When a missionary comes home from serving, they are bombarded with questions about their experiences. Often times, they find it difficult to summarize 18 – 24 months of their lives in a simple sentence. Here are 15 questions to ask a newly returned missionary that are better than “Well… How was it?”:
Related: The Beginners Guide to Returning From a Mission
CULTURE & PEOPLE
1. What did you love about the country that you served in?
2. What was the worst thing you ate?
3. What was your favorite thing about the people you served? What we can learn from them and the way they lived the gospel?
4. Who was someone you met and became close with while you were on your mission? What was their story?
5. What was the most amazing conversion story from one of your investigators?
6. Who influenced you most while you were on your mission?
RELIGIOUS
7. What was the most rewarding blessing you received from serving a mission?
8. What was your favorite lesson or principle to teach investigators?
9. How did you see your testimony grow on your mission?
SELF
10. If you could go back, what would you do differently?
11. What made you happiest while you were on your mission?
12. Why did you choose to go on a mission in the first place? What drove you to stay once you got there?
13. Which aspect of YOU did the mission change most?
14. What things are you excited to accomplish now that you are home? What are your new goals?
15. Was your mission worth it?
Each returned missionary has different experiences they will want to share with you. Asking specific questions will help you learn more deeply about a missionary’s service and in turn, have them reflect on their experiences more fully.
Some missionaries will return and will adjust rather quickly to life after the mission. Others might take a little more time. Elder Holland gave a talk entitled The First Great Commandment, where he taught returned missionaries:
“The call is to come back, to stay true, to love God, and to lend a hand. I include in that call to fixed faithfulness every returned missionary who ever stood in a baptismal font and with arm to the square said, ‘Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ.’ That commission was to have changed your convert forever, but it was surely supposed to have changed you forever as well.”
What was your favorite question to answer when you returned home from your mission? Let us know in the comments!
