Confessions of a Mormon Missionary, Part 3: The Mission

Newly finished with her training, she heads out on an 18-month mission.

Once I arrived on my mission, I was on a completely different schedule. You had to be up at 6:00 AM, and, of course, with some companions, they insisted on being up at 5:30! You'd have an hour of personal study, an hour of companion study. You had to be out the door, dressed, at 9:00 AM, on the streets proselytizing, teaching, working, whatever. And you would have one hour for lunch. Depending on the companion, you could come home, stay an hour. Otherwise, depending on the companion, you packed a lunch and you included your driving time to the park! And then you were right back at it. It was really rigid. The days were long, but at the same time, they went by really fast. You were always busy. I don't think I've ever worked as hard. You were grateful for bedtime. I didn't have insomnia on my mission at all.

The rules and the structure made it really easy to focus. Sometimes I would just get worn out and overwhelmed by it all, but it was impossible to lose focus. As a missionary, you were expected to baptize new members into the Church every month. There were minimum numbers of discussions that you were to teach, and so many hours spent tracting and so many hours spent studying, alone and with your companion. There were a certain number of scriptures to memorize. There was quota after quota. That was a struggle, because I just couldn't get into that. Every once in a while, I would think, "I just can't do this anymore," but only if I was feeling really down and depressed. You're in such a different state of mind. All you do is eat, sleep, drink, preach religion, and it's such a change of lifestyle.

Living the missionary lifestyle was a huge adjustment for me. I'm a little bit stubborn, and even though I was technically a "good girl," I still was a little bit of a nonconformist and liked to do things my own way and very much did not like being told what to do. It just so happened that my mission president was basically the strictest, most controlling man. He ran his mission field like a drill sergeant would, like an army. There were very rigid expectations and structures. There are standard mission rules world-wide, but in addition to that, mission presidents are able to add anything else that they feel is necessary. And not to be able to listen to music, classical music, that was my life...not to be able to listen to music was very hard. I'm very much a "spirit of the law" type of person, where the president was very much the "letter of the law." We clashed a lot.

There was one instance where my mother's boss was in Washington, DC, visiting with his daughter, and he wanted to come and visit me at the Visitors' Center. I had permission for that, that was no problem. Well, it worked out that he wasn't able to make it up there. He got in a time crunch and he called me and asked if I could come into DC with my companion and meet him, and he'd take us out to dinner. I couldn't go without permission, but the president was in meetings all day when I called, and so his assistant answered. Although I did have permission to see my mom's boss, I didn't have permission to go into DC, and if you went outside of your assigned area at all, which sometimes was quite small, you had to get permission from whomever above you. So I told the assistant that I had permission to see this guy and then I told him where I was going, as thought I had already been given permission. My companion and I drove to the metro, hopped into town, met him in Union Square, and had a wonderful time and a wonderful visit.

I was so afraid of getting into trouble, even though I had told the assistant where we were going. I didn't know exactly what the communication was, or how it was going to get back to the president. I was feeling so guilty that I basically blew it myself. The same assistant called me for another reason, and I assumed it was to chew me out because he had found out. He quickly realized something was up, and it just made me feel horrible. The president called me the next day and called me a liar and said, "I don't even know why you're out on a mission," just completely scolded me. I was devastated, absolutely heartbroken. He said, "Well, I hope you can go out and baptize some people!" Oh, it was so bad. That took weeks, maybe even months to get over, because I worked hard and really, for the most part, did what I was supposed to and enjoyed it very much. It's hard enough being in that environment and having to give up everything and having to be so perfect and to accomplish so much, and yet have an incident like that tear you down. We eventually made up and I ended up having a good relationship with the president, but it was not without struggles the whole way through. It was not easy.

THere were so many hundreds and hundreds of rules that it was just impossible to follow them all. So that was where being a "spirit of the law" kind of person really helped me. I remember the first few months of my mission, around Christmastime, my parents sent me and Andy Williams Christmas tape, which was my absolute favorite. We were forbidden to listen to music except on our preparation day. It was not my preparation day and I was just dying to listen to it. At that time my companion and I were living with a really sweet lady and I said something like, "Well, if you were to put this on and to turn it on, and if we were in the room, there's nothing I could really do about it!" So she put in the tape and I was just so happy.

Another time I had a companion that I just adored, and we were being transferred from one another and we were both really upset about it. We were supposed to be in our apartment and in bed by 9:30, but we just couldn't go to sleep. We were so upset and it was just a beautiful warm spring night, and so we just went out on a midnight walk. We just went for a walk in the middle of the night. We had a wonderful time.

You are with your companion, this same person, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and oh, that was an experience. I'd never lived away from home. I'd never had college roommates or anything, and I was not quite prepared for that. Sometimes it was utter hell. I had three companions, all in the first half of my mission, that were horribly self-righteous and mean, critical and demeaning. They were the "letter of the law" type. My first companion wasn't so much that type, but she was just really tryping hard to be strict and obedient and set a good example because she was training me, and I was her last companion before she went home. The second one was like a drill sergeant, just a bitch. We clashed from the beginning and that was a horrible month. She would call the president and complain about me, and twice she dragged me up to his office. Looking back, I want to forget a lot of it. It was really hard. I prayed for transfers.

On companion I had was completely anorexic, and she would say how she loved being thin. This was at a point on my mission when I was at my heaviest, and she monitored everything I ate. She had all these mind tricks and mind games, and for someone like me, who doesn't think quickly on her feet, and is more emotional than rational, that was a really, really difficult time. I just really felt abandoned and forsaken by the Lord during that time. I felt like, "How can God even really be there if this is going on?" I just felt really disconnected from it. In a way, I was doubting, because I felt that the Lord wasn't helping me as much as He should.

After that time, I remember reading the Gospel Essentials Manual, which is what new members of the Church use in their Sunday school lessons. And I remember reading through the first lesson, and it was nothing more than that God lives and He loves us and He created this beautiful world. We're all brothers and sisters. And I just had this incredible sweet feeling of peace that He does, in fact, exist. And everything was OK>

I had other sources of help and support, too. After the incident with my mission president, when he called me a liar, he made me go to counseling, and it turned out great. And working in the Visitors' Center was helpful, too, because, if you didn't like your companion, you still could have affiliation with other friends, people who also worked in the Visitors' Center. That helped a lot, it was a break. It was hardest when you were out in the field 50 miles away from anyone. But there were always people that I felt drawn to or close to in the ward that were helpful and were nice. There were always people to connect with.

I really felt much closer to God as a result of my mission. It also ended up being an opportunity to really live the gospel and the Mormon lifestyle, which, it sounds silly, I didn't really think about when I decided to go on a mission. That wasn't my intent for going. My intent was that this was an opportunity to serve the Lord and to help people. I didn't go thinking, "This is really going to give me an incredible spiritual foundation," though that's what happened. It's weird, because when you grow up in a Mormon society, there's so much that you don't learn, that you take for granted. And much of what you're missing is really basic, the essence of the gospel. It really did give me a strong spiritual base, and I also felt much more confident in myself after I returned home to Salt Lake. And my mission is certainly what planted the seed for me to want to come back and settle on the East Coast.