In light of today’s announcement expanding senior missionary opportunities, the Church needs to add some pictures to their website because when I searched for pictures of senior missionaries, the only pictures are of couples.
Here’s the news from the Church’s Newsroom: “Effective November 1, 2024, single men 40 and older may be called as full-time senior missionaries if they do not have dependent children living at home. Those who serve in this capacity will be considered for various assignments in area and mission offices, family history and other roles for which they have unique life experience (for example, medical, legal and other realms).”
Single senior sisters have new opportunities as well. “The types of missionary assignments available for single women age 40 and older have also been expanded. In addition to the current roles they fill supporting local Church units, advising missions on medical matters, working in family history, and other roles in mission offices, potential assignments will now include visitors’ centers, historic sites, employment centers and additional roles in area and mission offices.”
A couple of observations:
- I did not know that single missionaries do not proselyte. Did you know that? These opportunities for unmarried single missionaries are not proselyting missions. Which is fine – sending out seniors to knock on doors is probably not something a lot of seniors want to do (I’m projecting here).
- I did not know mission opportunities for single senior sisters were so limited. I’m glad they’re being expanded. Oddly, sister missionaries will NOT be considered for “roles for which they have unique life experience (for example, medical, legal and other realms).” Single sisters have been mission nurses, and that will apparently continue. But there is no wording similar to the men that states that women’s ‘life experience’ (career) will be considered in assignments.
- Because I’m a lawyer in Salt Lake City, I happen to know that the Church calls unpaid service missionaries to be Church Area Legal Counsel. Typically, this is a senior couple who is sent to live in the Area. The husband, an attorney, is the legal counsel and his wife is … still just his wife I guess. Maybe she gets an assignment somewhere in the mission. Extending this opportunity to single men now means a divorced lawyer dude can be called as Church Area Legal Counsel. Cool. I’m going to predict that no divorced/never married women attorneys will ever be called as Church Area Legal Counsel. I might be wrong, but I bet I’m not.
- Fun anecdote: I personally heard an older and experienced lawyer say he was never going to retire because he knew that as soon as he retired, the Church would call him to serve a mission as Area Legal Counsel and expect him to do the same job he’d been doing his whole life, but without pay.
The ongoing issue of limiting Church senior missionary opportunities to people who are well-off is still there. To serve a mission as a senior, you have to be able to pay all your own living expenses. I keep wondering when the financial burden will limit the senior missionary source. But, according to my co-worker who tried to attend a meeting in Davis County about senior missionary opportunities and got caught in the HUGE traffic jam to get to the meeting (apparently it wasn’t being broadcast), there are so many seniors interested in missions that the Church doesn’t need to offer financial help.
Related to the above, if the Church wants to basically staff a position that would otherwise have to be a full-time employee, it’s kind of not-great to expect volunteers to do the work. You get what you pay for, and some positions really need a trained employee who will be there long-term. Some positions are probably fine with short-term volunteers. But again, I have heard anecdotally of senior missionaries expected to do jobs without adequate training or support.
Commenters at Wheat and Tares seem to support the idea of service missions, especially for younger missionaries. I have a different opinion. Every so often I ride the train with a young service missionary. They’re doing jobs that the Church would otherwise have to hire people to do. One was working in IT, answering a helpline. Another one was assisting an administrative assistant. Service missionaries aren’t out building houses and helping the poor. They’re working for free to run Church operations. It’s an unpaid business internship.
But anyway, this expansion looks to be overall positive.
Questions:
- Would you be interested in serving a senior service mission?
- Do you have family members or friends who have served senior service missions? What did they think?
- The Church heavily depends on volunteers. What do you think of expecting volunteers to do work that would be paid in any other context? Such as working in an office, assisting the public, being a lawyer or nurse?
Wheat & Tares 
Here’s the only debate on this topic worth settling: does the Church need more missionaries? Or is the Church trying to keep single 40+ year-olds out of trouble?
Good friends of ours are serving a senior mission in a country where the church is shrinking. Although the husband’s ancestors are from that country, he didn’t speak a word of the language when they submitted their papers. The church told them that they would be working with member reactivation, and doing it in that language. The couple was like “um, like we said, we don’t speak the language, and there is no MTC for us” (not sure why there isn’t, but there isn’t). The church was like “it’s OK, have faith, it will work out”. This went on, back and forth, until they left for their mission earlier this year.
Guess what? Almost a year later, they still don’t speak the language. There is almost nothing for them to do, and the church doesn’t really seem to care. There weren’t any instructions on what they were supposed to do with the two branches to which they had been assigned, except to somehow reactivate the 95% who are on the roles but never come. It’s all very depressing. The sister, especially, is having a really hard time. She is a very accomplished woman in her field, but she can’t say a single thing to anyone, and she feels like an abject failure. She told us that she just wishes that she were home with here grandkids, rather than wasting 18 months in a country far far away.
If the church really needs senior missionaries, like they are always whining about, then they need to put forth at least a little bit of effort to help those who are called.
@Josh h We should be kept out of trouble. 😉
I didn’t know about single sister missionaries until I lived in Scotland. I met a couple there who worked in the mission house. However, they were still in companionships. Is that still the case? Because that is my nightmare. I felt bad that a 40 year-old wasn’t allowed to go anywhere by herself!
I also felt it was unfair, as the senior couple missionaries got to work and scan documents for the Church while the single sister missionaries had to work in the mission office.
I find it hilarious the Church doesn’t want to pay employees.
StaceyW – I really want to know if single senior missionaries have to be in a companionship or not as well. Not that I’m going on a mission, but if I had to have a companion at my age?? No. I wouldn’t mind having a co-worker, but I need my space.
I know a single senior sister who served a service mission (this sentence gets the Elder Maxwell alliteration award) while living at home. Her job was helping out at Temple Square. She didn’t have a companion. She ushered for events like concerts. A companion wouldn’t make any sense in that situation. Maybe companionship rules vary depending on whether you’re just helping out once or twice a month, or moving to another country to live and working full-time for the Church?
I have relatives who just returned from a senior mission. They were essentially worked like slaves. 18-20 hour days 6 days a week, with pressure to do more because they were not getting their assigned tasks done in even that amount of time. Both positions should have been paid employment covered by two people, and come under fair labor laws. Older couples like that should not be working that long of hours. They both have aged ten years in the 18 months they have been out. But being faithful members, they were happy to pay for the privilege of doing slave labor for the church.
It convinced my husband that he is lucky to have such a heretic as a wife because it will keep us from being expected to be that stupidly self sacrificing.
I think that the church does pay for lodging above $1400 per month, but all of the other costs are there. I think that the church can probably afford to cover medical costs. US Medicare isn’t portable overseas, and the insurance provided through the church costs the couple $730 per month (I have no clue if there are large deductibles or co-pays), but I understand that in most foreign countries the senior missionary has to pay out of pocket for all medical expenses, including any hospitalization or tests, and then submit forms for reimbursement.
I doubt that we will serve. It isn’t because I don’t want to proselytize (although I don’t), and it isn’t because of the cost (I will have a pension when I retire, plus social security and 401K), but because of family: my wife has already made five out-of-state trips this year to tend to an ailing elderly father, and she will also be called upon when an aunt gets unable to care for herself–last year she was there for six weeks, in addition to four trips for her father. They might pass before we retire next year, but they might survive until we enter our dotages. We’ve checked a couple of times about service missions close to home, where we could leave from time to time to care for the elderly relatives, and there have never been any opportunities, not even the first one. We tried, and we looked, and no service missionary opportunities are available where we live. That’s doing due diligence, right?
The church has a department of employees that do what I do for a living, but I can’t see myself going to SLC and doing for free what I’ve been paid to do, especially under a 30 year-old who doesn’t know half of what I know (only because he doesn’t have the experience). I don’t want to retire to then go to the Church office building every day while my wife works at the Church History Museum. We’ll need to be a pair, not separated from 8 to 5, with an hour for lunch.
Service missions might work well for people who live in their home in SLC, but out in the mission field opportunities are scarce, and in my part of mission field, non-existent. This tells me that I am the target audience for a senior service mission. I think the target audience is the Wasatch Front crowd.
Correction: This tells me that I am NOT the target audience for a senior service mission. Sorry!
I would never serve another mission. Period. Although I keep having dreams (well more nightmares) that I accept to serve another mission. Aftershock? PTSD? I don’t know.
Growing up in Provo, I know many, many people who served missions after they retired. It is sort of a badge of honor in my parents’ community to tell about how many missions you’ve served. My parents served in the Sao Paulo MTC for their senior mission. My neighbors served a mission in Hawaii, one in England, and were going to serve in the DRC Congo until my neighbor got a brain aneurism and they could no longer do it. I never heard anyone complain (not that they didn’t complain in private). They were all sort of gung ho. It is just what you did. You went to show how devoted you were and how tough you could be. Idleness was the devil’s playground and you gave your time to the church after you retired.
I’m on the fence about volunteers. On the one hand, people like volunteering and doing work for the sake of giving back and being useful somehow. I volunteer with refugees in various capacities and I love it. Volunteering gives people the opportunity to engage freely with people without the burden of feeling like you need to be productive or working for a paycheck. On the other hand, it isn’t as if the church is short on cash. It should probably pay more people to do many tasks.
I’ll add that having lots of volunteer positions helps seniors continue to feel important and validated in some way in the church. Important callings (where a person is really important such as a bishop) are relatively few. People want to feel needed. After people have had important callings, they want to continue to feel important. Missions fill that role.
I have a couple of anecdotes regarding the question of whether or not single senior sisters are assigned companions. Twenty-plus years ago my ex-husband’s aunts served two proselyting missions in England together. They were companions for the entirety of their missions. In fact, they would only go if allowed to be companions. One of the aunts was friends with Neil Maxwell, so he helped facilitate their request.
Also, within the past 10 years I have known a couple of senior/young adult sister companionships. In both cases the younger sisters felt the older sisters did too much mothering, while the older sisters didn’t have the stamina of the younger sisters and were consistently exhausted.
I feel that serving as a young missionary was overall a very positive experience and has been a huge blessing to me personally. Barring a clear and convincing spiritual confirmation (which I definitely do not expect), I would not consider serving as a senior. I agree with Brad D that for many it gives them a sense of being needed and important and when that is the case, yay for them. For me, I think there is really no way the church would ever have an assignment for me that would be anywhere near as valuable and important as what I do and will continue to do professionally and for my family.
I support retired folk doing what makes them happy.
My widowed aunt served a mission probably 10 years ago in Europe. She had a companion but I have no idea if they were allowed to take breaks from each other. My aunt is originally from Sweden and speaks several European languages so she seemed to enjoy her mission. They worked with the young single adult wards.
Another aunt and uncle are retired school administrators and they served in two missions at the church schools in Tonga and New Zealand. They loved every minute of it.
I won’t be serving another church mission but I do hope to find a nonprofit to work with in retirement. I’m going to have to make it happen. I guess the beauty of the church mission program is the members just sign up so less up front work.
My mission had a lot of couple missionaries. We offered church services every day of the week to accommodate the migrant works mostly from the Philippines who didn’t get to pick their day off. These senior couples ran the church services for them. Sounds a bit dull to me now but at the time I envied them being in an air conditioned building all day!
I did not have a church calling for years, then was temple cleaning supervisor. I have spent 10 years of my life on missions, time tithing?
my parents went on 2 consecutive family history missions to UK.
A couple from our ward are on a mission in Scotland. The first year the husband was a member of the bishopric because not enough active priesthood, not sure what they did the rest of the week. As a teenager my family built the chapel they now attend. There were about 20 active when we were building. We were told build the buildings and the lord will fill them. Buildings hold 200, now have 30 active. The Lord is taking his time. Our present stake has 7 units and one ward building. The couple in Scotland left his mother in a care facility. My wife visits her each week. They would be better used caring for her but they get more noble points by being in scotland. They now work in the mission home.
Friends of mine currently serving a mission are paying $3000/month. I don’t know what that covers but it seems like an awful lot to me.
I have actually been thinking about this exact question quite a bit lately. My daughter is serving a standard “young missionary” proselyting mission right now and, during our weekly calls, she has frequently wondered why the Church has her run around all day long trying to talk about the Church with strangers, almost none of whom are interested in the slightest. It’s a real grind, and it’s a massive waste of time. One thing my daughter and I have talked about is if doing these kinds of proselyting activities was as wonderful as Church leaders tells these young missionaries it is that the Church would offer these “opportunities” to senior missions as well. Or, rather, senior missionaries would be demanding that the Church allow them to proselyte just like the younger missionaries do.
It would seem to me that senior missionaries that are still pretty healthy and vigorous would be potentially be much more effective at proselyting than young missionaries. They actually have life experience, so people who scoff at being taught the meaning of life from 18 year olds might actually have some respect for someone who was willing to proselyte in their 50s or 60s. Even if older missionaries might be more effective, proselyting is still so ridiculously hopeless in many parts of the world that their increased efficiency wouldn’t really move the needle much at all.
I have really never heard a senior missionary complain about not being allowed to proselyte. I imagine that there probably are some senior missionaries that would choose to do this, but I suspect they are a very, very small minority. Why doesn’t the Church ask senior missionaries to proselyte? Here are two possibilities:
1. Senior missionaries aren’t healthy enough or tire too easily to proselyte. This would be true for some senior missionaries, but there are others I’ve seen that are plenty healthy to do this. There is no reason they need to keep the same hours of proselyting as young missionaries, either.
2. Senior missionaries would stop going on missions if the Church required them to proselyte because they’d hate it so much. I think this is the real reason senior missionaries don’t proselyte. Also, if senior missionaries were reminded of how awful it is to proselyte like the young missionaries do, then they would start speaking up and telling the Church that they shouldn’t force the younger missionaries to proselyte like that, either.
For all of the glorious talk about proselyting the comes from endless Church talks, it’s very, very telling that the Church doesn’t require senior missionaries to proselyte, nor do senior missionaries seem to have any desire to proselyte. It really makes you wonder if the Church should continue to ask young missionaries to proselyte in the extremely ineffective ways they’ve been proselyting for many decades.
Devotional held earlier this year in Europe:
https://europecentral.churchofjesuschrist.org/special-devotional-for-senior-couples-and-individuals
What a system! Requiring fixed income seniors to pay $2-3K/month, while the Q15 recieve a modest stipend of $14K+/month. Also, MP are paid with free everything and told not to pay tithing. Now that requires a marketing guru for persuasion.
I remember the cognitive dissonance as a young missionary of why the senior couples were allowed to watch TV and have days off.
It all works because we are all told and many are naive to believe it is the Lord’s way. There is a word that escapes me (not really) to what this is called…anyone?
In my mission in Argentina in the early tens there was a companionship of two senior (forties) single sister missionaries whose role was to proselyte.
Yes. When I served a proselyting mission in New Mexico and Texas in the late 80s I served with elderly sisters as their companions. One of them even brought her car on the mission. All we did was proselyte.
I served a mission in Southern California in the mid-70s. It was an interesting experience that I’m both thankful for and wonder what would have happened had I not gone. Now, I have nightmares about being on a mission at my age with young men and finding it impossible to live by the rules.
My mother went on a mission a few years ago to San Jose, CA. She was the mission car coordinator. It was interesting because she got a call from the MP who said people from SLC had called him and said, “She’s a woman are you sure you want her in that position?” To his credit, he stuck by her, and she served a year in this position, but the next MP, in typical passive-aggressive LDS style, reassigned her to a more appropriate position so she wouldn’t be stressed. She did a great job and organized the mission car system, which was in terrible shape before her, even though she had difficulty changing a tire. She could do the books, and reports, and get the missionaries to follow the rules.
The best thing, though, in my eyes, was the problem she had with her companion from Utah County, who said to her while they were shopping that all the black and brown people in the supermarket made her uncomfortable, and she didn’t feel safe. It made my mom so mad she called me when her companion was in the bathroom. I said you are in the heart of Silicon Valley. Those black and brown people have PhDs in some tech field. My mother from Ohio had never seen the way “Utah” Mormons looked at the world. It was the beginning of a big change in how she looked at the church. She’s still active but she doesn’t carry around as much guilt as she used to because seven of her eight children left the church because of what they saw in how church members treated others outside the faith. Now post-mission, she still goes, is active in the choir, and leads the music, but she is now not so hero worshipy of members who come from Utah or leaders and their opinions.
A friend recently said her bishop told her that senior missionaries have not rebounded to preCovid numbers after all senior missionaries were sent home in 2020. According to this bishop, that is the recent behind the big push for serving a senior mission. Of course, I don’t have any way of knowing if this is accurate.
She and her husband were also told that they should expect to work 10-12 hours per day in an effort to get through all the work needing to be done.
Thinking back to the post about “Mormon goggles” last spring… It genuinely amazes me how few of the people I know seem able to conceive of volunteering outside of the Church. We seem to be rare in our area in thinking that volunteering for other agencies is valuable or even possible.
I am an Emergency Physician and my husband is an engineer. It is ridiculous that his skills are important and mine are superfluous. The Church’s policy is wasting 50% of their talent pool. I suspect a female physician in an underdeveloped area would be such a blessing for those women. Men can do clerical work too. Neither myself or my husband are interested in a mission with an organization where my skills are not used/valued. We will look elsewhere.
A couple from my stake returned from a senior mission recently. She’s a retired nurse, and was responsible for the health of the missionaries in the mission, including getting them appropriate hospital/ emergency care where required. He is a retired educator, and worked with the local school authorities where they were serving to set up some sort of program, so both of them got to use their skills.
nMy parents after my dad’s retirement served a couples mission to Tonga where my dad taught at Liahona High School, a church operated school. My mother worked in the temple in names processing. They seemed to enjoy their time there. My dad was looking forward to returning to Tonga as he grew up in Tonga as a Mission President’s son from the mid Thirties through the WWII years. He later served a mission in Tonga working construction on the same school he would later teach at. At the time of his mission, his dad was in charge of the schools construction and also as Mission President again before coming home. Dad told me privately when he got home from Tonga that the CES whose auspices they went under was the most onerous bureaucracy that he had ever dealt with. even the defense department/military could take lessons from them. My dad should know as he served in the Air Force as well as working for three different defense contractors before his retirement. Dad’s parents served four couples missions and my dad was required to look after their affairs while they were gone and that was an additional thrown on him which he did not appreciate. When the mission calls came, my grandfather was raring to go but my grandmother at least publicly was all for it. I think privately my grandmother would have preferred to be home tending her garden. She would sometimes say how great the missions were but one time my mothers responded to her claims of loving the experience by telling her that she forgot to read her own letters. Their second to last mission began a few months before I left for my own mission and their last began just a couple of weeks after I returned from my mission. from my mother letters to me before my return, I got the impression that my grandmother was no looking forward to another mission. After reading about the change in service opportunities for single individuals later in life, I have similar reservations and questions that prior commentors expressed. As for those who choose to serve in such situations in the future I wish them the best of health and luck.
Anyone wanting to be just a bit more educated? A proselyte is a person. Proselytizing (NOT proselyting) is what the proselyte does.
This the third attempt at this comment, I hope it goes through. I read the article in the Salt Lake Tribune this making this announcement. If I were in such a position consider such service, I would not seek to do so as it would take me from seeing my grand kids grow-up and even though I am now retired (my wife is still working and has shown little inclination to retire) I would probably decline a mission service even as a couple. Given that the people end up having to pay most of their expenses out of their own resources even when the Church could probably afford to either pay their expenses or pay them a wage to help them cover their expenses. There are those who will choose to do so and I give my best to them. I think of experience of my grandparents. They served four missions together as I was getting older. My Grand Father was always raring to go but now that I think about it My Grand Mother was not so enthusiastic about the idea but she went along because she felt (or was taught) that it was her duty to follow the Priesthood without question. They served four missions together, Two to England and two to the Cook Islands. They left on their second to the last mission to England just a few months before I Left on my own mission. They left on their last mission to The Cook Islands a couple of weeks after I returned from my mission. My parents served a couples mission to the Kingdom of Tonga in the mid-nineties. For my father that was like going home. My grandfather had been called to preside over the Tongan Mission in 1936 and my grandmother was to lead the Relief Society. They were in Tonga all the way through WWII years before returning to the US. Grand father was called to return to Tonga in 1947 to over see the construction of a school there. My father remined behind to finish high School before being called to serve a mission to Tonga to work on the construction of the same school my grand father was working on. After Dad’s retirement he and mom were called to Tonga as couple missionaries. For Dad that was going home to where he grew up. My dad taught science and math at the same school that he had helped build 40 years before and mom worked in the temple in names processing. A side note, My grand father had served as a proselyting mission to Tonga from 1920 – 1924, and was there when David O. McKay stopped there on his tour of the missions in the church in 1921. After my parents return from Tonga, Dad told me privately that the CES was the most onerous bureaucracy that he ever encountered. He said that the Defense Department/Military could take some lessons from them. Dad should know, he served in the Air Force as well as working for three different defense contractors after that.
@Rebecca, the folks at both Webster and Cambridge seem to believe that proselyte is a valid verb which is a synonym of proselytize: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proselyte. Webster also lists proselyting as a valid word, but it doesn’t specifically state whether or not it can be used as a gerund. Wikipedia seems to think the gerund proselyting is valid, though: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/proselyting. My personal experience seems to be that people outside the Church tend to favor using the word proselytizing while Church members favor proselyting.
I’m so glad that I will never be pressured into missionary work again.
I like the idea of service missions, but I have no confidence in the LDS church’s ability to manage them well. Something like building houses for homeless or running soup kitchens would be awesome. LDS missionaries are going to be cleaning and running temples and doing family history for rich people.
Not really joking when I say that 50/50 chance that if my wife and I were to serve a senior mission that we’d divorce after returning.
I’m curious if the 40+ single men who can now serve missions can be divorced. I assume so since they specify that no children can be living at home, otherwise they are assuming a lot of widowers.
I’m actively discouraging my teen from considering a mission, but I like the senior opportunities. My relative just had a great time in Eastern Europe helping with mission logistics for a year. Communication was normal. I think it is convenient to have long-term voluntourism opportunities.
emotional manipulation to find “volunteers” is not acceptable.
Also, within the past 10 years I have known a couple of senior/young adult sister companionships. In both cases the younger sisters felt the older sisters did too much mothering, while the older sisters didn’t have the stamina of the younger sisters and were consistently exhausted. – FialhoRae
I was a younger sister with a Doris Day wannabe senior sister missionary because this senior sister had more energy and bad blood with the other senior sister options. She was very presentable and precise, judgy, well-meaning, dithering, and incapable of taking care of herself emotionally or physically.
I was authorized to be the “senior companion”. It was a trauma-inducing situation. I spent 4 months with her and another 3 months in recovery with another young sister she served with. With 20 years of experience – all of us sisters were short-served because this senior sister felt compelled to be in the mission field and didn’t know how to take care of herself (so expected her companion to take care of her).
I’ll tell you what the Church does not provide in their “please serve a senior mission” materials and presentations: Authentic feedback from seniors or couples who have served. That kind of feedback would be all over the map, hit and miss, kind of like bishop roulette. It would dispel the idealized view of LDS missions (of any kind) that most members cling to.
Clever LDS seniors should consider medical conditions that would politely exempt them from senior mission service requests. Here is good advice from Brother Bueller: “The key to faking out the parents is the clammy hands. It’s a good non-specific symptom. A lot of people will tell you that a phony fever is a dead lock, but if you get a nervous mother, you could land in the doctor’s office. That’s worse than school. What you do is, you fake a stomach cramp, and when you’re bent over, moaning and wailing, you lick your palms. It’s a little childish and stupid, but then, so is high school.”
Amy,
I had a senior companion that gave me night mares for years after my mission. Believe it or not her name was Sister Pressure and it was very hard to be her companion. She had been single all her life, and had worked as a nurse and she had a need to control everything. I was the senior companion and she was green so she was supposed to learn from me, but she really couldn’t and didn’t want to. She would criticize me constantly while we were driving around town to follow up on notes previous missionaries had made. She would not stop and I took to singing hymns at the top of my lungs so that I couldn’t hear what she was saying.
We were in a rural area with other missionary sisters far away. The only way I could get a break from her was to follow a group of elders around the golf course one P day. I desperately needed exercise for my mental health and she wouldn’t leave the house unless we were driving.
The mission president put her with an older sister but that didn’t work out either. A few months later I was at this sister’s exit meeting and she went on about how Sister Pressure had prevented her from making bread to share at a Relief Society meeting by turning the oven off halfway through the baking because she refused to pay her half of the gas bill for running the oven. So this older sister left the mission to escape her.
The other older sisters I served with were kind, experienced women who had been married and their spouse had died and they had no interest in remarrying. Sister Pressure was not like them, except in her lack of interest in marrying ever. Companionship was not for her.
Easier to say ‘no thanks’ and walk away. We’re all grown ups. Vote with your feet people. Unless you want to do it.
Last year, my husband and I attended a fireside for prospective senior missionaries – it was an in-person meeting at the WDC temple visitors center. This is what I was expecting to learn:
Instead, this is what I learned:
Okay, so I was in a large room filled with professionals who are already pretty converted (lol) to the cause. We’re mostly all professionals who have a lot to offer. We’re there because we’re already interested. Literally, stop preaching to the choir. Stop trying to persuade me. I’m in. I came for information that I couldn’t already get from an inspirational church video. A woman in our ward, an experienced ER nurse, attended with her non-member husband. They were hoping for a Q&A opportunity where they could ask what the husband could do if she were to apply to serve to work as a medical missionary. He would have been happy to work in an office, as a handyman, whatever. But there was no chance to ask questions. Really. They were both so disappointed by the fireside, they left the meeting with far less enthusiasm than they had going in.
My conclusion: if the mission experience is as frustrating as the recruitment fireside was, heaven help me.
I’ve interacted with multiple senior missionary couples in the last 20 years or so. By far, the most common complaint I’ve heard from them is that their missions ended up being way more expensive than they were told to budget for. Some of these missionaries were comfortable double-dip retirees, so they were able to absorb the unforeseen financial burden. Others were not so well off, and the mission became a financial hardship they weren’t counting on. I knew at least one couple that had their adult children sell their unoccupied house on their behalf, with no solid plan of where they were going to live after returning. I knew others who were longtime RV enthusiasts who did not own a traditional home, they just took their 5th-wheel rigs with them to their mission, where it would continue to house them. In an era where cushy pensions are no longer the norm, it is unrealistic, perhaps even cruel, for the Church to be making such a push to recruit more senior missionaries.
My wife’s uncle and aunt, shortly after retiring, decided to serve a mission after being personally recruited by an MP acquaintance, to serve in an eastern European country, despite no knowledge of the local language and no connection to the culture. They ended up having many positive interactions with the locals, but they were endlessly frustrated with the Church bureaucracy, being taken for granted by young missionaries, and being patronized and undervalued by the MP. Not to mention they missed the births of 2 grandchildren, and another grandchild died in an accident; being super-devout TBMs, they stayed in the field and did not come home for the funeral, though they later regretted that decision. Despite the notable positive experiences, they came home mentally worn out and are in no hurry to go on another mission. They now (rightly) consider being close to their grandchildren to be a better use of their time and resources.