Dear Little Brother: Entering the Mission Field

ENTERING THE FIELD

oh maaaaan. I can't believe this is finally happening. You're leaving in less than a week! As you requested, here are some of my insights and memories about entering the mission field.

First off, you gotta remember that before the mission, I was scared of EVERYTHING. I hated travelling, flying, and change (that part is still true, but I'm getting better at that). So as sick as I was of the MTC by the time nine weeks were up, I was FREAKING TERRIFIED of leaving the 13 people who had become my family in those two months. I burst into tears when we were supposed to get on the bus. And on the train to the airport. I was basically having an anxiety attack the moment we left the MTC gates. So embarrassing. I was under a lot of stress though. Also, I'd never left the country before and all I could think about was everything that could go wrong (my dad always liked to tell me about how Thailand was like the number one country for sex trafficking or something?? thanks, dad. Really reassuring).

ANYWAYS. What I knew in my head but didn't quite understand in my heart at that point was that EVERYTHING WORKS OUT and GOD TAKES CARE OF HIS MISSIONARIES. It's harder to see those things in the MTC because you're surrounded by missionaries in probably the safest environment in the world, but it's true. In a weird way, it's like when you put on the nametag, you become someone else. You and everything you have/are belong to the Lord. Sometimes, that can be kind of difficult to come to terms with, especially because you're still you, with all your individual preferences and goals and ideas, but at the same time you are 100% THE LORD'S servant. As such, nothing that happens to you REALLY happens to you, because you're under the mantle of your calling. Does that make sense?

Think of the worst thing that could happen to you while you're travelling. You could get your stuff stolen, get lost, miss a flight, lose your passport...any number of things, right? Well that and many more things have already happened to TONS of other missionaries, sometimes through no fault of their own. So relax, stay with your companion/district, and roll with whatever happens. Don't be stupid, though. (I don't feel like you have problems with that...but you can never be too careful with Elders ;))

I don't know if I told you or not, but my first three months in country were by far the worst months of my life. I've never felt more spiritually blocked or been angrier at God or cried more tears than I did in a city in the middle of the jungle in Thailand. Seriously. Still not 100% sure why that happened, however, I will say this; living in a different country can be a huge emotional and psychological shock. This probably seems obvious, like of course it's going to be different from America! But it actually goes a lot deeper than that. Sometimes you won't perceive all the stresses involved with living and working in a new country but they'll still be taking a huge toll on you. Here's a quote from a doctor about that:

If you have been treated for [or ever experienced any kind of] mood, anxiety, or other psychological disorders, including panic attacks, bipolar disorder, clinical depression, eating disorders, substance abuse, etc. be prepared for a regression with many symptoms resurfacing after about a month in your host country.... This regression is due to the extra stress of living and working abroad.

It impacts everyone differently (and from personal experiences, I'd say it can have a stronger negative impact on women), and it might not impact you much or at all, but keep that in mind that there might be things happening in your head that make it hard to cope, and that's okay (as a side note, you should also keep that in mind when you train a new missionary or even with people from your MTC district: some of your companions/friends may have a harder time than others).

It's totally okay if this happens to you, it just means you need to be aware of your personal warning signs and SLOW THE FRICK DOWN, BUDDY. GOD DOES NOT WANT YOU TO WORK YOURSELF TO DEATH OUT THERE.

Let me say it again in case you weren't listening. GOD. DOES. NOT. WANT. YOU. TO. KILL. YOURSELF. IN. THIS. WORK. The mission is important and everything, but you've got an eternity of being a husband and father and those are ultimately going to be the most important things you ever do. Don't forget it. If you need to stop and get off your bike for a 5-minute breather, do it. You're not slowing your companion down, you're actually helping him because what good are you going to be to him in a lesson if you pass out or fall asleep?

So here are some pointers about taking care of yourself. I don't know exactly what the climate/mission is like there but I think most of these things are universal:

1. Some doctor person I think said that however many hours different your destination is from your origin, is how many days it will take your to get over jet-lag (I don't have a medical source on that, I've just heard it). You're looking at 10-11 hours of difference, right? So plan on being suuuper tired for the first couple weeks, and be patient. I remember we would finish daily planning at 930 and I'd be asleep minutes later. Sometimes we would go home for lunch break and I'd sleep for an hour. I'd also fall asleep in church and sometimes in lessons. I felt so bad, but looking back it was honestly just jet lag. It's okay.
2. WATER WATER WATER. Make that the first response to any ailments you experience. Headache? drink water. Diarrhea? drink water. Joint pain? drink water. Sounds silly, but honestly you can get dehydrated so fast without even realizing it and the symptoms of dehydration are super broad. You'll need more water anyways just with the increased physical activity of being in the field, and it's easy to forget about it but it's honestly so, so important. I just got in the habit of sucking on my water bottle anytime I was stationary (on a bus, waiting for an investigator, eating, etc.).
3. Take breaks. I mentioned this earlier, but it's totally okay to take breaks for snacks/water/breathing. Every missionary works at a different pace and it's okay if you work at a slower pace than your companion. This is also expected when you're a greenie. In the future, you may have a kid/companion who can't work at your pace. No matter how frustrating it may seem or how much faster it would be if you just did the work alone, slow down. Be patient, with others and with yourself when you can't quite work at the speed you feel you should be able to. Because that's literally the point of missionary work, is to invite EVERYONE to come unto Christ, and it starts with you and your companion.

When you reach your limit and feel like giving up, take a minute to say a silent prayer pleading for strength from on high, then work for 30 more minutes (or 20, or 15) and watch the hand of the Lord work in everything you do.

Okay so I feel like the letter so far seems a little bit negative. I had a reallyyyyyy negative experience getting into the country and being a greenie. It's okay. I will say that my saving grace in the field were the members and the people we taught. I felt like they were truly my family. Even when I was super isolated from my trainer and having a hard time with EVERYTHING, the members loved me and as I searched for the little ways that I could serve them, they loved me even more. It definitely got me through that period.

So I really don't know how it will be in your mission, but there were a few big problems in my mission. One was that there was this conception that the more intense you could work, the better a missionary you were. NOT. TRUE. It's not about who can stand out in the sun contacting the longest or who can teach the most lessons after church. It's about doing YOUR BEST. And I know I've mentioned this before, but sometimes your best is not punching your companion in the face or not swearing out loud, haha. Seriously though. It's okay. There was another problem in my mission where everyone just took everything wayyyy too seriously. And certainly being serious is good, but my favorite missionaries were the ones who weren't stiff as a board and could crack a smile and laugh and have fun. Play games with the members. Get involved. Earning their trust is far more effective than contacting the streets for 8 hours a day. I think you have enough personal examples of that to understand how important that is (I'm thinking of that one Elder who served in our ward when we were younger...maybe he was a little too immature or goofy at inappropriate times, but he had my trust at a time that was crucial in my life and conversion and I think yours, too).

Now about your trainer: I don't know who will have the great pleasure of calling you their son out in your mission. I'm sure he will be wonderful and try his best to train you and do the work. But being a trainer is hard. Trainers feel a huge amount of responsibility towards their children and also to their area, and sometimes they feel like they have to do it alone. It's a balance trying to keep your kid involved but also do what needs to be done. Be open about what your needs are -- if you want him to translate certain conversations or maybe just when your investigators ask questions...and be willing to adjust that system as often as you need it. Be patient and loving, with yourself as well as your companion. You are your most important investigator, and are as deserving of God's love just as much as the people of Armenia!

Being a trainer is a lot like being a parent (hence all the slang with calling people family terms). Being a parent is really hard, and your trainer is gonna do some stupid things. Guaranteed. They might not even realize they’re doing stupid things. Somehow, the mission is intense enough that everyone suffers from memory loss and forgets how awful being a greenie can be (which is probably a blessing, frankly).

I hope this helps. It's actually been really healing for me to write you these letters and reflect on my mission experience, so I have to thank you for giving me the opportunity to get my thoughts out on paper. I hope this didn't come across as negative; I believe you will be a healthy, happy, successful missionary in every way and you will see and work miracles out there. Everyone's mission serves a different but vital purpose in God's plan -- it's possible that you might not fully know or understand what your mission's purpose is until much later, and that's okay. Patience in God's timing is really the key.

Best of luck, little bro. You're gonna rock it out there :)

the calm after the storm: life as a newly-returned RM

Coming home from the mission is like getting sucked out of a riptide and tossed in a kiddie pool.

You're used to going hard and working 10-hour days (that's not including the time you put in for studies) and suddenly you're not working. At all. Your knee-jerk reaction is to talk to everyone about the gospel. In the store, on the street, you even want to stop and pull over the car just to talk to someone on the sidewalk. Can't you just see a girl in a black hoodie and sweats pulling a minivan over and rolling down the window: "hey there, do you wanna hear a message about Jesus Christ?"

Apparently, that's not considered normal in the real world.

It gets weirder when you try to introduce yourself. Your brain keeps choking on itself and you can't think of yourself by your proper name. Is it your first name? Should you just scrap it and go by your last name? Your first name on the mission is "Sister/Elder" so maybe you should just stick to that....

And then, as people congratulate you and welcome you back, you finally realize what Frodo Baggins is talking about in Lord of the Rings, when the hobbits go back to the Shire after fighting the war of the Ring and the Shire is...exactly the same. As Frodo says:

How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.

While perhaps serving a mission isn't nearly as traumatic as traipsing into Mordor to destroy a weapon of ultimate evil, missions can be pretty dang painful and difficult. And nobody really knows what happened, what you've been doing and how you've changed the world. How you've changed. You realize that there are things you will never be able to explain or share with the people closest to you. The lives you've seen change, the miracles, the experiences, the answered prayers after months of begging for answers. The gospel means so much more to you now than just going to church for three hours a week, it's living and breathing itself.

People will ask you about the food, the language, the people, the baptisms. But these are all just a fraction of what you've experienced and what you felt.

Shoutout to Tolkien for creating a story that would help explain the plight of newly-returned missionaries. Always knew I could count on you, JRR. (Not coincidentally, JRR Tolkien wrote Frodo's character the way he did because he was reflecting his own feelings on returning home from World War I a shell-shocked veteran.)

The things you thought you'd be interested in when you got home are pointless to you now. You had a list of movies several pages long in little notebook, but you've watched maybe one or two of them. You just do the little things like exercise and shower and read scriptures every day and wonder:

Where do I go from here?

People who aren't also newly-returned missionaries laugh and say, "well, marriage, of course!" But you're still married to the mission in your head. You know you have to move forward but there's nothing hold onto in the future and the recent past is all so very real and there. You don't want to change, but you can't live a missionary lifestyle anymore. It's just not your calling anymore.

I know I'm not the only one going through these odd withdrawal feelings. In fact, I know people who've had them worse than I have. This is not a new phenomenon, but I've noticed that there isn't really anything to help newly-returned missionaries in their transition back from missionary life. We have the Missionary Training Center to help us prepare for life in the mission field, but there's nothing on the flip side. Just an airplane flight and that's it. The stake president shakes your hand and sends you on your way and just like that you're not a missionary anymore.

But the mission does a pretty good job preparing you for heartbreak, instability and sudden change. Living out of two suitcases and facing the possibility of moving every six weeks will do that. So you come home, unpack your bags, get rid of a bunch of stuff, and get ready for the next thing. Maybe it's a job, maybe school, maybe both. You have to figure out your own purpose now. It's not clearly spelled out in page 1 of Preach My Gospel.


But in the midst of my own personal search to find some meaning to this new, unfamiliar life, I realized that our purpose to "invite others to come unto Christ" isn't reserved for people with a nametag on their chest, and if a mission has taught me anything, it's that as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I have not only the privilege but the responsibility to do missionary work for the rest of my life!

And missionary work is so much easier for me to do now with a phone and access to as many social media websites as the internet can provide. God didn't intend for missions to end, He meant for them to be a big first step onto the rest of our lives onto earth. Everything is meant to prepare. My two months in the Missionary Training Center prepared me for the mission, the mission has prepared me for the rest of life, and this life is preparatory for eternity.

So while I'm certainly not the most experienced returned missionary, I think I'm finally getting a handle on things with the same purpose that kept me going on my mission.

Isn't it cool that we have a Heavenly Father who made this incredible plan and figured it all out?

why do we serve?

best. day. ever.

For over a year now, I've been preparing to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It's been an exhausting, trying process, and I've put a lot of sweat and tears into preparing. And now that I have my call, it finally feels like it's really going to happen: I've been called to serve in the Thailand, Bangkok Mission! I couldn't be more thrilled. I've never had Thai food and I've never spoken a word of Thai in my life but it already feels like home to me.

But when people ask me about the mission, it's always about where I'm going or when I'm leaving, but almost never is it why I'm going. I've been getting increasingly frustrated at the reactions when people find out I'm going to Thailand. They congratulate me and then proceed to talk about how exotic Thailand is going to be, how I'm going to love seeing elephants and petting tigers or taking in the architecture. And I know they're just happy for me, but it frustrates me that people believe this will be like an exotic vacation.

A mission is anything BUT a vacation! Not going to lie, I'm going to appreciate the break from school, but that's about the only thing I'm taking a "break" from. I'm gonna be working like I've NEVER WORKED BEFORE, not with animals or exotic sites but with PEOPLE. Missionary work is ALL ABOUT PEOPLE. So it didn't matter to me whether I was going "stateside" or foreign, I was just so excited to have the opportunity to serve Heavenly Father's precious children. The place does NOT matter. Of course there were places I didn't want to get called and places I was afraid of going, but I knew either way once I opened the call that it would feel right, because the call comes from God. It's not a randomized process. We are sent where and when we need to go for a reason. And now that I know where I'm going, I'm even more excited! I love the people of Thailand with a love I didn't know I had in me, comparable to the love I have for my family and closest friends.

I've always been a loving person, and growing up, I always assumed my ability to love people as deeply and openly as I did made me weak, but I realize now it gives me more motivation and power than any of my other strengths. LOVE IS WHY WE SERVE. And more than that, love is the central purpose behind so much of what we do in this Church! It's the backbone of missionary work, the Relief Society program, the Church Welfare program...and most importantly, the Atonement, in which Jesus Christ took upon himself the sins of the world to allow us to find a way back to be with Him and our Heavenly Father -- because He LOVES us. I don't think I could ever overemphasize the importance of love; it's the biggest motivator behind my going on a mission and I already know that love will keep me going during the moments of my mission when nothing else does.

I love this gospel, I love the people of Thailand, and I'm so excited to go serve them! #thechurchistrue