Departure Day

At Salt Lake City International airport this week, and it was departure day for a big batch of missionaries leaving the missionary training center and heading to all parts of the world. I was in line with about twenty of them at Cafe Rio. I texted Lauren: when did we start sending twelve-year-olds on missions? They look younger and younger as the years go by.

Kids, some of you had far-off looks in your eyes. Others were flirting with each other though pretending not to. You were practicing different languages (I heard Polish, German, and Spanish), and I overheard two sisters saying to two elders, “So I guess see you in a few years.”

And it hurts my heart. As vulnerable as you feel, kids, as afraid as you are, you have no idea and are totally unprepared. It’s way worse than you can imagine, though everything good I have in my life at this point descends, at least in part, from my mission. I met Lauren on my mission, for example. This is a duality, kids.

Some of the elders were rocking hipster suits with smooth brown shoes and the pant legs a bit high at the bottom (the style these days). If you make it the full time (more than twenty percent of you won’t), the only shoes you’ll care about are those that don’t blister your feet and will last at least six months. You will beg for comfort out of your suits or dresses and ditch the form fit after you have sweated buckets through it or nearly suffered frostbite. You won’t care about your spiky hair when you finish your “shower” from a bucket.

You’re pretending not to flirt with each other because “lock your heart” and all that stuff. And really, it is best to follow the mission rules—but with your eyes open. Returned missionaries are increasingly marrying each other, as Lauren and I did, for a number of reasons. Not only do you share your faith, but you’ve seen each other get screamed at and called names, observed how you’ve operated under other stress, learned to live with people of vastly different backgrounds. So yeah, go ahead, flirt but don’t call it that and save most of it for after the mission.

Four of you were on my plane to Boston. You had a five-hour layover, and then it was on to Cape Verde. You got six weeks of Portuguese in the MTC. The people speak Creole, so your Portuguese is only of limited use. I’m sure your arrival was disorienting, your body jet lagged, the light far brighter than you thought it should be, the sounds and smells foreign, and you unable to communicate beyond limited basics. Hang in there, kids.