missouri stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints back in the 1970s. I was never in her home. We only spoke a few times. Rochelle Roskelley was a girl I met my freshman year at Brigham Young University during the second semester. She was mature and gentle and kind, and a very good listener. We talked, we laughed, we colored together, and one April night, she shifted my paradigm. When I headed to BYU in the fall of 1977, I was looking for a new beginning. All through high school, I felt awkward and out of place. I was too loud, I was too pushy, I was too immature … there were too many things that felt wrong about me, and I was looking forward to being in a new place where no one had preconceived notions about who I was. In other words, I was a normal 18 year old, but it didn’t feel normal to me. Everyo