By Daniel Lawhorne
Deciding to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was a long process for me. Ever since I was young, I always felt like knocking on doors to teach lessons wasn’t what the Lord had in mind for me. I suppose, ultimately, I was correct. For a long time, I didn’t plan on serving a mission. I always had a strong testimony of the gospel, but just felt that a mission wasn’t what God wanted from me. And then it happened.
I started to feel a shift.
I started to feel like God was calling me to serve as a missionary. At first, I was unsure. I had told myself for so long that I wasn’t going to serve a mission that when that feeling came I was a little bit upset by it. What about the plans I had for my future? How was this all going to fit together? After a while, it became clear that a mission was, in fact, what God wanted for me, and when I accepted that, I wanted to do my best to go along with it. I started to pray for the desire to serve a mission and to want what He wanted for me.
And I started to feel a change.
It took time and it took cooperation, but I started to see others the way that God sees them. I started to see them more and more as my brothers and sisters and as lost sheep who could feel the same joy that I feel if only they knew about the gospel. After months of praying and learning from God, I finally started to feel the desire to serve a mission. I decided that that’s what I was going to do. And not long after that decision, I started struggling with my mental health.
I’d always been anxious and, looking back, I realized I’d always dealt with depression, too. It had just never been bad enough that I really understood that that’s what it was. These changes–combined with a night shift at the job I was working–made me feel incredibly isolated from everyone around me. I felt like I never saw anyone, aside from a couple of coworkers and occasionally a family member who happened to be awake when I was getting home. I began to wonder how I was supposed to serve a mission with these mental health challenges and the physical health problems that came from them.
Despite all of this, the more I prayed, the more God made it clear to me that this was what He wanted me to do. I got a Priesthood blessing from my dad in which he encouraged me to look into alternative missions. I set up a meeting with my stake president and we discussed the possibility of a service mission. I felt the Spirit strongly confirm to me that this was what I was supposed to do.
Although a lot of people within the Church are aware that service missions exist, I’ve found that most people don’t know exactly how they work.
Service missions can be anywhere from six months to two years for elders and 18 months for sisters. Typically, service missionaries live at home with their families and volunteer at various charities and nonprofit organizations. Service missionaries don’t usually have companions. Rather they have a set of service mission coordinators, who are typically senior couple missionaries who serve as a sort of combination of companions and mission presidents. They help missionaries manage their schedules, make contact with places they want to serve, and meet with missionaries each week to discuss the needs and progress of the missionaries.
During my service mission, I had the opportunity to work with the Church’s history department to read, copy, and annotate journals of early missionaries so that they could be sent to the church’s history department and be analyzed and documented. I helped with the bi-weekly food orders that would arrive in town from the Bishop’s Storehouse. I and the other volunteers would unload the truck, unpack all of the items, and repackage them in the specified boxes for families in need.
My largest project, however, was working with the city government at the local municipal building. I had several projects while I was there, which ranged from cleaning out the records room and deciding what should be kept and what should be destroyer, digitizing decades’ worth of council minute books, researching the city ordinances of similarly-sized towns to determine what policies could be beneficial to pass, and making a map of all of the roads and parking lots on and around campus, which I then converted into an interactive CAD file to show how bad parking is on campus.
I was pleasantly surprised by how fulfilling the calling was for me. Even though it was difficult and there were days that I enjoyed more than others, I’m so grateful for the opportunity I had to serve the Lord and those around me, and to feel of the love that He has for each and every one of us. My mission meant more to me than I can express in writing. If any of you want to hear more about my mission–or about service missions in general–please feel free to reach out! Both Professor Brothersons served as service mission coordinators, as well as Professor Lynn Chapman. All of them are great people to talk to if you want to learn more.
Additionally, there is information available at the Church’s website, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/service-missionary/a-service-mission?lang=eng
Daniel Lawhorne: daniel.lawhorne@svu.edu
Todd Brotherson: todd.brotherson@svu.edu
Carrie Brotherson: carrie.brotherson@svu.edu
Lynn Chapman: lynn.chapman@svu.edu
My Experiences as a Service Missionary was originally published in The Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.