MTC Missions are hard

I wrote this after receiving Anthony's plea to come home while he was feeling discouraged. It helped me to get through something very hard.

Missions are hard!!!

This is a statement that I dread hearing from people right after they ask how my missionary is doing and I give a negative response. How is a mission hard? Is it hard because you miss you child? Is it hard because they miss you? Is it hard because of the money you sacrifice each month? I think every family has a different answer to what makes their mission experience as a family hard. Our missionary left Nov 2, 2011 to go in the MTC in Provo to prepare for his mission in Thailand. As of this writing he has been in the MTC for just over six weeks.

My husband and I have had different experiences so far and we are in the same household. I am non emotional and still have not cried. Sometimes when people ask me how I am doing with a tilt of their head, I feel bad smiling and saying I am great. And I am honest in that answer. I know that my son is right where he wants to be by serving a mission for his church. He has been looking forward to beginning this chapter of his life for a long time.

Our family is probably not like the average Mormon home, or Utah Mormon home. My husband and I are converts and were the only members of the church in our children’s lives up until two years ago. First Anthony’s father decided to become baptized in June of 2009. Anthony had the privilege to baptize his own father into the Church at 17 years old and have his first example of conversion by example. His father had watched our family for years and come to the realization that our blessings came from our beliefs. Last summer my mother-in-law and her husband were also baptized for the same reason.

We are not the strongest members of our ward but we attend our meetings weekly, I am never prepared for the Sunday School lesson. I never have the answers to the questions presented in Relief Society. I feel like anything I have to say would not be as good as the person next to me (I know this is not true). I am always amazed at the knowledge my children have of the book of Mormon and the Gospel. I still feel like a child with them in my knowledge. Our family holds Family Home Evening, but not weekly and not really structured. We do not get up at 6AM on our knees and pray to God and read the scriptures as a family. We do read scriptures nightly and have nighttime prayer before bedtime with our kids. I do not have my own prayer time or read my own scriptures regularly. I rarely go to the Temple even though I have several temples within an hour of my home. The closest is only ten minutes.

This week, my missions are hard moment finally arrived. Each Tuesday morning I look forward to receiving my email from my missionary. Because he is in the MTC this is a weekly thing. I understand once he is in Thailand this will be less frequent. My son is always upbeat and funny in his letters and emails; he even started calling us Momsie and Popsicle. The following is the heartbreaking part of Tuesday’s email that we received:

I have a confession to make, this last week, I've thought about coming home. I just didn't feel like I could teach very well, and I feel like the missionaries in my district don't actually like me very much. I know that that is selfish thinking, but it feels very true. I also discovered that I could spend all day planning for a lesson to teach, but as soon as I get in there to teach, my mind goes blank. It just gets me discouraged every time, but I've been working on it. I feel as if I come home, nothing will ever be the same. Ever. I just don't want to make you guys upset, and I don't want to let so many people that we know and love down. I especially don't want to make you guys upset by coming home, and I keep trying to work hard here and do what I can, but I still get discouraged.

Just letting you know, I could really use a pick-me-up, and some extremely good news.

Elder Anthony Susi

As I was reading this letter, I was on the phone with my mother in Alaska and got quieter and quieter. I got off the phone with her and got right to work in sending Anthony a response. I have to tell you I was in shock at receiving this letter from Anthony. I always thought he would be totally fine and never have a single problem. He is very fun and has a great spirit about him. I forwarded his email to his past leaders, some of our family and our current and past Bishop. I also called on several of our returned missionary friends that could help him with his self doubt because they had all been there at some point or another. Everyone I called to action was very interested in helping and only my husband was angry at me for calling on the troops. I spoke with several people and they all said yeah missions are hard. That whole statement drives me mad.

Tuesday night prior to going to bed, I sent an email to the MTC presidency to make them aware of my son and his doubts to see what they could do to help him. Then I spent my Wednesday in a fog running millions of scenarios through my head and waiting. When my husband and I were in the car together the District President over Anthony’s mission called us. He introduced himself but I have no idea what his name was. He told us that he had been told by the Branch President that Anthony was the problem. That he was being rude to the sister missionaries and his companions and when asked to apologize he refused to do so. His plan was to call Antony in to his office and get the other side of the story. We asked him what normally happens at this point. He let us know that normally he would have the missionary talk with his Stake President before the parents but in this case it seemed as if we were all on the same page that Anthony really wanted to be out there and was willing to call us with Anthony instead of the Stake President.

After hanging up from that call, I was more in shock and surprised to hear that My son was the problem and wondered if he was trying to get kicked out of his mission by being rude to people when he was never that way. My husband told me that Anthony is no Angel and can bee a little @#$% sometimes. I went to the Elementary school to help my daughter with an assembly she was in and take photos for the school yearbook. As I took each photo, I was not really there. I normally love taking photos like that and I was just not into it. I still got some decent shots. Its not like I am a photojournalist. My friend even told me the next day that I just had a sad look on my face. It is hard to hide your emotions sometimes.

After that I came home and waited for the call to come. The call finally came right when I had started dinner for the children. We felt to stressed to eat. I cannot even remember if we ate dinner. The district president called and told his that our son was in the room with him and was very humble at the time (in LDS terms this mean crying). He excused himself from the room and left us alone (us at home and Anthony in the MTC). We spoke to him for about 20 minutes with him saying very little. He said that he was not aware that people were taking him this way and he was very hurt that he was not aware of it on his own. We asked him to talk to each sister individually and apologize, and speak with his companion and let him know things that are bothering him. We spoke of a few other things and he felt better at the end.

We never once asked him about his letter asking to come home. We figured that if we asked the question it would come into his mind again. Now is the time to grow up and learn how to be in the world. He is no longer in school where he gets to make his own decisions or friends. In the MTC not unlike the military you are not allowed to choose where you are going, who is in charge of you, how your leader will be, or who your companion is. Once when I was in school, I did not get along with a girl at all. My teacher was aware of this and would put us together all the time for projects. I complained to him that he would keep doing this to me. He told me that in life you don’t always get to like the people that you work with but that I needed to learn to work with them to the best of my ability.

So back to the question how is a mission hard? I now have two answers to this question. A mission is hard for me as a mother to know that my son is struggling or unhappy. There is not much I as a mother can do except for pray for him and believe in him. I believe that he can do anything. The other answer is that a mission is hard for the missionaries to learn how to get along with so many different types of personalities. So I guess the statement that we can’t choose our family members is also pertinent to the missionary program. You can’t choose your companions. But they can learn to get along with many types of personalities. We all can learn a lot be remembering that we ourselves can choose to hold a grudge or be offended. I am not offended that my child is having a hard time in the MTC. I am not offended that some of the missionaries he is with do not understand his sense of humor. I am not offended that some people may even think my plea for help for my own missionary on Tuesday was a bad idea or that I should not “air my dirty laundry for the world to see”.

In all of this I have researched and found that the opinion that a missionary that returns home early or cannot “hack it” should be shunned or ignored. It is no wonder that the District President told us that most missionaries that come home early fall into inactivity. I think that might be the point that I would be offended. It would be hard for me to help him if everyone was saying bad things behind my back and his back. Maybe we should try to see how we can help our upcoming missionaries get along with many different personality types.

Maybe the next question should be how can we help our boys to be better prepared for their missions? We spend a lot of time on religious things, but maybe we should try to spend some time doing social things. We talk about making sure our kids know how to take care of themselves, and make right decisions, but what can we do to help the kids get along with others. I walked through the junior high yesterday to take something to my younger son and was shocked to see and hear the things I saw and heard. These are the social problems I think of. How can we as parents better prepare our kids socially at school that will also help them when they attend college or attend their mission?

I always thought my son was as ready as he could be for his mission but as a mom I have failed on the social aspect. He was prepared in every other way. Now we will move forward and try to help him from a distance to work his way through companions that have stronger personalities or sister missionaries that are overly sensitive. These skills that he will learn from this will help him to get along in any job he has in the future. And I hope to respect people also. Missions are hard!!!!