"So, when are you leaving on your mission?"

I heard that question several times a week when I was nineteen and twenty years old. If I was in a good mood, I'd dance around the issue, giving some vague answer. If the question came from a rude stranger who knew nothing of my situation, I would say, "When am I going on a mission? Why, when I've grown a foot or two, of course."

It never failed to elicit either a chuckle or a groan. And while obviously flippant, it also cut to the heart of what it meant to grow up in the LDS church. Primary children bellow the song, "I hope they call me on a mission! When I have grown a foot or two!" In seminary, they give you pretend mission calls, and the girls are urged to date only those boys who plan to go on missions. When they get married, it will only be to a returned missionary.

A mission then, for boys, is not a question of if, but when. And the only correct answer to when is, when I'm nineteen, of course.

The problem was, when I was nineteen I didn't know if the church was true or not. I'd attended four years of seminary, gone to youth conferences and Especially For Youth, and read the Book of Mormon a couple of times. I had, it's true, gone through a semi-rebellious stage in high school, where a friend and I would give air to some of our more agnostic thoughts. But for the most part, I was trudging in the same zig-zagging line toward a mission as the rest of them. I just wasn't sure I wanted, or even should go.

The rub is, neither were most of my friends. Oh, some of them wanted to believe. Many actually did, albeit tentatively. And no worry. Any deficiencies in testimony would be cured once we were in the supercharged spiritual environment of the MTC. Or so we were assured by well-meaning spiritual leaders.

But what if they were wrong? What if I didn't get a testimony on my mission? What if I went through two years of pretending. Of lying? And these lies would be of the worse kind, convincing people to make enormous sacrifices, to bet their entire future on my message, when I never believed this message in the first place. No, I must either gain a testimony before I entered the MTC or not at all.

As one by one my friends made their way to the MTC--some out of duty, others from genuine desire--I began to wonder if I was making a mistake in waiting. I felt like the young man who stays home from the war with vague claims of a disability, while all the townsfolk watch him disapprovingly. Girlfriends urged me to go, uncles and aunts gave gentle suggestions, my aged grandfather talked about what a handsome missionary I was, or would be. My siblings and parents kept nudging me in that direction. And still I resisted.

I won't give the tedious details about how I eventually found a testimony--probably through the same methods employed by desperate missionaries--or how I eventually reasoned myself out of that same testimony. Those details are available elsewhere on this site. The bottom line is that I never went on a mission.

"But what about me?" you ask. "Isn't this supposed to be about whether or not I should go on a mission?"

Yes it is. And surprisingly, I'm not going to tell you not to go on a mission, even though that was the best decision for me. There are those who mean it when they say that a mission was the best two years of their lives. There are others who are transformed by joining the church and embracing the hope and change offered by those missionaries. I've seen boys leave on missions and return men and I've known converts who will be forever grateful to the young men or women who introduced them to the church.

Nevertheless, a mission must be a choice. You must not default on this decision and go simply because your girlfriend or your parents expect it. If you are a girl, it is just as wrong to go because you are 21 and bored, uncertain about your major or about your love life. This kind of decision is the most important that can be made and it is simply immoral to make it without serious thought. Both you and the people you convert will be irrevocably altered by the decision you make and it must be you who makes it, not Mormon culture and not the church.

Let's examine a few reasons this decision is so important.

Two Years of Your Life

Sounds obvious, but it bears repeating. This is time you could be spending in college or traveling the world, or in any of a number of other pursuits. However it is spent, this time will be gone forever when you return. This life is the only life we know we've been given and its time is very precious. It would be a shame to waste two years on something that you are not certain about.

Leave a Boy, Return a Man

There is little doubt that personalities are changed by missions. Some of this is additional maturity. Some of this is....well, something else.

The mission is an intense experience. Constant work and pressure. Casual decisions and relationships become taboo, replaced by a soldier-like obedience to your leaders. You spend every moment with a companion who may be a great guy or may be the world's biggest jerk, but will wear on you sooner or later. You deal with the strain of difficult emotions, including rejection, boredom, embarrassment, and loneliness. Your body suffers from excessive work, strange diets, and even illnesses that you must simply work through. There are no weekends on a mission, no sick leave. You will feel occasional flashes of inspiration that will seem almost hallucinogenic in their power because they are contrasted against the crush of daily emotions.

And when you return? We all know missionaries who act like pod people when they return. Where is that brother or friend who could crack the funniest jokes? Who is this deadly serious man who has replaced him? Why is he so preachy all the time?

Some of these changes fade over time, of course, but doesn't it make you wonder about the intensity of an experience that would so seriously alter someone's personality? The war metaphor is once again appropriate. A man who has lived through a napalm firestorm in the Vietnamese jungle will never be the same again. Neither will a returned missionary.

Changing the Lives of Others

Let's face it. The vast majority of missionary work involves changing nothing at all. You will deal with a seemingly endless series of cancelled appointments and disinterest. Occasionally, however, you will have the opportunity to baptize an individual or a family. Are you prepared to offer this sort of change?

Consider the young woman who has been a Catholic all her life and for untold generations before. Her family will be hurt when she joins the church and bewildered by her new friends and lifestyle. When she meets a young returned missionary (perhaps even yourself, in another year or two) and goes with him to the temple, her parents will be hurt beyond words when they are forced to wander the grounds of the temple while their daughter is married somewhere inside.

Now, all of that is worth it if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is all that it claims to be. If, indeed, this is the one true path that God has established to regain his presence, any sacrifice on Earth is worth it in order to find this path and hold to it.

But if you're not certain, do you want to take this risk? Are you ready to ask people to make these sacrifices if you are not certain yourself? And what if, like me, you are not certain that you would find a testimony on a mission?

It is my hope and, yes, testimony, that you think hard on these issues before you act. If you do, you will make the right decision for you and those others you impact.

Best wishes.