Missions are not boring!

[Exiled]

2 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

Since we paid people to shop, cook, clean, and do our laundry for us, P-day was mostly about writing letters and then going to the central post office to mail them. Then we'd have a late lunch at a restaurant, and then head to zone meeting. Sometimes the whole zone would go out to eat together or we would make pancakes after zone meeting. 

How would you handle paying people if you had a native companion who may not have been able to afford it?  I think it's changed now with some sort of monthly stipend, but I had either Brazilian companions or poor american ones.  Also, I was in Brazil during hyper-inflation where prices were increasing sometimes one percent a month.  Even so, I would spend sometimes merely $80 in one month (parents loved it).  Members would feed us lunch and some members would wash our clothes but there still wasn't enough time to do much of anything.  To go into the center of Sao Paulo would be a whole day just traveling because traffic was so bad and the subway was just in the very center of the city. It was better when I was in a beach area and we had bikes.

[jkwilliams]

6 minutes ago, Exiled said:

How would you handle paying people if you had a native companion who may not have been able to afford it?  I think it's changed now with some sort of monthly stipend, but I had either Brazilian companions or poor american ones.  Also, I was in Brazil during hyper-inflation where prices were increasing sometimes one percent a month.  Even so, I would spend sometimes merely $80 in one month (parents loved it).  Members would feed us lunch and some members would wash our clothes but there still wasn't enough time to do much of anything.  To go into the center of Sao Paulo would be a whole day just traveling because traffic was so bad and the subway was just in the very center of the city. It was better when I was in a beach area and we had bikes.

My Bolivian companions got about $90 a month, so we pooled our resources. We basically had bread and cocoa two meals a day. We definitely didn’t eat out much. Later after the currency stabilization program came out, none of us could afford luxuries, so over the last 5 months of my mission we never went to restaurants.

[Kenngo1969]

Waylon,

I'm not sure, even given the thumbnail sketch of my mission that was published in The New Era in 1993, that our missions were that much different in some respects (though hardly comparable, I know, because I served a "cushy" stateside mission. )  https://www.lds.org/new-era/1993/02/we-did-it?lang=eng

I had conflict with several companions, although such conflict wasn't necessarily born out of the prospect that my heart was in the wrong place.  That having been said, I'm not so much interested in whether someone is judged according to my (perhaps erroneous) standard as I am that pertinent facts be considered which bear upon the difficulties I, and we, experienced.  

The intervening years have done much to put my mission experience in perspective. 

https://greatgourdini.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/gods-army-and-my-own-mission/

[Tacenda]

10 hours ago, JAHS said:

I served in Austria and a church member there said she was friends with a couple who were going through some hard times and thought we might be able to visit them and give them some hope so we agreed to visit them.
We got to the apartment building and climbed up the stairs and knocked on the door and the wife answered. We told her that her friend asked us to come by for a visit and she hesitated at first but then agreed to let us in.
As we talked to the couple we could tell that they were in a serious state of depression so we taught them something about the plan of salvation and the purpose of life and they seemed to appreciate the message.
It was winter time and we noticed that it was very cold in the apartment because someone had left the window open. After we left a few days later we talked to the member friend who told us the reason the window was open was because they were about to jump out the window and commit suicide just as we were knocking on the door. They were eventually taught by other elders and joined the church. 
 

Oh man, this is something. I regreted not fulfilling a mission but maybe I'll do a service mission, and after reading these stories it sounds pretty apealing to make a difference in people's lives. What an amazing thing to have done by thwarting their suicide and giving them hope. 💕

Edited August 28, 2018 by Tacenda

[Calm]

5 hours ago, Amulek said:

My mission president signed off on allowing me to serve as the drumline instructor for the local high-school in my first area.

The school obviously had some restrictions about overt proselytizing, but we were allowed to wear our name tags.

When I started the kids were, without exaggeration, the absolute worst sounding group of drummers I had ever heard in my life. And, trust me, I have heard some really, really bad percussion sections in my day.

The heartbreaking part though was that kids all knew how bad they were, and everyone else in the band did too.

Whenever they practiced you could just see the self-esteem draining out from their poor little high-school selves. 

The noble drummer inside me absolutely lost it. 

For those of you who don'w know, the drumline is (objectively) the coolest part of marching band (sorry brass, that's just how it is), and I wasn't about to sit by and let these kids feel like losers just because nobody ever bothered to show them how amazing they could be.

So, I poured all of my free time into writing warm-ups, practice drills, cadences, etc.

When my companion was playing basketball on P-Day, I was on the sideline re-arranging all of the music for the band's performance pieces - seriously, the kind of dreck that gets passed off as the percussion part in most songs is just...bad - abysmally, horribly, offensively bad.

Anyway, we started having drumline practice every day of the school week, Monday through Friday: an hour before school each day and an additional hour or so on Monday afternoons (since that was P-Day and we weren't required to count that as part of our official weekly allotment of "service" time). 

It was amazing to see how fast they improved.

After a week, it was like the light-bulbs were all starting to turn on. After two weeks they were really getting the hang of things. And after a month they were sounding legitimately good.

Which was a relief, because we had been keeping all of their 'cool new stuff' under wraps until I was satisfied that they were ready to actually perform it - flawlessly. 

When it came time for them to show off the goods, I got permission from President to attend the Friday night game and oversee their performance. 

They performed to perfection, just like they had practiced - laying down one sick beat after another. 

To paraphrase the great George Clinton, they tore the roof off the sucker!

The band instructor went flipping wild. 

The rest of the band went flipping wild.

Every single flipping person in the entire flipping stands got up on their feet, and they all went flipping wild.

The drumline, however, was chill.

You know, because laying down funky beats is just what they do.

Every. Dang. Day. 

Still, it was pretty tough for a few of them to keep from smiling a little bit at least, and nobody could have missed how brightly they were all glowing with pride.

When I went to church the next Sunday, one of the members of the ward who taught at the High School (who arranged for me to work with the kids originally) said that he had been sitting with the administrators and that they had all completely lost their...you know what...when they heard the drumline perform. They thought it was a college band or something; none of them could believe it was their own students.

When they learned that the only change was that one Mormon missionary from BYU had helped out with the drumline that Fall, they asked if the Mormons had anyone else they could send to take my place whenever I left.

Had I done nothing more than help those kids do better with their music and feel better about themselves, that would have been more than rewarding enough. 

As it happened though, as a consequence of just having worked together, several of the kids ended up investigating the church, and at least one of them was ultimately baptized.

In my patriarchal blessing, the Lord said that I would serve a mission and that I would serve him in "unexpected, unanticipated ways." 

I consider that prophecy fulfilled. 

 

That was a really sweet read, Amulek.

[Tacenda]

Reading through all of your experiences I'm sad that a few of my children didn't serve. I've always felt this way about LDS missions or service missions that are not religious related. I think it'd be great for every young adult to do this before they settle down in life. 

[bsjkki]

6 hours ago, Amulek said:

My mission president signed off on allowing me to serve as the drumline instructor for the local high-school in my first area.

The school obviously had some restrictions about overt proselytizing, but we were allowed to wear our name tags.

When I started the kids were, without exaggeration, the absolute worst sounding group of drummers I had ever heard in my life. And, trust me, I have heard some really, really bad percussion sections in my day.

The heartbreaking part though was that kids all knew how bad they were, and everyone else in the band did too.

Whenever they practiced you could just see the self-esteem draining out from their poor little high-school selves. 

The noble drummer inside me absolutely lost it. 

For those of you who don'w know, the drumline is (objectively) the coolest part of marching band (sorry brass, that's just how it is), and I wasn't about to sit by and let these kids feel like losers just because nobody ever bothered to show them how amazing they could be.

So, I poured all of my free time into writing warm-ups, practice drills, cadences, etc.

When my companion was playing basketball on P-Day, I was on the sideline re-arranging all of the music for the band's performance pieces - seriously, the kind of dreck that gets passed off as the percussion part in most songs is just...bad - abysmally, horribly, offensively bad.

Anyway, we started having drumline practice every day of the school week, Monday through Friday: an hour before school each day and an additional hour or so on Monday afternoons (since that was P-Day and we weren't required to count that as part of our official weekly allotment of "service" time). 

It was amazing to see how fast they improved.

After a week, it was like the light-bulbs were all starting to turn on. After two weeks they were really getting the hang of things. And after a month they were sounding legitimately good.

Which was a relief, because we had been keeping all of their 'cool new stuff' under wraps until I was satisfied that they were ready to actually perform it - flawlessly. 

When it came time for them to show off the goods, I got permission from President to attend the Friday night game and oversee their performance. 

They performed to perfection, just like they had practiced - laying down one sick beat after another. 

To paraphrase the great George Clinton, they tore the roof off the sucker!

The band instructor went flipping wild. 

The rest of the band went flipping wild.

Every single flipping person in the entire flipping stands got up on their feet, and they all went flipping wild.

The drumline, however, was chill.

You know, because laying down funky beats is just what they do.

Every. Dang. Day. 

Still, it was pretty tough for a few of them to keep from smiling a little bit at least, and nobody could have missed how brightly they were all glowing with pride.

When I went to church the next Sunday, one of the members of the ward who taught at the High School (who arranged for me to work with the kids originally) said that he had been sitting with the administrators and that they had all completely lost their...you know what...when they heard the drumline perform. They thought it was a college band or something; none of them could believe it was their own students.

When they learned that the only change was that one Mormon missionary from BYU had helped out with the drumline that Fall, they asked if the Mormons had anyone else they could send to take my place whenever I left.

Had I done nothing more than help those kids do better with their music and feel better about themselves, that would have been more than rewarding enough. 

As it happened though, as a consequence of just having worked together, several of the kids ended up investigating the church, and at least one of them was ultimately baptized.

In my patriarchal blessing, the Lord said that I would serve a mission and that I would serve him in "unexpected, unanticipated ways." 

I consider that prophecy fulfilled. 

 

This is a super cool story! 

Edited August 28, 2018 by bsjkki

[Tacenda]

5 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

This is super cool story!

I know huh? Kind of reminds me of movies such as "Mr. Holland's Opus" and "School of Rock"!

[bsjkki]

4 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I know huh? Kind of reminds me of movies such as "Mr. Holland's Opus" and "School of Rock"!

This would make a really cool movie. Someone should do it.

[Okrahomer]

5 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

My Bolivian companions got about $90 a month, so we pooled our resources. We basically had bread and cocoa two meals a day. We definitely didn’t eat out much. Later after the currency stabilization program came out, none of us could afford luxuries, so over the last 5 months of my mission we never went to restaurants.

Restaurants....???!!!  Germany was simply too expensive for us to afford restaurants.  The closest I ever got was McDonald’s after one zone conference.  A companion and i also splurged once and ate at a Schnellimbiss (German-style fast food) once.  I did make it a point to purchase currywurst and frites each time we’d wander anywhere near the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market.).

But speaking of missions and food, I was not capable of boiling water let alone preparing any sort of nutritious meal when I first arrived.  My first attempt to cook anything was “dessert” for our district of 8 missionaries.  We had purchased strawberries and heavy cream, and my companion (the DL) asked me to take care of it.  I did pretty well getting the strawberries ready, but it all ended in complete disaster when I confused the little packets of baking soda with the little packets of “vanilla sugar.”  Baking soda does not taste very good in whipped cream—even on strawberries.

[jkwilliams]

8 hours ago, Okrahomer said:

Restaurants....???!!!  Germany was simply too expensive for us to afford restaurants.  The closest I ever got was McDonald’s after one zone conference.  A companion and i also splurged once and ate at a Schnellimbiss (German-style fast food) once.  I did make it a point to purchase currywurst and frites each time we’d wander anywhere near the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market.).

But speaking of missions and food, I was not capable of boiling water let alone preparing any sort of nutritious meal when I first arrived.  My first attempt to cook anything was “dessert” for our district of 8 missionaries.  We had purchased strawberries and heavy cream, and my companion (the DL) asked me to take care of it.  I did pretty well getting the strawberries ready, but it all ended in complete disaster when I confused the little packets of baking soda with the little packets of “vanilla sugar.”  Baking soda does not taste very good in whipped cream—even on strawberries.

Oh, that's funny and sad at the same time. Once my sister-in-law made a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies using an unlabeled dry-pack can that she thought contained sugar. It was salt. 

It really depended on the exchange rate. At the time, Bolivia was going through a period of hyperinflation, with inflation reaching 24,000% (not a misprint) by the spring of 1985. When I arrived in Bolivia in March 1984, you could get two salteñas  and a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice for less than a dollar. A few months later, the exchange rate was such that you could get a chateaubriand steak, salad, fries, and a liter of Coke for about 75 cents. Of course, that didn't last long. When I was in the mission office, we would get a hamburger or ice cream on P-day, but nothing more extravagant. Just before my last transfer, a new government was elected, and they put in effect a plan to stabilize the peso and control prices. They flooded the market with the central bank's dollar reserves, making our dollars suddenly worth a lot less. For example, a single egg now cost 50 cents US. Whereas you could previously transfer by airplane for around $8, my last transfer (where planes were the only option) cost me around $400. We got lucky in that the sister who cooked for us in my last area was the wife of a fisherman, so we pretty much ate fish every day, but we couldn't afford to eat out. We did splurge on turkey sandwiches and lemonade for Thanksgiving. 

But as I said, restaurants in Bolivia are more hazardous to your health than if you cook for yourself. I got salmonella from one sip of a bad milkshake. Usually we had someone cook 1 or 2 meals a day for us, depending on how much we could afford. When I had Bolivian companions, we had to be very frugal, as they got roughly $90 a month, but in pesos, so often their monthly stipend was wiped out by a currency devaluation. We learned to exchange our money weekly, as you could usually get through a week even if you had a backpack full of worthless pesos. You literally had to carry your money in your backpack, as the exchange rate reached $2,500,000 to the dollar, and the largest bill available was $1,000 pesos. 

Except when I was in the mission office, we cooked at least 1 meal a day. In my first area, when the electricity was working, we would use our space heater to toast some bread and heat a kettle of water for cocoa mixed with powdered milk. I learned to make a few Bolivian dishes (potatoes with ocopa sauce  is a favorite with my kids), but the main reason for having someone cook for us was the difficulty in obtaining food. Some items, such as bread and eggs, were rationed, and for the rest, you had to navigate the open-air markets, which took a lot of time. Plus we never had access to a refrigerator, and I was only in a place with a stove/oven for 2 weeks once. We also felt like we were helping the members because we were adding income to their families and enabling them to buy more and better food for themselves. 

[Amulek]

9 hours ago, Calm said:

That was a really sweet read, Amulek.

It was a really sweet experience - one that I will always be grateful to the Lord for allowing me to be a part of.

I know the story reads a bit like something I did, but I hope that's only because I'm telling it from my perspective.

I genuinely believe it was the Lord's hand at work.   

 

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, Amulek said:

It was a really sweet experience - one that I will always be grateful to the Lord for allowing me to be a part of.

I know the story reads a bit like something I did, but I hope that's only because I'm telling it from my perspective.

I genuinely believe it was the Lord's hand at work.   

That is indeed an amazing story. My first area was a government housing project on the altiplano near the airport runway. Because it was flat and there were no other towns nearby, it was laid out in a 1-mile or so square, with a road bisecting the square. We had tracted out one half of the town, so we decided we would start on the other half one morning, but instead for some reason we went back to the side we'd already done. We discovered a two-block section of one street that we hadn't covered. The first block was a string of rejections, as was the first half of the second block. Two houses from the end of the block, we we were invited in by a man in his 40s, who introduced us to his wife and young daughter. We taught them the discussions, and every time we asked if they had questions, they would say, "No, elders. We know what you are teaching us is the truth." Finally, after several discussions, I asked the husband why he would always accept what we said without question. He told us that his wife had been in an accident and had suffered what we would now call a traumatic brain injury. She could function mentally but had some physical problems as a result. She could no longer work, so their income was half what it had been, and they were struggling. The husband and daughter spent much of their time caring for the wife, and he said they had finally reached a point of desperation. They had knelt down as a family in prayer and had asked God to send them some help. They were still on their knees when we knocked on their door. 

[jkwilliams]

10 hours ago, Calm said:

That was a really sweet read, Amulek.

Little-known fact: Sometime in the 1970s, the church's welfare program in Bolivia began promoting soy milk as a cheap source of protein for poor families. The proselyting missionaries were engaged to give out samples of soy beans and teach people how to make soy milk out of it. A couple of enterprising elders wrote a song about soy milk, which they recorded and sent to the radio stations to help spread the word. The "leche de soya" song became the most popular song in the country. 

[champatsch]

2 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

Oh, that's funny and sad at the same time. Once my sister-in-law made a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies using an unlabeled dry-pack can that she thought contained sugar. It was salt. 

It really depended on the exchange rate. At the time, Bolivia was going through a period of hyperinflation, with inflation reaching 24,000% (not a misprint) by the spring of 1985. When I arrived in Bolivia in March 1984, you could get two salteñas  and a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice for less than a dollar. A few months later, the exchange rate was such that you could get a chateaubriand steak, salad, fries, and a liter of Coke for about 75 cents. Of course, that didn't last long. When I was in the mission office, we would get a hamburger or ice cream on P-day, but nothing more extravagant. Just before my last transfer, a new government was elected, and they put in effect a plan to stabilize the peso and control prices. They flooded the market with the central bank's dollar reserves, making our dollars suddenly worth a lot less. For example, a single egg now cost 50 cents US. Whereas you could previously transfer by airplane for around $8, my last transfer (where planes were the only option) cost me around $400. We got lucky in that the sister who cooked for us in my last area was the wife of a fisherman, so we pretty much ate fish every day, but we couldn't afford to eat out. We did splurge on turkey sandwiches and lemonade for Thanksgiving. 

But as I said, restaurants in Bolivia are more hazardous to your health than if you cook for yourself. I got salmonella from one sip of a bad milkshake. Usually we had someone cook 1 or 2 meals a day for us, depending on how much we could afford. When I had Bolivian companions, we had to be very frugal, as they got roughly $90 a month, but in pesos, so often their monthly stipend was wiped out by a currency devaluation. We learned to exchange our money weekly, as you could usually get through a week even if you had a backpack full of worthless pesos. You literally had to carry your money in your backpack, as the exchange rate reached $2,500,000 to the dollar, and the largest bill available was $1,000 pesos. 

Except when I was in the mission office, we cooked at least 1 meal a day. In my first area, when the electricity was working, we would use our space heater to toast some bread and heat a kettle of water for cocoa mixed with powdered milk. I learned to make a few Bolivian dishes (potatoes with ocopa sauce  is a favorite with my kids), but the main reason for having someone cook for us was the difficulty in obtaining food. Some items, such as bread and eggs, were rationed, and for the rest, you had to navigate the open-air markets, which took a lot of time. Plus we never had access to a refrigerator, and I was only in a place with a stove/oven for 2 weeks once. We also felt like we were helping the members because we were adding income to their families and enabling them to buy more and better food for themselves. 

Yes, I remember a $7 plane flight from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz. I wasn't there during hyperinflation, but the exchange rate was nearly always favorable. One of my companions made it through a month on $50, and his mother told him to stay down there as long as he wanted. It didn't matter that 3-week mail strikes might limit communication. I also remember getting a parasite, and being hungry an hour after eating. A few harsh pills seemed to clear it up.

I was there during the Falklands Conflict, and many large rocks were thrown our way by demonstrators on one occasion, since my companion was 6'4" and blonde, and we stuck out like sore thumbs. That was the fastest I've run in my life.

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, champatsch said:

Yes, I remember a $7 plane flight from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz. I wasn't there during hyperinflation, but the exchange rate was nearly always favorable. One of my companions made it through a month on $50, and his mother told him to stay down there as long as he wanted. It didn't matter that 3-week mail strikes might limit communication. I also remember getting a parasite, and being hungry an hour after eating. A few harsh pills seemed to clear it up.

I was there during the Falklands Conflict, and many large rocks were thrown our way by demonstrators on one occasion, since my companion was 6'4" and blonde, and we stuck out like sore thumbs. That was the fastest I've run in my life.

So, you were likely there during the transition from the narco-gobiernos to democracy. I've heard stories of how dangerous that period was. Adding the Falklands probably didn't help. I had 4 different kinds of parasites, which was not much fun. The only time I ever felt in real danger was when a mob of protesters surrounded our car and tried to bash in the windows and overturn it. I just laid on the horn, let out the clutch, and inched my way out.

[Gray]

I think for a lot of missionaries, the mission is mostly long stretches of boredom, with shorter periods of intensely interesting stuff. Knocking doors all day and getting rejected isn't all that interesting. But as always, YMMV and YMMV (your mileage may vary and your mission may vary)

[Okrahomer]

2 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

Oh, that's funny and sad at the same time. Once my sister-in-law made a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies using an unlabeled dry-pack can that she thought contained sugar. It was salt. 

 

I dished it up and served it to everyone, so I was really embarrassed when the other missionaries started "reacting."  In the end though, there was a great deal of laughter--i.e., once we figured out what I had done.  Rest assured, I never made that mistake again!

2 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

It really depended on the exchange rate. At the time, Bolivia was going through a period of hyperinflation, with inflation reaching 24,000% (not a misprint) by the spring of 1985.

I think Germany went through something similar following WWI.  It's difficult to imagine surviving such an environment.

[jkwilliams]

3 minutes ago, Okrahomer said:

I dished it up and served it to everyone, so I was really embarrassed when the other missionaries started "reacting."  In the end though, there was a great deal of laughter--i.e., once we figured out what I had done.  Rest assured, I never made that mistake again!

I think Germany went through something similar following WWI.  It's difficult to imagine surviving such an environment.

Imagine carrying "bricks" of money around to pay for bus fare. Once my companion and I had to get $b92,000,000 pesos from the bank, and the largest bills they had were $b50. We filled both backpacks and a huge flour sack full of cash, and they let us back the Land Cruiser up to the bank door so we could heave it in the back. 

[Kenngo1969]

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

... I was there [ in Bolivia] during the Falklands Conflict, and many large rocks were thrown our way by demonstrators on one occasion, since my companion was 6'4" and blonde, and we stuck out like sore thumbs. That was the fastest I've run in my life.

I was chased halfway down the block by a seriously upset Rottweiler once.  Watching me move is funny; watching me try to move fast is hilarious!   

[Kenngo1969]

16 hours ago, Okrahomer said:

Restaurants....???!!!  Germany was simply too expensive for us to afford restaurants.  The closest I ever got was McDonald’s after one zone conference.  A companion and i also splurged once and ate at a Schnellimbiss (German-style fast food) once. ...

Sie sprechen Deutsch?  Ich kann nicht viel Deutsch, aber eine bisschen, Ja.

[Okrahomer]

16 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Sie sprechen Deutsch?  Ich kann nicht viel Deutsch, aber eine bisschen, Ja.

Ja!  Ich spreche gerne Deutsch!  Bloss, kommt's jetzt nicht so fliessend her.

[lostindc]

On 8/27/2018 at 6:35 AM, jkwilliams said:

A coworker of mine, who was baptized in the church but has never been active, is currently reading the book I wrote about my mission. Just about every morning he comes over and says something like, "I just read about [an experience I had]. Did that really happen?" 

This morning he came by asking about a sister missionary who got pregnant, and when I confirmed it happened, he said, "You always think of missions as being boring, like really regimented, but wow, it is all so interesting."

I thought about this and replied that one of the first things I learned on my mission is that, despite the rules and reporting, you and your companion were pretty much on your own. You could have done just about anything and then just made up your reports (I knew people who did just that). But I also realize that what makes a mission interesting is both the stuff you expect to happen (or at least hope it will) as well as the unexpected.

So, I have some questions:

What made your mission "interesting"? What experiences that you expected made it interesting, and what happened that you hadn't expected that made it interesting?

For me, it's a lot of the little stuff, the things I take for granted but that cause other people to do a double-take: the weekly shower at my wife's house, using money as toilet paper, hanging by a toe on the outside of a packed bus. But it's the big stuff, too: saving an infant who was near death because we happened to have the recipe for a rehydration drink, meeting a family who had literally just been praying for God to send them messengers when we knocked on their door. 

 

I am not BS'ing, your book is by far the best book I've read on anything mission/missionary related.  It's in my tops for any Church related book.  I placed your book on my daughter's shelf a bit ago, because she's old enough to handle the tougher content in your book and she displayed interest in wondering what it's like to serve an LDS mission.  

[nuclearfuels]

On ‎8‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 9:35 AM, jkwilliams said:

A coworker of mine, who was baptized in the church but has never been active, is currently reading the book I wrote about my mission. Just about every morning he comes over and says something like, "I just read about [an experience I had]. Did that really happen?" 

This morning he came by asking about a sister missionary who got pregnant, and when I confirmed it happened, he said, "You always think of missions as being boring, like really regimented, but wow, it is all so interesting."

I thought about this and replied that one of the first things I learned on my mission is that, despite the rules and reporting, you and your companion were pretty much on your own. You could have done just about anything and then just made up your reports (I knew people who did just that). But I also realize that what makes a mission interesting is both the stuff you expect to happen (or at least hope it will) as well as the unexpected.

So, I have some questions:

What made your mission "interesting"? What experiences that you expected made it interesting, and what happened that you hadn't expected that made it interesting?

For me, it's a lot of the little stuff, the things I take for granted but that cause other people to do a double-take: the weekly shower at my wife's house, using money as toilet paper, hanging by a toe on the outside of a packed bus. But it's the big stuff, too: saving an infant who was near death because we happened to have the recipe for a rehydration drink, meeting a family who had literally just been praying for God to send them messengers when we knocked on their door.  

Meeting a family who had literally just been praying for God to send them messengers when we knocked on their door.  - this one happened to me many times, often after the home recently experienced a death in the family.

Helping families accept the restored gospel

Learning a foreign language and culture

Eating gator tail, amongst other semi-identifiable items

Living life with one single focus provided a lot of clarity to my otherwise distracted and addled mind

Being away from some toxic influences in UT (some people, the air, jobs, etc.) - this almost felt like I was flying

Living more independently

Having your weaknesses presented to you very clearly by companions

 

The weird:

Hearing about missionaries who came out with me being sent home before reaching 6-months

Hearing about a group of missionaries that formed their own secret society in the mission and were sent home before I got there 

[Stargazer]

On 8/27/2018 at 3:35 PM, CV75 said:

You'll have to buy my book to find out!

His sig is the advert (like mine). Lol

But seriously, his book is well worth reading.