A Season For Spreading The Faith

He could not bear to do anything unless he did it well. Besides being Utah's Class AAA MVP in football, he had achieved a high school GPA just [3/100]ths of a point shy of perfection. His father, who recently taught religion and organizational behavior at BYU, had been a mission president in Ireland. His mother had given birth to him in Belfast. As far back as Covey could remember, he had known he would go on a mission. He had envisioned all the souls he would round up and herd to the truth.

On Christmas Day, when the other missionaries were relaxing, he knocked on doors and reaped more rejection. Some nights he hid in his bathroom from his companion and wept. "Sometimes you feel all alone in the world," says Covey. "I had a landlady who fed me spinach pancakes for dinner. When I didn't eat them, she cut them up and put them in my eggs the next morning. If I left a light on for two seconds, she'd yell at me. Some people shooed me from their doors like I was an animal. Some told me I could go to hell.

"I've been humbled. I've realized how limited my power is. The battles rage inside me, between the glory of God and the glory of man. I used to pride myself that I hadn't cried in seven years. Then I went on a mission, and I was crying every few nights."

Covey grew up within a mile of Cougar Stadium, cutting out hundreds of articles about Brigham Young football for his scrapbooks, attending home games, mimicking the great BYU quarterbacks in his backyard. He quarterbacked Provo High to the state championship. Coaches from Pitt, Stanford, UCLA, Oregon State and Air Force knocked on his door, but he knew deep down where he was going. After watching Covey play the six-game jayvee season, including a game in which Covey completed 47 of 77 passes for 520 yards, Edwards sensed that the latest branch on the Cougars' Gifford Nielsen-Marc Wilson- Jim McMahon- Steve Young- Robbie Bosco family quarterback tree had shown itself.

And then he was gone, 10,000 miles from Provo, to the farthest possible mission from the church's hub, pushing away news about his team, suppressing the football player inside him for fear it might interfere with the missionary. During Monday afternoon pickup basketball games at the church, what he had bottled up burst from him in ways that surprised the others. The 6'1", 180-pound cherub-cheeked missionary was bouncing bodies off the wall.

"I've felt longings for football," he says. "But I've closed them off. You can control your mind. Football is important to me, but my feelings for the church are a lot more important. A lot of my friends said I'd accomplish more by staying and producing a winning team for the church, that BYU football is introducing people all over to our religion. But why should I be exempt from what the prophet asked of all young men just because I play football?

"I was pampered all my life. The mission is the toughest thing I've ever done. But getting rejected constantly makes you stronger. All great things are hard. This is a great life."

During the last week of December, Covey had to make a decision. The church had recently re-extended the duration of missions from 1� years to two, but all those afield at the time could select either stint. If Covey chose 18 months he would be home by July 1985, having missed just one season of football. Surely no one would question his commitment: None of the BYU quarterback greats of the last decade had gone on missions at all.

Covey postponed the decision until the last moment, the anxiety eating at him. On Christmas Day he telephoned his father—one of two calls a missionary is allowed to make each year without getting special permission—and asked for advice. His father told him the family would support him either way. He wondered what his hero, the Scottish runner Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire, would have done. Covey fasted and prayed for help. "People were telling me, 'You look terrible,' " he recalls. "I was so deep in thought people were talking to me and I didn't even know it."

Something told him that if he could overcome himself, he could overcome anything or anyone. He called the mission president on New Year's Day and told him he would skip another season of football and stay. The anxiety vanished. Now his sacrifice felt whole.