After growing up without much medical attention, Angela Andra received a heart transplant at 20 and ultimately converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She is believed to be the first female heart-transplant patient to serve a Mormon mission.
Her medical records were shipped with her to the Virginia Richmond Mission, where she served faithfully with no further complications — other than having her appendix removed while serving.
Andra returned from her mission in February, and now, at 24, she has a story that could fill volumes and equal two lifetimes of the average person.
For someone growing up in a polygamous clan with two mothers who had 10 children each, health issues could get lost in the shuffle. Such was the case with Andra, whose blue fingertips turned darker in cold weather and whose blue lips never garnered sufficient attention to see a doctor.
So when Andra left her family in Missouri and moved to Salt Lake City to live with a brother, her first trip to a hospital resulted in the doctor exclaiming: "I have been a blood doctor for 30 years and I have never seen blood as thick as yours."
Andra says she rebelled at 17, deciding a polygamous lifestyle was not for her. She hadn't married, although she says a couple of "old codgers" showed interest.
After moving to Utah, Andra became a Buddhist and often attended kung fu sessions with her brother. There she came in contact with Mowava Pryor, an LDS actress with whom she instantly felt a connection and built a friendship.
Andra mentioned she wanted to sing, so Pryor put her in touch with Alex Boy? an LDS singer. Again, there was that feeling of connection. "I felt like I was meeting an old friend," Andra said.
Meanwhile, the heart condition was still being addressed. After her hospital experience, which came about because Andra had a bad stomachache and had been throwing up, tests indicated that her heart only had three chambers instead of the usual four — and only one was working properly.
Furthermore, said Andra, "my organs were flip-flopped."
Dumbfounded hospital personnel had never seen such a condition, because in normal circumstances surgeries would have been performed during her infancy. Doctors determined that instead of doing several surgeries, they should go ahead with a heart transplant, because it would eventually have to be done anyway.
One problem: Andra, having never been to a hospital or a doctor, needed to get all the usual immunizations. The shots are usually spread over a couple of years, but doctors sped up this process over six months.
Paperwork was completed, and she was certified for a heart transplant on July 7, 2005.
The previous February, the meeting with Boy?took place.
"I didn't know she was a nonmember," he said. "You know, I thought everyone in Utah was a Mormon. She was coming for singing lessons but about a half-hour before she arrived I had an impression that she was coming to hear about the gospel. This wasn't about singing lessons."
Of course, Andra didn't realize she was coming to hear about the gospel. They talked for about three hours and Boy?discovered she had read the Book of Mormon many times, so he gave her another booklet: "As A Man Thinketh."
This little act impressed Andra. "He didn't try to give me a Book of Mormon," she said. "I actually hated the Mormons. I was a Buddhist."
Boy?said he was searching for ways to get her to feel the spirit and at the end of the evening he gave her a blessing.
Shortly thereafter, Pryor hosted a dinner that included the missionaries with Andra and Boy?
"I was furious," Andra said about the missionaries coming. She says she wasn't told they would be there, but Pryor contends that she told her.
Andra said, "I believe that Heavenly Father must have blocked it from my ears."
In any case, the missionaries were there to teach, but Andra was in no mood to listen. However, her respect and friendship for Pryor and Boy?caused her to take the first discussion.
"I was boiling inside," she said. "The elder asked me to kneel down right now and pray. I told him I would do it on my own time."
In deference to her friends, she agreed to meet with the missionaries once more. "It bugged me really bad that I had agreed to do it," she said.
A few days later, she was just about to call and cancel the appointment when the phone rang and Pryor invited her to church. She went and said, "Everyone was like 'cheesy' friendly."
But there was something that felt familiar, and that distressed her. "I can't remain up there in limbo," she said.
So she searched high and low for her Book of Mormon to read. "I was like a crazy woman," she said. "It was that intense." Finally, she threw up her arms and said, "God, if you want me to find out if this is true or not, help me find it."
At that moment she received an impression to look in the garage. She found the book in a storage box right on top.
Just walking from the garage to her room and holding the scriptures, a feeling came over her.
"I felt very overcome with a feeling I didn't recognize." She laid down on the floor and could not stop crying. "I don't know how long," she said. "It could have been three minutes or it could have been three hours."
While on the floor, she remembered a childhood wish of hers that she could experience being held in Jesus' arms. "I realized now that I could have that experience."
On May 15, 2005, her friend, Alex Boy? baptized her.
All this seemed to converge with her clearance for a heart transplant. Just 12 days after getting on the list, she had an eight-hour heart transplant surgery July 19.
"I took a nap," she said. Three weeks later, she was up and walking around normally.
When she first woke up after the surgery, the nurse had to take her cell phone away because she was calling people. But just before that, while she was heavily sedated with morphine, Elder Richard G. Scott just happened to be at the hospital, and Pryor waved him over to give her a blessing.
Andra doesn't remember it, but Pryor said, "It was a powerful blessing. He spoke to her spirit and to her heart."
Many friends urged Andra to go on a mission, but it wasn't something she was planning. In December, her ward was in Park City on an outing and everyone was trying to finish up President Gordon B. Hinckley's challenge to read the Book of Mormon. She was reading in Alma 36 — "I was behind schedule" — about Alma wanting to share the gospel so that others could experience what he did. "I had been sharing with friends now," she realized.
The next day as she was going to see Pryor, who was working at the baptistry in the Salt Lake Temple, she slipped on the ice and snow and fell. It then hit her like a lightning bolt that she was to go on a mission. "I had to experience the pain," she said, "to determine that I wanted to go on a mission."
Upon arriving at the baptistry, she told Pryor that she was going on a mission.
"I knew she was supposed to go on a mission," Pryor said. "I could see the light in her and I knew it was right."
She waited the requisite year to receive her LDS temple ordinances, and her doctors required a one-year checkup.
All went well and she served a successful mission. Her mission president, Spencer Kirk, said, "With all that was stacked up against her, she had the courage to stand up against the odds. She wanted to make a difference in people's lives."
E-mail: wjewkes@desnews.com