Two prep years can help you be ready for a lot of life-endeavors. But the complexity and unpredictability of an eternal-quality marriage demands a lot.
Russell Ballard provided personal evidence: “My missionary service prepared me to be a better husband and father and to be successful in business. It also prepared me for a lifetime of service to the Lord in His Church.” My own life’s experiences agree with Elder Ballard’s.
Expectation and Surprises
Before I married the love of my life, I knew he had a testimony of Jesus Christ and His Atonement and that he was 100% committed to keeping the covenants he had made with God for the rest of his life. Those were the main requirements I had chosen and maintained for my future spouse and eternal companion.
After we married, I was to have some surprises. He had had two prep years for our marriage, and I discovered that he fulfilled requirements that I didn’t even know I needed to have. He knew how to do laundry, vacuum floors, grocery shop, prepare meals, scrub toilets, make beds, live on a budget, and many other important everyday life skills.
I was astonished! The entire time I was growing up, I don’t think I ever saw my dad perform tasks like this. My husband had learned these life-skills while serving a two-year full-time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from age 19 to age 21.
“The honeymoon is over” is a popular comment when a couple enters their first home. On the afternoon we returned home from our honeymoon, my husband suggested that the next morning at 6:00 a.m. we could play a missionary game. “Before we go to bed,” he explained, “we will each place a glass of water on our nightstand. When our alarm sounds at 6:00 a.m., the first one out of bed and ready for companionship gospel study gets to throw their water on the other.”
Two Prep-Year Lessons
What? While throwing water seemed like a great game for missionaries, I wasn’t sure it would be so much fun for a married couple; but being a new bride, I agreed—half-heartedly. I liked that he was excited at the prospect of studying the gospel together every day, so I was willing to give it a try.
That missionary game has blessed our lives in ways we couldn’t have expected. Beginning the day with personal and family planning, prayer, and scripture study—no matter how short or ineffective it sometimes seemed—has brought us closer to each other and to God.
Those mission-lessons continue to equally yoke us in our family life today. Although I had not yet served a full-time mission, my life was blessed because of his choice to serve.
Another missionary blessing is that I can give him the title of doctrinal wizard. Throughout our marriage, He has easily and confidently quoted scriptures, led our family in prayer, taught Church lessons when asked, guided spiritual discussions, and given priesthood blessings. So he has helped our family walk the covenant path of discipleship that leads all of God’s children back home to our loving heavenly parents.
I loved teaching school, taking care of our home and family, and studying the gospel. So I’ve been grateful for those two prep years and totally embraced my husband’s missionary talents and abilities.
Another Generation
Later in our lives, my husband and I have served together as mission leaders, and I have gained in-the-field mission experience in addition to my mission-wife benefits. I have watched many of our missionaries return from their missions, marry, and work together with their spouses, as we did, to be equally yoked in rearing their families. We have observed that those who choose to continue living the divine patterns that they adopted during their mission service are happier than those who have not.
Those who have kept their mission behavior may not include throwing water, but they do continue practices like holding daily personal and companionship (family) prayer, studying scriptures, following the Spirit, striving to become more Christlike, and living a healthy lifestyle. Our missionaries have expressed to us that although their lives still have challenges, they have greater peace and happiness because they know they are doing their best to stay faithful to God. They and their families are fortified through the holy practices they established while serving their missions.
President Russell M. Nelson promises, “Your decision to serve a mission, whether a proselyting or a service mission, will bless you and many others.” I have certainly been blessed as my husband’s mission service had prepared him well for our eternal marriage.
I have now learned from my own service that a full-time mission is the gift that keeps on giving, as it blesses the recipient as well as those the recipient touches. To be able to focus solely on God and those to whom He sends us during this time is truly a gift—a privilege, and a luxury.
Pressures and Repentance
The pressures of life can be daunting. Demands like obtaining an education, making a living, and caring for property or people depending on us can feel overwhelming. God’s brilliant gift, His plan, includes missionaries who are able to focus completely on loving and serving Him and their fellow man for a specific time. As they serve in this way, they become prepared to get along with and care about the eternal welfare and well-being of others, and they become ready to add even greater life-responsibilities to their mission-established holy practices.
God’s gift is perfect. Those who choose to accept it and live it are abundantly blessed, and they become the divine means by which others are also blessed.
The mother of one of our missionaries and her husband were not active members of the Church, were critical of it, and had attempted to prevent their son from serving the full-time mission he desired. But he was determined to serve, and he did.
Though he arrived in our mission with no family support, we watched him embrace that mission. He worked hard, was obedient, and shared his testimony with everyone, including his own family when he communicated with them. For months, his parents continued sending him negative misinformation about the Church and begging him to return home early. But he was determined to serve his full two years and remained 100% committed.
I’ll always remember a tearful phone call from his mother, who worked on the campus of a large university. She told me she did not understand why she had felt the way she had about her son’s mission. “Every day I see young people all around me who are addicted to alcohol, drugs, riotous living, and destructive behavior. In contrast, my son is serving God, loving people, learning life-skills, perfecting his Spanish language skills, and writing me emails expressing his love for me and for God. I want to repent.”
This mother did repent. Her son’s two prep years were valuable to her, as they have been to so many others. She and some of her family members returned their hearts to God and came back to Church. Our missionary was thrilled. His mission had brought eternal miracles into his own life, into the lives those he had taught, and into the lives of his own family members.
My family and I have been among the “many others” our Prophet has promised will be blessed by missionary service. I have received these blessings and seen many others receive them. I know that missionary service, when lived with an eye single to the glory of God, helps people to establish holy habits and become loving spouses and life-long disciples of Jesus Christ. I am grateful for the amazing grace and enabling power that God continuously extends to each of His faithful missionaries.
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