M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

"I Eat Missionaries for Lunch": Frank " Bunk" Robinson's Conversion
by Peggy Proctor

What a nice place to grow up, sunny southern California. Dad was in insurance in Culver City, but eventually the smog got to him. We moved to Colorado. I was raised in a very strong Catholic family and attended a small private boy's school then went on to college. The University of Colorado was so incredibly large it was out of my league and after attending for a time, I looked for a small college, more like the parochial schools I had grown up with. My search brought me to Westminster College in Salt Lake City.

Living in the heart of Salt Lake, I was surrounded by LDS people, but going to school mostly with those who were not LDS, misconceptions started to build. I came to the point, as others, that I was developing real "us and them" feelings. I must admit that for a while I was probably a bit of a "hater." [Did I say that?] After Westminster, I went to the University of Washington but then I was drawn back to Salt Lake again to work in radio.

The misconceptions about the church grew in my mind. There are some amazing misconceptions among the people out there! To some degree the church has had a reputation of, or at least it appeared to me to be, closed or private, which created a very negative impression. My thinking began to be tempered, however, while I was manager of a radio station where I knew and worked with many members of the church.

During this period I started to separate myself gradually from the Catholic Church because of questions about some of the basic doctrines. Missionaries periodically came to my house and I was always polite but explained that I had my own religion. I joked with them but never was serious about taking the discussions. For a while even, more in jest than to scare them, I told them that, "I eat missionaries for lunch!"

Turning from commercial radio for a time, I went into public radio for four years at the University of Utah. There I became very close to Steve Hess who was delightful and open minded. He expanded my thinking a little bit, but not much. Still, though I would never have admitted it at the time, we had a lot of wonderful discussions. About this time, my wife decided to separate. She moved to Las Vegas with the two children and eventually there was a divorce. I left the U of U and went back to commercial radio. At this point, I knew Diane, who was recently divorced and whose house had just burned down, on top of that. She was just starting over again, struggling to pull everything together, and then was laid off by the station because of a slow down.

Friends suggested that I should get together with Diane. I was working for her father as the station manager. Diane is the one who finally put that together, and we went to lunch. Since she was LDS, however, I wasn't quite sure where things should go from there. (She had four children, ages three and up, and I had two, ages twelve and fourteen, who were living with me now. Their mother had decided that she didn't want to be a mother anymore.) Diane and I dated for a while, but then decided that we couldn't move forward., so we were just really good friends. The challenge with both of us trying to raise our children was just too much.

Years passed and I moved to Oregon. My daughter Hillary, who had moved back to Las Vegas, was planning to be married. I asked her to send me a list of the people she was inviting to the wedding. Diane showed up on her list! I didn't even know that she knew Diane!

Diane came to the wedding, and it was the time for us to get to know each other better. One thing led to another and soon we were married. I made one thing clear,--- "I fully respect what you do, but when it comes to religion, leave me alone." Suddenly, however, I found myself head of a Mormon household and I was learning a lot. Dave Miller, my best friend in radio, was our home teacher.

Diane was given a calling in the ward, and the bishop came and asked if that was ok with me first, which was pretty impressive to me. I went to meetings from time to time, but, in my mind, nothing was happening to me.

I smoked a pipe continually at the time and had a glass of wine every evening for dinner. At one point, for no reason I can think of or explain, I stopped drinking wine. After some time we moved from Oregon to Utah where there were some pretty good missionary efforts. I would watch videos and talk about the gospel but had no real interest. One day a friend suggested that we kneel down and pray, but I told him that I wasn't at that point.

Then in the middle of August, I stopped smoking!--It was an out-of-the-blue decision. I called and got some of those smoking patches. I had not thought about it ahead of time, and I still had no thought of joining the church. I went to church now and then though and always supported Diane in paying tithingÖIn fact, I said, I'll give them a tithing also; I need to be giving it somewhere! I went to the Catholic Church a few times but found nothing there.

Then, one day the doorbell rang, and I opened the door to find two sister missionaries. One sister asked, with an English brogue, if I had a moment. I said yes, but said my reputation was one of eating the missionaries for lunch. Her response was. "Oh, good, when shall we eat?" This sister asked questions that caused me to ask questions and examine my own personal beliefs. Sister Powell was good at respecting where I came from, and then asking me questions like, "What do you think about this? What are your feelings on that? What do you believe? What do you think the Mormon Church believes about this?" Then she would say, "You're crazy, you have no idea!

How would you feel if I told you it was this way? Would you have a problem with that?"

She began breaking down the misconceptions I had about the prophet Joseph Smith and the temple. Some of these things had come from my father who was a Vermont mason. What happens is that you get the story and build on it and tell it to someone else who builds up the story a little more and pretty soon it's not the same story.

The nice thing about Sister Powell was that she was so good and so respectful of what I believed but then she would take a situation and turn it so nicely and say, "Okay, but what if I told you that it was like this" or "How would you feel if I told you it was this way." She would then, ask me what I believed and she would say, "That applies to exactly what we're doing." Mostly I would just sit back and say, "Oh!-- okay." We discussed the word of wisdom, which at that point I was living, but I had a little problem with someone telling me what I should or shouldn't do. Again, she explained that very nicely. We met for some time, and she had perhaps four different companions in process of time. I am not sure that we ever did standard discussionsÖsome of it was almost like we learn in primary, but it explained the concepts very clearly.

Sister Powell had that wonderful warm sense about her. It was not like she was reading something or reciting something memorized. There was something really special about her; she had the Spirit with her so strongly.---It was almost like there was a light around her, and she brought the nicest spirit into our home, that I could not ignore. . Sometimes when she came we would get off on a subject, and she would explain it, and all of a sudden, I would feel this warmth as the Spirit rushed in, and I would be almost in tears.

We talked for four or five months before she ever asked if I was ready to be baptized. When she asked, "Are you ready to be baptized?" there was no question, I said, "Yes." After that, about two or three days into it,---I said, "I can't do this." I remember telling Diane, "I'm not going to do it; I can't do it."

Diane said, "The adversary is working on you." He probably was. That was a very difficult time. I postponed baptism for a couple of weeks, but knew it was right and finally my step son, Ben, baptized me. Sister Powell started teaching me in early summer and it wasn't until January 25th that I was baptized. Her transfer came two days later.

I still had some questions afterward and visited with the bishop during this period to discuss my concerns. His advice was, "Pray about it." I would and it was amazing how I would get the answers so quickly.

My children did not support my baptism at first, they thought that maybe Diane had put pressure on me, but she never did push it. I learned, however, that during the course of my conversion, she and the entire neighborhood were praying for me and hoping that my heart would be open and receptive to the gospel. Later on my children had no problem at all as they realized that they had never seen me more happy.

I have two older sisters, one 10 and one 14 years older. It took me over a year to tell them I had been baptized. When I delivered the news they were both thrilled to hear that I had done something that I really believed in, and asked, "Why did it take you so long....?"

Note from Peggy Proctor:
I didn't know Bunk before his baptism, but he is a gentle, genteel, and guileless man whose eyes sparkle, and a warmth surrounds both him and his wife. Missionaries don't usually take so much time with one person nor are they in one area very long, but the Lord knew the heart of this man and sent a special missionary who chipped away with her chisel of light at the dark misconceptions which surrounded him. As you look at his story, you can see how the hand of the Lord moved in his life to bring him to the waters of baptism.

Bunk was recently called to the high council in his stake.

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