I have never really wanted to serve a mission. As a child, I remember secretly feeling glad (though slightly wicked) I was a girl because it meant I did not “have” to go on a mission. Even in those tender years I could tell that childbirth would be no picnic, and the reprieve from missionary service felt like a balancing weight in the scale of fairness.
I think my feelings were due, in part, to my natural shyness. Even through my college years I much preferred to listen in the shadows of conversation than actively participate. I envied girls like Christine Anne Vick (When Hard is Just Hard), who were outgoing and willing to speaking their minds. Perhaps that is why I appreciate her courage in sharing the difficulties she had on her mission. In my immaturity, I somehow thought that missionary service was tied to personality traits, and I simply did not have the right traits. I would not have guessed that someone like her would have had an experience like that. More openness about what a mission truly involves might help us all appreciate the sacrifices of those who serve, as well as helping those who are preparing to go.
As an adult, I have tried to catch the vision of missionary service. There are times when the grand scale of the gospel—the reality of the kingdom of God and the potential to save souls—actually sinks in and I am overwhelmed. I do want to shout from the rooftops “Yes! This is the truth! Please, come and learn!” But the routine of life creeps back in, along with the sense that the few non-member neighbors I do have are tired of people trying to convert them.
It’s easy in our goal-oriented society, to think of missionary work (or conversion) as a target—we either hit it or we don’t. I’m trying to learn how to think of it as an attitude, part of the larger work of living the gospel generally. For me, living the gospel also involves respecting non-members’ beliefs and realizing that I can learn from them.
I often think of Alma and the sons of Mosiah and their desire to serve missions among a people who hated them. What a bittersweet time for king Mosiah and the elder Alma, who had prayed for their sons to return to the fold. Yet the return they sought brought about a change in the course of their sons’ lives—a change that involved sacrifice, physical and emotional pain, danger, and potential death. I’m sure the boys would have had a much safer and more comfortable life as sinners. But once they had felt the reality of the Atonement, and the power and love of the Savior, they “were desirous that salvation should be declared to every creature, for they could not bear that any human soul should perish; yea, even the very thoughts that any soul should endure endless torment did cause them to quake and tremble” (Mos. 28:3). Every soul became precious, worth every effort to save.
So I am left wondering about myself. Do I, as Sis. Parkin has said, feel the love of the Lord in my life? If so, does this love compel me to reach out to others? Do I see people as the precious souls they are? Does my defensive neighbor feel like I care about her? Do I care about her? And how do I balance the eleventh Article of Faith with missionary work? I think my reprieve might be over . . .
Here in Utah, I have decided that the best missionary work I can do toward my neighbors is just being a good neighbor, and not shunning them because they aren’t part of my “cultural” norm. But I remember, when living outside of Utah, it seemed religion was something more easily talked about. Probably because there wasn’t such a religious majority.
I felt the same as you, however. I have always regretted and been saddened by my feelings of relief. I’m not even one whit shy, but during college did not have the fire of testimony burning so brightly as I feel I do now. It’s a difficult issue, one that I think Satan uses to inspire guilt and uneasiness.
I did serve a full-time mission. After a tour of the MTC when I was a beehive in Young Women’s, I put it in my mind as part of my life plan. I experienced some similar emotions to Christine. Super high expectations, guilt, and stress that resulted in IBS and an awkward and emotional transition back into normal life. To that point I had never been challenged so much. The things I felt confident in about myself and about the gospel were tested; I was tested. I don’t have a simple lesson that I learned either. But I do feel that the things I learned and continue to learn from my time as a sister missionary changed me and have helped me more fully understand the everlasting gospel. Like you said Melissa, it has helped the reality “sink in.”
I had equally high and unrealistic expectations for myself after my mission. Now that it’s been a few years and I’m busily raising my kids and building a home I’ve started to relax and know that, like I said in our discussion a couple of weeks ago, the responsibility isn’t necessarily to make sure you’ve told every neighbor and person you know what you know about the gospel but to be a Christlike person. As we build true and loving relationships, the opportunities to share the truth of the gospel come so naturally. The spirit guides us. I love what Elder Ballard talked about in conference not too long ago about leading a gospel sharing life, having a gospel sharing home. He redefined member missionary work in a way that seems more intuitive. Be a friend, be a good neighbor, invite people in, share your happiness and joy, people won’t be able to help wanting to know what it is that brings you so much peace and happiness.
It’s still hard. Everything that is worthwile is. Like Justine said, it’s a tool that Satan uses to inspire guilt. I think one of his greatest tools for the mothers in the church is discouragement. Making us feel that we aren’t and never will be able to do enough is a great way to get us down and out.
I visited my sister’s mission home when my family went to pick her up. As my only sister, I idolized her, wanted to be like her, copied her in everything that she did. However, on the door step of the home, I felt (an inspiration kind of feeling)that a mission was not for me. And it wasn’t until long after I was married that I realized some of the potential reasons why. I think I would have driven myself CRAZY if I had served. My perfectionism that had previously served me so well, would have, I fear made a mission very difficult.
I like to think of my “perfectionist” phase as something that I had to live through, learn from, and leave behind. And so I really liked your analogy about rejecting missionary work as a target.
And, I hope my reprieve is over too. It’s just easier said than done…
Well, this probably isn’t the place to say this, but I have never had a desire and never felt guilty for not wanting to serve a mission. The thing that bothered me most about that decision was all the dissertations I had to endure from others about serving a mission from the age of 20 to 27 (which only stopped because I “finally” got married). For me, the choice was “Well, God what do you think?” The details of what He thought is really only something I can understand, but I decided not to go and to stay and grow in other ways. Have I ever had the chance to say ‘On my mission…’?? No, and in a way I’m glad. I’ve had to fight just as hard for my religious experiences and discoveries, and I’ve had some fabulous times. I agree that guilty feeligs can arise from Satan, but also from the emphasis that we place on other’s perception of our life & choices. Remember the discussions that we’ve had with the Lord on our own since those ar eth emost important and sometimes no one else can understand our answers.
This is such an important topic—one that deserves way more attention and time than I think we can all give it here.
When I was 20 and was not planning on serving a mission, ever, my father wanted me to and really pushed me towards it. When I was 22, and discovered for myself that Heavenly Father wanted me to go, others told me to stay and finish my last two classes and just not worry about it. When I came home, I had people tell me pretty much everything under the sun about what they thought about women serving, or not serving.
I feel like women and missions is one of those topics that reflect just how complicated an LDS woman’s life is. We get so many conflicting messages growing up, about how to really fill our divine roles—it’s crazy—there is pressure to be the perfect LDS woman, and what does that mean? Does it mean we served a mission, or got married, or stayed single until we were 30? It seems like whatever my path was, while I have been on it, there have been people who disagreed with what I was doing.
About missionary work—-I really believe, as part of my testimony, that the Lord will make missionaries out of all of us, in the way He needs and wants it, if we will allow him to. I almost did not let him make a full-time missionary out of me, because of a pre-occupation with third-world development and a desire to help others in temporal ways. I am so glad I listened to Him. I know that I was needed as a missionary by others, and I know that my family now needed me to be changed in certain ways to be able to serve in building Zion as I’m doing now. But like you all have said—it’s not that you “served a mission or you didn’t.” The Lord can train and prepare us for our unique futures in other ways besides full-time missions. He has many ways of accomplishing the same end. It’s about what you are allowing the Lord to do with you, and if you are seeking for the desire to share the gospel, in whatever way, with others.
That is one of the myths about missionary work–that there are people who “have the desire,” like D and C section 4 talks about, and those are the people who serve as full-time missionaries. I don’t believe that’s true. Maybe some are blessed with that initial fire, but it’s more than fine to have to seek it, pray for it, to pray to “want to want to share the gospel.” That can come, it can be planted inside of us by the Holy Ghost if we diligently go after it.
I wish I could share the gospel with the same natural enthusisam that I share other good things in my life. Here’s an example. Wherever I go, people seem to start homeschooling. When I moved away from my last home, my closest friends went back to public schooling. “You were the glue,” they told me. I can’t figure that out. I don’t consider schooling choice to be a matter of gospel principles, but somehow I win converts without really trying. I care so much more deeply about the gospel of Jesus Christ, but people around me aren’t getting baptized right and left. BTW, I do want to go on a mission someday, but in my imagination it’s always a humanitarian mission. No tracting.
I have to share my experience here. I found myself nodding and agreeing with so much that y’all have said. But my experience seems different too.
As a firstborn daughter of two adult converts, I always wanted to serve a mission when I was young. I told everyone that I was going to get my degree, serve a full-time mission, get another degree, marry around the age of 27, and then start a family. But then I was nineteen and in love with the idea of getting married . . . not even in love yet with a certain someone.
Now I had been in love, and wanted to marry that wonderful person, but other people who loved us discouraged us from getting married. When he left for his mission, I prayed about whether I could just wait for him. I received a quick and direct answer. “You will not.” I took that as a “No” and moved on. I was engaged to someone else before my old boyfriend had finished his quick MTC training.
In my patriarchal blessing, I had been told that I would be given the desire and opportunity to serve a mission, and that if I did serve, my service would prepare me to govern my family and home. So I puzzled over that, even used it to argue with a would-be-boyfriend who gave me a 2+year-advance warning that he was going to propose!
I prayed and was reassured that I should marry the young man who proposed marriage to me after we had only dated for 3 weeks. We were sealed in the temple and we talked a lot about serving a mission or several together. He had served full-time for 18 months, and then been reassigned to serve a stake mission. He had never actually been released.
Fast forward 10 years and 5 births . . . we’re at church and I get a prompting to read the yellow posting on the bulletin board . . . there’s a description of a part-time church service mission for editors! I get a strong prompting to talk to the bishop and tell him I can do that. I talk to the bishop, and then several folks at the Church Office Building, and I am assigned.
I show up every 6 months around Conference time, and help make sure the Conference talks are proofread (and in some cases, translated) completely. I work with lots of other proofreaders like myself, moms and wives and single sisters, of all ages and backgrounds.
We talk between surges of work, about everything from what’s on sale at Albertson’s, to how to find a good job, and sacred experiences we are reminded of when we are moved to crying while reading aloud a talk by one of the Brethren. It’s not tracting, or even teaching English and hygiene. But it takes me to Temple Square and gives me a chance to contribute in a way that I believe is a special gift from my Father. I cannot otherwise explain my ability to proofread.
We’ve since moved away from Utah, and so I’ve been released from that wonderful mission. That’s the thing I miss the most about Utah, especially in April and October.