The Challenges Of Returning Early From An LDS Mission

Serving an LDS mission is an incredible thing. It’s life changing. But it’s also the hardest thing a young man could ever dream of doing.

On August 19th, 2013, I was sitting in LaGuardia Airport, reading Sports Illustrated and glancing up at the TVs playing CNN, alone by myself for the first time in nearly two and a half months. I was returning home from an LDS mission in New York City - but instead of being excited, I was nervous. I was almost more nervous to go home than I was to leave for New York in the first place.

August 19th was a Monday, and I’d made the decision to go back home the previous Wednesday. The choice to go home wasn’t an easy one by any means, but even as I write this, I still feel as if it was the right choice to make. So why was I feeling so nervous to return home, if going home was something that I felt was right for me to do?

Well, I’d grown up in Utah.

Growing up in Utah has a lot of perks - the fishing, hunting, camping, and outdoors opportunities are second to none. I spent the first 18 years of my life running around in the mountains and canyons of Utah, chasing big fish and sleeping under the stars more often than in my own bed during the summer. I guess you could say I really had the quintessential childhood.

But there’s another part of my childhood that had tremendous influence on my growing-up years. I grew up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and for as long as I can remember, plans had always been made for me to serve a two-year mission once I turned 19. When the age limit to serve was lowered to 18 in October of 2012, the pressure to go and serve mounted even higher. All my friends were busy filling out their papers, and they all had one thing in common that I didn’t share with them - an excitement to go and be a missionary for the LDS church.

In the predominantly LDS culture of Utah, especially southern Utah County where I live, the pressure to serve a mission is heaped on a young man from the moment he’s first old enough to comprehend what a mission is - although, a mission is something that’s completely incomprehensible until a person actually experiences it for themselves. While I do think that the culture of Utah and the expectations that are placed on young men and young women are unfair, and sometimes do more harm than good, that’s just how life is here. I’m sure that in other areas of the world with a high concentration of people who share the same religious beliefs, these problems are manifest as well. This isn’t a unique experience limited only to Mormons in Utah.

The point is, though, that I felt immense pressure to go and serve. I can remember people asking me when I was as young as nine years old where I wanted to serve a mission. In primary church classes (I was between eight and 12 years old when I attended these), we’d sing songs about growing up and going to serve. Young women are told to only seriously consider marrying men that are return missionaries. Sometimes, serving a mission began to feel less like a choice and more like a duty that I felt I was shoehorned into accepting.

Even with all the pressures and expectations, mission service shouldn’t ever be a barometer for a person’s worth, and neither should church attendance or anything else of that nature.

I left to serve in the New York New York South Mission, Spanish speaking, on June 26th, 2013, and came home on August 19th, 2013. I was gone nearly two and a half months, trying my best to serve and be the picture-perfect missionary I knew my parents wanted me to be. But therein lay my biggest challenge - I wasn’t there for myself. Not one part of my wanted to be on a mission, especially at 18 years old and literally one month removed from high school.

So why was I there?

I’d gone on a mission because I knew my parents wanted me to. My friends wanted me to. My girlfriend at the time wanted me to. My church leaders wanted me to. I knew, somewhere deep within myself, that a mission was some sort of duty that I should probably try and fulfill, even though current president of the church Thomas S. Monson didn’t serve a mission. Even with all those people acting as a buttress for me, I still didn’t want to go and serve. Yet I still made the choice to go. I own my decision, but I know I made that choice for a host of wrong reasons.

It’s not that I didn’t think a mission was a good thing. Some of my best friends in the world are out there right now serving, and I support them wholeheartedly in their efforts. I just never saw a mission as something that I wanted to do. The thought of leaving everything behind for two years, all to just go and try to preach a gospel I wasn’t even completely sure of myself,  was just too much to ask.

That leads to another encumbrance for me - I wasn’t sure how much I really believed in the gospel or the church (those two are very separate entities, by the way). My belief is still something I struggle with even now, although I’m doing much better.  I was just spoon-fed the doctrine growing up, and since I spent my childhood in Utah, I never really had moments present themselves that forced me to honestly and truly question my religion. My parents believed it, my neighbors across the street believed it, my best friends believed it - that was enough for me. I ran on the borrowed light from their testimonies. This is something that’s completely my fault. I should have cared enough to take the time to study out my religious beliefs and really decide how I felt about them. Instead, I’m trying to do that now, while working two jobs and having a failed mission in my rearview mirror cloud my judgment.

Obviously, I wasn’t serving with anything close to the right intent. I thought for a while as I stayed in the Provo Missionary Training Center (a whopping 20 minute drive from my house) that maybe I’d find a desire to serve if I tried hard enough. I gave it my all, but for the two and a half months I spent as a missionary, I never found a willingness in myself to serve.

As I went through my mission experiences, I’d watch all my companions and other missionaries. They all had one thing in common that I didn’t share with them - a desire to be there. Sure, they got down at times. They realized it was tough. They complained. But giving up wasn’t ever an option for them. Seeing all these other people happy to be where they were made me really question myself, and that led to some serious depression problems.

On top of feeling inadequate, I had some problems going on at home. I got a letter from my eight year old little brother, detailing all the problems that were going on. I felt guilty that I was gone, instead of being at home and watching out for my siblings. That feeling of guilt just added to my depressed feelings of inadequacy.

Then, I received a letter from the girl that I’d left behind - basically it was the Dear John letter that every missionary who left a girl behind is scared to death of receiving. That letter was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I went back to my apartment in Mineola, New York, right outside of Queens, that night and I just cried like a baby. I felt as if every last thing in my life was crashing down around me. My parents were fighting, I didn’t want to be a missionary, my girlfriend had cheated on me, I couldn’t learn Spanish to save my life, and I was just a miserable wreck.

That night, I was so depressed, I nearly took my own life. Something stopped me, and to this day I’m still not sure what that was. I realized, though, that I needed help. Feelings of suicide are not natural and need to be dealt with before terrible things happens. I’m lucky that I have a second chance to fix my life, and maybe even help someone else.

So I called my mission president and made the arrangements to come home and go to therapy and get on medication to help me fight my depression. The interesting thing is, though, I’m not alone in the reason for my return home. According to a study done by Utah Valley University professor Kris Doty, more than half of all missionaries who return home early do so due to depression and anxiety issues.

I came home not because I wasn’t “worthy” to be a missionary, not because I did something that merited sending me home, but because I had legitimate problems that needed immediate help. So why do I still have feelings of inadequacy to this day, nearly three months after I’ve returned home? Once again, I’m not alone in my feelings about this - 73% of missionaries who come home early have feelings of inadequacy, regardless of why they came home. Once again, that data was provided by the study conducted by Doty.

So where do these feelings of inadequacy come from? What causes them? Why is mission service such a huge factor in the lives of young LDS men?

Well, that’s because the people that have gone and served a mission know what it can do for a young man’s life, and they want their sons to experience the same things. Yes, the pressure to serve is a cultural thing, but it’s also viewed as a sort of ‘rite of passage.’ Failing to fulfill that rite of passage, to live up to the expectations of everyone around you, is probably the predominant factor in early return missionaries feeling inadequate.

I don’t have any reason to feel inadequate about myself. I’m currently a feature writer for the Utah Jazz, a content manager for an SEO company in American Fork, and I drive a Camaro. I have plenty of things to be happy about in my life, but I still feel as if I’m less of a person sometimes. I went and saw The Saratov Approach, an absolutely incredible movie depicting the tale of two missionaries who are kidnapped in Russia. They endure their kidnapping, escape through their faith in God, and both of them ended up staying and finishing the two years of their missions. Stories like that, of perseverance through hard times, also add to the feelings of, “I’m not good enough” that I know so many early return missionaries feel. If two missionaries can get kidnapped but still stay out in the field, who am I to come home because of my petty problems?

The thing that I’ve learned, and that I hope other early return missionaries have learned as well, is that maybe by coming home early, God’s showing you that he has a different plan in store for you. Maybe your mission is to help others in different ways that you couldn’t quite do as a full-time missionary.

At the end of the day, though, I’m the only one that can change the way I feel. I have control over my own emotions, and I have the choice to feel whatever way I choose to feel; but the judgments of others still hurt. I just wish people could understand what a missionary who comes home early goes though.

You come home, and you go to church that first week, and you just want to die inside. I know I did. My bishop asked me to bless the sacrament that first Sunday, to help dispel any rumors as to why I returned. As I sat there on the stand and looked out over the congregation, I could feel everyone’s stares and I could just about hear exactly what they were thinking. “Why is he back? Didn’t he leave?”

And I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what could be said in order to explain why I came home. All I knew was that people were already casting aspersions on me, as people will do no matter the circumstances. But in my case, and the case of every single missionary who’s come home early, those aspersions on character are completely unwarranted. Yeah, if a missionary came home because he wasn’t what’s considered worthy to serve, obviously he’s going to have a few things to work out between himself and God, if he so chooses. But the very fact that he confessed, came home, and is trying to do his best, is honestly just as, if not more, admirable than serving a full-time mission.

At the end of the day, there’s no difference between a kid that served a mission and a kid that didn’t. If you subscribe a belief in a God, in a heavenly father, then you accept the fact that we’re all God’s children. If that’s the case, as it is for most people in Utah, then loving everyone in that fashion is imperative. I’m terrible at it. I’m probably one of the most judgmental people in the world, but these experiences in my life lately have humbled me beyond words. I strive every day to accept everyone else, because I know that’s what I need the most in my life. And every other early return missionary needs that too. They need acceptance, help, support, and above all, they need love. They need to know that even though they may have “screwed up” by coming home, they can still take life by the reigns and live an honorable existence.

The greatest service that could be done to early return missionaries is to change the entire perception of missions in Utah’s culture. Instead of viewing them as a right of passage, a mission should be viewed as a holy, difficult, trying, incredibly extenuating calling that can do wonders for a person’s life.

But here’s the catch - I know plenty of people who never served a mission, and those people are some of the best people I’ve ever met. By that same token, some of my best friends aren’t members of the LDS church, and I strive to be like them because they set examples that should be emulated.

Church attendance, missions, all of that stuff, shouldn’t ever be a measure of someone’s worth,  especially in a culture where the dominant religion emphasizes charity with unwavering force. Above all, if anyone is reading this and you’re in the same spot as me, I want to speak directly to you - you are not a failure. You’re not less of a person, and you’re not condemned for your decision to come home and live your life. You’re in command, and you can make your life what you will. Don’t let the judgments of others affect how you live your life.

In the same way that people who don’t serve a mission can’t ever truly experience how hard it is, people who never came home early can’t really understand what early return missionaries experience either. But maybe what I’ve said will help people understand; and maybe, some other kid out there in my same situation will be able to find that last shred of strength inside himself and soldier on, trying his best. That’s all anyone can truly ask for at the end of the day.