After 18 years of never spending longer than a day apart or an hour angry at each other, Mackenzie and Morgan Casper begin their first semester at BYU–Hawaii with the realization that separation quickly approaches them.
Fraternal twin sisters by birth, both grew up in Idaho and discovered their passions for art and music through the same unlikely manner that led them here: rejection. They said they wanted to enroll as full-time students at BYU-Idaho, but right before they left, they got an email saying the application had been deleted.”We took that as our message that we’re supposed to come here,” said Mackenzie Casper. “And since we both got accepted, we were just like ‘Oh, I guess we’re going to Hawaii.’”
Morgan, the older sister by about 60 seconds, leaves to serve a mission in Rochester, New York (Spanish-speaking) on Nov. 11. “I opened my mission call in front of the Laie Temple,” said Morgan, “and I’m so excited. I’ve never been more excited for anything in my life before. It’s like the only thing I think about.”
“When she got her mission call,” said Mackenzie, “I started crying because I was so happy for her. I think it’s really awesome that she’s going to go.”
Born into a home clouded by drugs, the two sisters had to learn to depend on each other very quickly. “Me and Morgan had to grow up really fast,” said Mackenzie. “We had to feed ourselves and then our mom had another baby along the way and we also had to take care of that baby while our mom was in the garage making drugs.”
At the age of 8, they were taken into their grandmother’s home, where they lived with and developed a love for the gospel. Sports captured the sisters’ attention. But because of complications with their knees, they were forced to lay aside those aspirations for a time.
“First we started band in eighth grade when we were 12 or 13,” said Morgan. “We got into music because we couldn’t do sports, but we still wanted to be involved with something.”
After her band instructor laid out all of the instruments and let each student try them, Morgan was sure she wanted to play the saxophone. But when she was the only student who could make a sound on the French horn, her teacher insisted she give it a try.
“I got out the French horn and I sounded horrible for the first two years,” she said, “and then finally I kind of started sounding decent and then I loved it. I still want to learn saxophone but the French horn is really pretty.”
Mackenzie, on the other hand, found it a bit harder to transition from sports to a new passion. “I held a grudge for a really long time because before eighth grade I wanted to play sports, and that’s all I would do with all my time, and then it finally got to the point that my knee got so bad that I couldn’t run or do anything,” she said.
Now she is majoring in graphic design and hopes to get her master’s degree in art at BYU in Provo. “I started [art] in 9th grade. I took it because I thought it would be like the easiest class. And I hated art so much…the only reason I got into art is because I wanted to prove my art teacher wrong,” said Mackenzie. “So I would draw for like 5 hours a day after school. I did that and I eventually became decent, and I just grew to love it.”
The two sisters have always supported one another in their respective endeavors, but do find some disadvantages in being twins. “We’re treated as one person instead of two different people,” said Morgan. “It’s always Morgan and Mackenzie, it’s never just one or the other.”
“Not only were we treated as one person, but we were talked to as if we were one person,” added Mackenzie, recalling an instance in which they were asked to a dance and both of their dates made jokes all night and frequently asked which one they were supposed to be dancing with.
Another disadvantage is comparison; occasionally one twin will be told she is prettier or more talented than the other. “If someone says that about us,” said Morgan, “it should seem like a nice thing, but really it offends us.”
MJ Baird, a freshman from Illinois studying music education, met the Casper sisters the Sunday before the semester started. “They were really sweet. They reminded me of people I knew back home,” said Baird. “They are the most consistent in saying they don’t look alike. All the other twins I know just accept it, but they always say how much they don’t look alike.”
Despite their psychological twin connection--slight raises of the eyebrow and movements of the lips are manifestations of linked thoughts for the two sisters--not everything they went through growing up was solved through each other’s company.
“In 8th grade I was really struggling with my self-image. I was kind of chubby,” said Mackenzie. “She was never chubby,” corrected Morgan.
“But I felt so chubby. I felt really fat. I wasn’t even overweight or anything. I just felt really down about myself,” said Mackenzie.
“I was on the verge of becoming anorexic because I lost 20 pounds in two weeks. So it was kind of scary. And then one night I came in, and I couldn’t see anything. My vision was gone and I walked into a wall and my grandmother sat me down and ... had a talk with me. After that I started realizing that it doesn’t matter what I look like as long as I’m healthy. What’s helped me most is [realizing] the Savior gave everyone a body to take care of, and not to bash on.”
“It was hard,” said Morgan. “I just didn’t know how to help, and I felt bad. If one bad thing happens to another one of us, then we’ll feel sad with them, but if it’s extremely personal, I definitely will go to my grandmother. Which seems backwards.”
“The hardest thing was my very first knee surgery,” said Morgan.
“It’s weird, the rest of the four knee surgeries, they were so easy, but just the first one, it was just hard. I was on crutches for three months; I couldn’t even lift up my leg because I had lost so much muscle.
“I just had a really bad attitude about everything and I could feel my testimony dwindling and it just wasn’t good. But it was cool because I just thought the Savior has been through exactly what I’ve been through, He knew how I felt. So I just read my scriptures more and it helped me pull through it, and after that my other three surgeries were like a piece of cake.”
Morgan didn’t tell her biological mother about her mission at first, and contact with her is sparse and far from gospel-related, despite her attempts. For Valentine’s Day the sisters gave her a Book of Mormon, including their written testimonies on the inside cover.
“She didn’t open it or read it or anything, but I thought she was just going to throw it away or put it under her bed,” said Morgan, “but she put it right by her bed on her nightstand, and I just felt like her heart was softened just a little bit. ... I’m definitely most grateful for the gospel because it tells you how to live life, it’s your guide through life. I don’t know what people do without it.”
“I love that families can be together forever,” said Mackenzie. “With our situation, where our family isn’t really complete, me and Morgan aren’t sealed to anybody, and so at first that was a hard concept for me to learn. ... But our grandma has taught us that you can be loved by anybody.”