Eyes Opened by my Mission

10 years ago today I left to become a full time mis­sion­ary for the LDS church. In doing so I left behind home, fam­i­ly and my teenage sweet­heart Tama­ra for a 2 year peri­od in which I was allowed to com­mu­ni­cate with them once a week by post and twice a year by tele­phone. No Skype. No visits.

I did it out of a con­vic­tion that I had an ulti­mate truth to share with oth­ers, and a strong sense of duty. I had spent most of my youth prepar­ing for a mis­sion, in seri­ous dai­ly scrip­ture study and my best adher­ence to extreme moral stan­dards. I had already had the expe­ri­ence of teach­ing and bap­tiz­ing my best friend a cou­ple of years ear­li­er, who by no small coin­ci­dence hap­pened to embark on his mis­sion on the same date, thus we end­ed up spend­ing a cou­ple of weeks in train­ing together.

Going out as a 19yr old, I expect­ed to be part of a prophet­ic move­ment, hav­ing been promised that if I had faith and was obe­di­ent, I could take the Mor­mon mes­sage to many peo­ple and help them convert.

My first 6 weeks of ser­vice were a cru­cible. Every day I awoke home­sick and depressed, des­per­ate­ly want­i­ng to return to the arms of my fiancée. Sev­er­al times, I not­ed dates in my agen­da for the near future that I expect­ed and hoped to be fly­ing home. The chim­ney stacks and smog of the north-east­ern town that I was in, wors­ened my prospects. How­ev­er, I worked through it and began to find an incred­i­ble inner strength. I believed this to be God’s bless­ing and I dis­tinct­ly remem­ber the pure joy of free­wheel­ing down the hill on my bike each evening to those Sep­tem­ber sun­sets, feel­ing full of spir­it and sat­is­fac­tion that I had achieved some­thing good.

This was a for­ma­tive time that I remain appre­cia­tive of to this day. It taught me beyond any­thing pre­vi­ous­ly that I could do some­thing hard, even seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble. It also made me into a hard-core, by-the-book mis­sion­ary for the major­i­ty of the rest of my mission.

I had some mea­sur­able suc­cess rel­a­tive to where I was sta­tioned. Some bap­tisms, re-acti­va­tions and a lot of time in lead­er­ship roles. I felt like I was mak­ing a dif­fer­ence and that my sac­ri­fice of home life was being reward­ed for the most part. I nev­er had a moment with­out home/lovesickness.

So, what did I learn from it all? Actu­al­ly, some pret­ty unex­pect­ed things (for me): Con­trary to my belief (I called it “knowl­edge”) that the church I rep­re­sent­ed was the most true reli­gion on earth with a water­tight the­ol­o­gy and an exclu­sive lev­el of access to the “Holy Ghost” (a con­cept shared by most ortho­dox Mor­mons, espe­cial­ly at that time), I found that I was encoun­ter­ing peo­ple of all kinds of reli­gions and back­grounds who obvi­ous­ly felt equal­ly guid­ed to and con­vinced of their own par­tic­u­lar faith, by God.

It began to become clear to me that my reli­gious supe­ri­or­i­ty was unfound­ed, and I had no grounds to claim that my book of scrip­ture or the­o­log­i­cal view­point was some­how more author­i­ta­tive than oth­ers. This wor­ried me a lot in the final stages of my mis­sion and I resolved to look into it deep­er when I even­tu­al­ly got home.

After return­ing on August 3^rd 2007, I began thor­ough research into sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy and also revis­it­ed the his­to­ry of Mor­monism. After blood, sweat and tears, I even­tu­al­ly came to accept a far less restric­tive view of real­i­ty based in rationalism/agnosticism.

What has sur­prised me most on the road I have trav­eled since, is that I can feel and expe­ri­ence spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in greater mea­sure out­side the church than even when I was a com­mit­ted mis­sion­ary (a claim that is gen­er­al­ly denied to be pos­si­ble with­in Mor­mon ortho­doxy, and would be deemed a lie or mis­con­cep­tion at the least). I had won­drous expe­ri­ences then and before­hand, faith affirm­ing and vision­ary - and yet these have been tran­scend­ed by my expe­ri­ences since leav­ing Mor­monism, despite the fact that I emphat­i­cal­ly reject the con­cept of a god.

My con­clu­sion, and mes­sage to any read­ing this who might now be con­tem­plat­ing mis­sion­ary ser­vice in the LDS church: You may dis­cov­er the world isn’t as black and white as you pos­si­bly have under­stood from lis­ten­ing to and study­ing the words of church lead­er­ship up to this point. You could dis­cov­er some rather unex­pect­ed things on your journey.

There is much to be enjoyed and appre­ci­at­ed dur­ing the, let’s face it, rather unique expe­ri­ence of an LDS mis­sion, but don’t think for a moment that it’s part of a for­mu­la with a set out­come. If you go, make sure you real­ly study before­hand. Those you talk to will have Google at their fin­ger­tips so be ful­ly aware of the facts of church his­to­ry, have a good under­stand­ing of sci­ence and get to know a bit about oth­er faiths and cul­tures before­hand. I had done a lot of this before my mis­sion but was still tak­en aback when real­i­ty pre­sent­ed itself.

If you think you have a true mes­sage to share that will bring joy to peo​ple’s lives, by all means go! But do it with open eyes and be street savvy. Check your facts and you’ll avoid com­ing across as igno­rant or naïve. Don’t sup­pose your mes­sage gives you supe­ri­or­i­ty over peo­ple that you inter­act with.

Above all, despite what­ev­er the mis­sion num­ber ori­ent­ed goals are, don’t let the pur­suit of sta­tis­tics rob you and those around you of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to give no-strings-attached char­i­ta­ble ser­vice. The biggest regret of my mis­sion is that I was blind­ed to real char­i­ty by a rig­or­ous pro­gram of tar­gets and goals, and always had the truth-push­ing agen­da in the back of my mind dur­ing any per­son­al encounter that I had.

Here’s to anoth­er decade of (per­son­al) discovery.

“If we have the truth, it can­not be harmed by inves­ti­ga­tion.” – J. Reuben Clark (Apos­tle)

“Whoso­ev­er shall com­pel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.” — Matt 5​:41