“Who here thought that their mission was the most important Spiritual experience in their lives?” the Elder’s Quorum instructor raised his hand expectantly while giving a lesson on missionary work. Most everyone raised their hand. I looked around, but the only others with their hands down were the new converts. “Of course you can develop a testimony without going on a mission,” he continued, “but we know that those two years cause your testimony to grow faster than in any other situation. I’ll always be grateful for my mission.” These lessons are not uncommon. I’ve been in one a half dozen times. “Return Missionaries” is a fraternity. Don’t serve a mission and you will never belong to it.
“Where did you go on your mission?” innocently asked the wife of the Elder’s Quorum President while we ate at the Pot Luck after church. This is the male equivalent of, “When is your baby due?” There isn’t a way to spare either of us any embarrassment. “I’m not pregnant, just fat.” Or in this case, “I didn’t go on a mission; I’m just a wicked and lazy person.” She might have saved herself a little if she had asked first if I had actually gone on a mission, but it wouldn’t have helped much. The assumption is that anyone who is still bothering to go to church at this point already went on a mission. It is a commandment after all.
“The question is asked: Should every young man fill a mission? And the answer of the Church is yes, and the answer of the Lord is yes. Enlarging this answer we say: Certainly every male member of the Church should fill a mission, like he should pay his tithing, like he should attend his meetings, like he should keep his life clean and free from the ugliness of the world and plan a celestial marriage in the temple of the Lord” (Spencer W. Kimball, “Planning for a Full and Abundant Life”, Ensign, May 1974, 86).
I’m sorry to disappoint you, President Kimball. I received every level of Priesthood at the age I should. At 12 I became a Deacon, at 14 a Teacher, at 16 a Priest, and at 18 an Elder. I got married in the temple. But yes, I was missing a step in there. And I don’t mean attending BYU. I was way too cool to follow my Mormon friends to “the Lord’s University.”
Now I’ll never be an “RM.” I’ll never have stories about throwing up while eating Sister Manzanita’s terrible lasagna. I’ll never tell about the time we decided to knock on “just one more door” before finding the golden investigator. I’ll never have the joy of baptizing someone into the Church, or the feeling of failure from never finding a convert. I don’t have any horror stories about terrible companions. I can repeat these stories, but they’ll never be mine.
Another equivalent would be to ask any couple, “How many children do you have?” I’m so grateful that although I am very guilty of asking probably all three of these stupid questions way too often, that I’m a little wiser now. The measuring sticks that we use in Mormon culture can be unfair and hurtful! I’m also grateful to know that as wrong as it is to judge people for whether or not they’ve completed (or taken) the aforementioned prescribed life “steps,” it is just as wrong for us to judge those who ask those questions out of ignorance of character. I hope people were able to forgive me for my ignorance when I was among the guilty…
Two last things…
One, you said, “I’ll never have the joy of baptizing someone into the Church, or the feeling of failure from never finding a convert.” No one needs to be a full-time missionary to experience those things, right? Don’t sell yourself short, these feelings are yours to be had! Right?
And two, I kept searching for the end of the article…I felt your sentiments went unresolved at the end here. So, you didn’t serve a full-time mission when you were young. You’ll never have those stories to tell. But where does that leave you? Grieving? I don’t think you have regret, but I can’t tell for sure by how you resolved this post. Are you apathetic? Are you mad at everyone who keeps bringing it up? Or, are you pleased with the life choices that you’ve made, and hope that everyone will just grow up and realize that there’s way more to life than being in the RM fraternity? I hope you’re happy with your life, everyone deserves that :)…not just those in the fraternity. I wish you the best!! (Meanwhile, good luck making mission memories of your own, in the great big mission field that is the whole world!)
Jenna, thank you for your comments and questions.
Of course anyone can contribute to the conversion of someone else. I am referring to the unique experiences of full-time missionaries. I believe (perhaps wrongly?) that the experience of finding a convert is in some ways different from converting friends outside of the context of a mission. They would certainly have some overlapping similarities, but would not be wholly the same.
The ending of the article was left without a real ending to express my feelings of incompleteness. I’m not apathetic, grieving, or angry, but the lingering sense of incompleteness never seems to leave. Most times I don’t think about it, but sometimes when the full time missionaries come over for dinner, or someone shares an experience from their mission, I feel a little tinge of regret.
The primary purpose of the article was to hopefully help others’ understand how it might be hurtful to assume everyone has served a mission. While it doesn’t make me angry or even annoyed, I am able to see how it could be hurtful to someone else.
Sorry there isn’t a happy ending. I can assure you I am well adjusted. My life is everything I wanted it to be. I just wanted to write about one of those small disappointments we all have in life that don’t exactly control our lives, but we may think of from time to time.
I did teach people who were baptized during my full-time mission (in Spain). Yes, it is a rush to find someone who is ready/willing to accept the gospel, BUT… there are way too many “buts” to list. As far as I know, all five of the people I taught who joined the Church have fallen away. I have lost touch with all of them. I honestly don’t believe that a convert baptism that happens during a mission is worth any more to a soul than participating in a conversion that happens outside of a mission. I have made countless efforts to introduce the gospel to dear friends since my mission (well, both before and after), and have never once seen a friend embrace it. What I wouldn’t give to see a friend accept the gospel, especially if their conversion was lasting. I just wanted to let you know that helping someone find the joy of the gospel, in my opinion, would be the same either way. In fact, one of the best parts of all in helping a person outside a mission to convert is that you wouldn’t have to experience the DRAG it is to get transferred shortly after seeing someone begin to make changes.
I hope that your missionary efforts outside of those had while wearing a name badge can bring you the joy that you did not have when you were younger. For me, I believe they have more similarities than you realize, and there are advantages to the outside-of-mission experiences that the mission does not have. I agree with Jen—your not having gone may have blessed your life in more ways than we can count :). That said, I empathize with your feelings of loss in not having that experience. I have a friend here in PA who did not serve a mission for the same reason as you (stayed home to help an ill family member), and who feels the same loss as you have described. Again, best wishes to you, and may your moments of regret be super few and far-between :).
So why didn’t you serve a mission? You mention being too lazy and wicked in a joking way but then you don’t explain.
Jeff: my father had some health problems and I ended up working for him during that time. Afterwards I went back to school and got married.
When I first started reading your post, I thought it might relate a little more to my experience as a female RM. In my case, if I had been in that meeting, I wouldn’t have raised my hand for a different reason. Because my mission was, in fact, NOT the most spiritual moment of my life. And that would be another sort of judgement I would have to deal with. My mission was an experience I am grateful to have, but I would never choose to go on another mission. My mission was rather traumatic. But I stuck it through to the end. Those who are in the “RM” club aren’t always as excited about it as others are. And actually, I have had more powerful conversion experiences off my mission than the ones I had while wearing the name tag. As a side note, I also went to BYU. I was grateful for the experience, again, but am glad that it is over.
I attend church, I believe whole heartedly in God’s gospel and Jesus Christ. But I feel a different sort of discomfort when I talk about my mission and BYU. I’m automatically put in the RM club and people assume that I “must be” _______ fill in the blank. “You RM’s know what I mean,” “You’re an RM? How are you not MARRIED?” “Once a missionary always a missionary” “I can’t believe an RM would ever doubt or leave the church”
Does the fact that my mission was extremely hard for me mean something about me? Did I not do it right? Was I an unfaithful missionary? Well, fortunately for me I don’t believe any of that. My experience was mine alone, and I am grateful for it. It molded me in many ways, and I feel better because of it. But in a different way than what it sometimes seems everyone else does.
The fact that you did not serve a mission will keep you out of the club forever, but maybe that’s a good thing? Not all of my experiences as a missionary are happy to look back on. Your experiences of not having served a mission is also a difficult challenge. But I’m sure the empathy we will gain from the pain will far outweigh the forms of acceptance we sometimes feel we need in order to be happy about our choices in life.
I’ll join you in your discomfort from this side of the club.
Jen: the example I have of something I did accomplish was getting my Eagle Scout. I don’t really regret getting it but I never enjoyed scouting. It’s not the same as your experience, after all it was more family pressure than church or culture. Expectations can often lead us to do things we wouldn’t otherwise.
You may never be a part of that fraternity, but there is another side to that coin. You didn’t squander two of the best years of your life and subject yourself to two years of abuse at your own expense. Like many young men, I thought the mission experience would be all about finding the pure in heart that the Lord had prepared and were just waiting for me to find them. The reality turned out to be altogether different. What I found instead were dozens of bootlickers aspiring to become ZL’s and AP’s, hypocrisy galore, and a country full of wonderful people that were nice, but almost universally indifferent to our Mormon message.
I look back with shame at how phony and manipulative I could be (and I prided myself on being one of the more genuine ones out there.) Everything we did was done towards the end of getting a baptism.
There likewise exists a very large fraternity of ex-Mormon RM’s. These are the ones you don’t see at church, but there are tens of thousands of them.
The truth is that the mission is not what the church propaganda machine makes it out to be to impressionable young men. Even though I managed to convince myself at the time that I was serving for all the “right” reasons, if had I been honest with myself, I would have recognized that my main reasons for going were to satisfy the heavy expectations of family and friends and to gain that RM-stamp that I thought was a pre-requisite to finding and marrying some sweet little Molly Mormon.
The disillusionment of a mission has devastated many testimonies over the years. I continued on active in the church for a number of years after my mission. Like many others, I focused on the positive aspects of my mission and rationalized away the many negative aspects. But looking back, I can see now that my mission really put some big cracks in the wall that did eventually come dumbing down.
I can relate to much of this very well. I served, and the whole time, the whole experience just felt off, or wrong (and I admit, I rebelled a bit against the normal LDS missionary culture, and attitude.) Ultimately the mission experience is what caused me to leave the church. I attended for years after, but just couldn’t be on board with the central theme of missionary work, and the whole “every member a missionary” thing.
Thanks for sharing your story. I served a mission and actually had a very good experience, so I don’t know what it is like to go through your situation. However, I have had a related experience because I’ve been divorced. Sometimes the rhetoric at church can make you feel defective if you don’t have the ideal marriage. I am at a good place now so it doesn’t bother me, but I can understand how this sort of thing can make people feel excluded and demeaned.
Life is messier than it is sometimes presented at church, and I think we need acknowledge that in our interactions with our brothers and sisters.
Mike C: I’ll start practicing today. The Gospel Doctrine lessons is on “Marriage in the Covenant” using the story of Isaac and Rebekah. The whole lesson is about how temple marriages are the most important thing ever.
The lesson manual does say: “As you discuss the importance of eternal marriage, be sensitive to the feelings of class members who have not been married in the temple or whose parents have not been married in the temple.” It doesn’t offer any tips on how to do that, however. And one could argue that it is the shear emphasis on the topic that is the problem, not just how it is presented. It’s a problem if people in the church feel like outsiders because there is a specific narrative they haven’t been able to follow.
I’m going to go ahead and disagree with this article and with many of the comments, including those on temple marriage. Yes we need to be sensitive of others and definitely not be judgmental if they haven’t participated in mission/temple marriage, but are you all suggesting that we just not talk about missions and temple marriage in an effort to not offend? To me that would be preposterous. That would be the other extreme, and let’s not swing the pendulum to the other end. Placing emphasis on missions/temple marriage is the right thing to do. Should we not all aspire to that? And, if you didn’t serve a mission in your youth, you can still serve upon retirement with your spouse. Instead of asking, “where did you serve your mission?” simply ask “Did you serve a mission?” If the person did not, then no worries. Neither party should be offended or judgmental.
Every member of the church, both and male and female, should try to serve a mission. I don’t even need to get into all the benefits it provides those who serve and those who are served. I am proud of my mission service. I think back with great fondness on the people I served, the lessons I learned, the spiritual growth I experienced, and the maturity I developed. And the same thing goes with my temple marriage. My wife has been battling a stage 3 brain tumor and was initially given a life expectancy of 3-5 years. My temple marriage has given me tremendous comfort. Knowing that we are sealed for time and all eternity has been a huge blessing for me.
I would encourage all members to seek these things out, not shy away from them out of fear that we might offend someone who didn’t serve a mission.
The thesis of my article was not that missions are bad. Nor have I suggested they should not be encouraged.
One more comment, to me the solution is two fold. One- members shouldn’t be judgmental of those who didn’t serve a mission. Two- people who didn’t serve shouldn’t be offended when members ask them if they served. Simple as that.
It’s not a question of being judgmental, or of “don’t be offended.” It’s about compassion and understanding.
re: “people who didn’t serve shouldn’t be offended when members ask them if they served.:
There is a huge difference between asking someone politely if they served a mission and asking someone “Where did you serve your mission?” without knowing anything about their life. Like I said, it’s just about as rude as asking a middle-aged man or woman about their spouse and/or children, without knowing whether or not they have either.
I really appreciate this article, for the sake of educating those who are unaware that such awkward questions are unnecessary and even a little bit riculous. Asking people to be conscious of Christ-centered unjudgemental love and gospel-centered ettiquete is not the same as de-emphasizing temple marriage and missions.
There definitely is a class structure of sorts when it comes to RMs vs Non RMs, divorced vs still married and a plethora of other situations.
Sometime we tend to make sweeping generalizations about why someone does or doesnt serve or have kids or get divorced. In a way, without being dramatic, not serving a mission, reasons for divorce, and family planning should be treated like lgbt. If one doesnt want to come out with that info, they shouldnt have to. I dont go around asking people about their sexuality and i expect they will come out with that info when they are good and ready.
I admire you for putting your feelings out here. Nowadays, its almost harder and more noble to not serve a mission and endure the scrutiny. Much love your way my friend.
I serve as Ward Clerk to a Bishop who did not serve a mission. We grew up together. He decided to get married right out of high school. I love serving with him. He’s a great man.
I dislike the “Best Two Years” label. If you’ve been home 5 years and those are the best two years, what have you been doing lately?