This is going to be a long post, I just need to get my feelings out there.
I am a recently returned missionary and have been home for a little over a week now. I'm posting this because I feel like I overall had a negative experience before, during and after my mission. The problem is that when I talk to someone I feel like there is an unwritten rule that all missions are positive and if I had a bad experience it is my fault. I feel trapped in being unable to express how I really feel and conforming to all these expectations. Please bear with my as a type out my experience, mainly for my own benefit and any words of advice are appreciated.
I was first called to serve in Spain and entered the MTC. Within the first week I tore my ACL and my second week I had surgery. Under extreme stress I met with the District President to discuss my situation. He said I could do rehab there and serve in Provo until further notice or just go home. Being from Utah I nixed the Provo idea and wanted to serve "full time." So I'm extremely stressed and decide to go home on my third week there.
I arrive home and begin living in limbo. Home environment was not stable and all I wanted to do was go, I couldn't work while recovering and could not commit to school. I wait and wait for something to change. This is August of 2008. In early November I find out my visa is expired and must wait until April to even reenter the MTC to go to Spain. Again I have to make a choice too quickly. I think I implied that I just wanted to serve and would accept whatever happened. I thought I would restart the MTC for Spanish stateside.
So no contact until January 2009. I get a random call one day from my Stake President who says he has a plane ticket to Florida for me and I leave in a week and a half. I was so scared. This was my only chance to serve a mission. I accepted grudgingly knowing that I had lost the call to speak Spanish or redo the MTC even.
So I arrive in Florida and to make a long story short the following sums up my mission. I never fit with the program. For the first 18 months under one mission president I felt like I had to perform or die (get numbers). I manufactured so much anxiety in myself for not meeting goals or expectations that before I went home I had to meet with a counselor about it. Not to mention the transfers. I will openly accuse my president of playing favorites. If you weren't on the list you just became a peon in hard areas with hard companions but still the same expectations. I had 3 difficult companions in a row for about 7 months of misery. All of my areas were among the hardest in the mission. I can only truly say I loved and am friends with less than half of my companions. Not to mention the peer leadership. I honestly thought I was going to hell if I didn't meet goals for the week, "big brother" style.
I left under the impression that I would be a servant of the Lord not a door to door salesman trying to sell the most unwanted product in the world. I found no success tracting what so ever, but if you didn't tract all heck would break loose. Truthfully I'm terrible at it and never desired to do better. I should not have to sell the "true church" to people.
I didn't baptize either. Only one person I know would even count as a conversion and she came to us converted. We only taught her lessons as a formality, she was golden.
Well to have something positive when we changed presidents I got relief. I began to do what I felt was needed and it actually worked. If my first president found out he would have had a stroke. Yet I still felt unsatisfied, I had nothing tangible to report. I was obedient and worked reasonably hard but never measured up. I will say this, I love my last mission president. If it weren't for him I don't think I would have any hope.
I felt really embarrassed in my report to my stake president asking about being "led by the spirit" or "when an investigator really felt it" and nothing came to mind. I had so much downtime and frustration that it began to hurt me. Again my main point I feel like I can't talk openly about this and have to focus strictly on positive things. I had a negative time but everyone expects me to have had a positive 100% spirit robot experience. It is almost like a conspiracy of silence on what really happens in the mission field.
There is a lot more of things that happened that I'm not going to share for sake of space. I mean, my emotions are so welled up just writing this.
In essence I spent two years and $10,000+ just to waste my time, and the Lord's time. The only positive thing I feel is that I made a few missionary friends and had a lifetime of growing up condensed into two years, you can't pay for that I guess.
So now I'm home and back into a bad situation, living in limbo again until school starts in fall. How do you come to terms with a negative mission? Is it even possible?
Sorry for the rant, I just really needed to get this into a neutral zone. Thanks.
