The other mission

I’ve written recently about how happy we are that one of our daughters has chosen to serve a full time mission. It is exciting news and it’s an exciting time as we (and by we I mean my lovely wife) help to get her ready to leave in a couple of weeks.

At the same time I’ve reflected on another daughter who chose not to serve a full-time mission. Her decision was not taken lightly. She had many friends who served and she worked at the MTC in a support function, so she had plenty of thoughts about missions and missionaries at that time. But as she prayerfully considered whether to serve, she felt it wasn’t the right thing for her to do.

Of course there is nothing wrong with her thinking, either. Instead she finished her degree at BYU, and during those last years there served in a Relief Society presidency in her ward. After graduation she began working for a magazine in Northeastern Pennsylvania. She attends a very small ward of the church (what would probably be a branch if it were a new unit), and presently she serves as the Young Women’s president.

Because of who she is, my daughter throws herself completely into her service. She is working hard to shepherd the few young women in her charge, to learn how to be an auxiliary president (actually, she’s really good at it), to live by example as she works to complete the Young Women Personal Progress program (again; she did it when she was a young woman, too), to support her bishop and other members of the ward council, to attend the temple whenever she can (whether as a leader on a youth trip, or for her own temple service), all on top of doing her best at her job and trying to live a gospel-centered life.

While she did not serve a full-time mission, there is no doubt she is serving as hard now as she would be if she had. Having lived in these small units before, I know the value of having young energetic people move in to liven things up, bring new perspective, and just maybe reach one or two people who otherwise wouldn’t have been reached. As her parents, we know (because she tells us) how hard she works in her calling, and how much physical, spiritual and emotional energy she invests in the young women she serves. And we are pleased that she is so willing to serve; surely it would be easier to sit back and enjoy her chosen forms of recreation rather than working so hard. We are grateful that she recognizes that blessings don’t necessarily flow from the easy path, but rather from the path of service.

I’m reminded of my parents who never served a mission. They were in their 30’s when our family joined the church. By the time they were old enough to serve a senior mission together, they were serving so much in their stake that perhaps going on a mission would have provided a rest! In one stake, Dad served on the high council and was responsible for all the family history centers in the stake, and Mom was the director of one of those centers. When they retired again, Dad quickly because branch president in his rural unit of the church (and for a while he served simultaneously as branch president and branch mission leader). Mom served in a variety of callings during those years, too. Coincidentally I served with a brother several years later who was a bishop in my parents’ stake at the time Dad was branch president; he thought my parents were a senior missionary couple! Although they never served a full time mission, their service was as valuable as any senior couple’s would have been.

Elder Uchtdorf taught us several years ago to lift where we stand. Yes, some will be called to distant shores to preach and lift and serve. And others will serve quietly at home. My lovely wife and I are of an age where we’ve begun to look forward to a senior mission or two or three. We dream of serving in a temple or in family history or in some exotic location. Whether and how we serve will certainly be influenced by our own preparations, financially, physically and spiritually. But it may also be influenced by local needs wherever we live at the time.

The Call

As we expected, that large white envelope turned up in our mailbox last Friday. My daughter received her mission call. She was not home when it arrived; our high-school-aged son called her with the news it had arrived. It lay unopened for a number of hours until she finally got home from work. She dialed up her sister who lives in Pennsylvania and then we all sat around the family room together as she opened it.

She read it out loud.

First surprise: a domestic city two states away. Not going to some far-off exotic location. In fact, she and her mother and sister are going to the same city for the weekend this week (a trip planned weeks ago).

Second surprise: she reports to the MTC in about five weeks. Not much time to get ready, nor to worry about changing her mind, nor to do much of anything but focus on the task at hand. Of course, she had just started a new job the day before the call arrived, thinking she might work the whole summer. Oh well.

Third surprise (buried in the last sentence of that first paragraph): she’ll be speaking Mandarin Chinese. She speaks some Mandarin already as she took two years in high school in Taiwan, and then took a couple of semesters at BYU. She worries she does not know any “church” Mandarin. We assure her the MTC will help her with that.

She commits us all to a Facebook blackout until she’s had a chance to call a few friends personally, and in the wee hours of the morning she finally posts about her call, and we are free to discuss it with friends and family by the time we get up. Over the next few days there are calls to extended family, congratulations to her (and, oddly, to her parents!), and even an email from her mother’s aunt who served with her husband in the same mission a few years ago; she provides some of the most interesting and helpful tidbits about what it will be like for our daughter

Our daughter is pleasantly surprised at the positive response from her non-LDS friends on Facebook, folks she knew in high school who also seem genuinely supportive and impressed that she is going to serve.

Last night we sat around the kitchen table working on the master list of Things To Be Done before she leaves – from contacting the missionary travel department to shopping to sorting out luggage to setting a date for her first visit to the temple (Interview #1 completed yesterday afternoon). And it sinks in to me: she’s really going.

One of our older sons is visiting from the Pacific Northwest. He congratulates us that finally one of our children is serving. He knows that this is important to us – and to our daughter -- and he seems pleased that our daughter is comfortable and happy to be doing something he did not feel he could do. I appreciate his respect for us and our feelings just as I honor his choice to follow his own path.

I reflect on my own call. I opened it at the mailbox on the summer afternoon it arrived as my girlfriend (now my wife) stood beside me. I skimmed the letter so quickly that I had to read it two or three times before I finally saw where I was going. And I only had three weeks to report to the LTM. No time for second thoughts for me, either. I remember my excitement, my confidence that everything would be ok. I was too young and too inexperienced to be nervous.

My daughter is older than I was then. I think she’s more mature than I was. And I think she knows enough to be a little nervous. But she’s pretty excited, too. And so am I.