Meet Catherine
Age: 23
From: I moved a lot growing up, but my family is currently in Virginia.
Family: I’m the eldest of six kids.
School: I’m working on a degree in Communication!
Hobbies: Reading, Writing, Drawing, DnD, & taking on too many projects
Mission: Global Services Department, Utah, 2020-2022
What’s a service LDS mission?
[Members of the Church of Jesus Christ can go on proselyting or service missions. Both types of missionaries volunteer their time and strive to serve God. Proselyting missionaries invite people to learn more about God and teach lessons. Service missionaries use their skills and talents to help out community or Church organizations as needed].
Since my mission, service missions have been integrated under mission presidents like proselyting missionaries, but at the time I served, my mission president was actually my stake president. So some of the things that I’ll say about my mission may have changed by the time any sisters reading or watching this will go on their missions, but I’ll just share my experience.
A service mission was first brought up when I was going through and seeing my doctors to get my papers figured out. Two separate doctors were like, “Hey have you considered a service mission?”
I was like, “What’s that?” They explained it to me, and I was like, “Oh, that sounds super cool.” I know some people who didn’t want to serve a service mission at first, like they felt they were downgraded or something. But to me, a mission was always about having a chance to serve my eternal family and God’s children. And so a service mission was just another way to do that. I actually wrote on my papers, “Please send me on a service mission,” and they did.
When I was called on my service mission, the first thing that happened was I was contacted by my SMLs, my service mission leaders. We were grouped in districts, and the mission president role was split between SMLs and stake presidents. I don’t know if SMLs are still around, but I started when some new SMLs came on. So we had a meeting with them and the stake president. We went over all of my options.
The first thing you do is look at the service opportunities in your areas. You can do food banks. You can do Catholic services, church stuff. There’s all sorts of variety in the things you can do. But it does depend on your local area and what’s available.
They let you visit a couple of the sites, get a feel of how they work, and they interview you for a couple of them before you and the leadership decide which is the best match for you. And it doesn’t have to just be one, sometimes people do one or two or even three at a time.
I ended up doing just one assignment my entire mission, although most missionaries can change around the 6 month mark. You can choose to stay or change your assignment, or you could choose with your stake president, that this is the time for your mission to end. I did the whole 18 months at the Global Services Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s basically the Church’s Customer Service Department. If you get feedback sent to Gospel Library, Gospel Living, Member Tools, Sacred Music, apps like that, any response to feedback or any questions you have is probably from a service mission site.
It’s kind of basically a volunteer opportunity with missionary elements intertwined.
Every day we’d start with a little devotional and split into our groups. Every Thursday around lunch we’d have a bigger devotional. If there was a missionary finishing their mission we’d have what’s called a sendoff. There’d be a little meeting dedicated to them, thanking them for what they did for the mission. There was a presentation that was kind of like a yearbook, with people leaving different messages for them that I thought was super cute. As a leadership assistant, that was one of my favorite things to do.
Actually it was mentioned in my interview with the GSD leadership, that their leadership assistants were being released within 2 weeks of each other, within that month. And they were like, “Hey, how would you like to be a leadership assistant?”
I actually ended up serving as either a leadership assistant or management assistant the entire length of my mission, besides my first two weeks.
So I didn’t get a lot of the same experiences that some other missionaries did, but it was a great opportunity to support the other missionaries in the leadership at the GSD.
Because we weren’t assigned companions, and we didn’t have the same schedule as proselyting missionaries, (just because a lot of the time people on service missions can’t keep that schedule), we had [slightly different guidelines]. What was expected of us was to have a scripture study buddy, and we were expected to read and study for an hour a day. Now I wasn’t always perfect at that, but that was the goal.
For maybe half of my mission, I was the only sister in my district. That was pretty interesting. I had to get creative with how I did my scripture study, but that was a really unique experience. You do still have district and sister leaders. I got to be a sister leader for a while, and it was a great experience working with the district leader just to give input to the service mission leaders about what could help our fellow missionaries.
Christ on Campus
Christ on Campus is a podcast that I’m going to start. It’s going to be released on January 6th. It’s aimed toward college and university students, but anyone can listen if they want. It’s about Jesus Christ and helping us find Him in the time of our lives, you know, when Mom isn’t there to drag us of out of bed and take us to sacrament meeting. It’s up to us to make the decision and commitment for ourselves.
It starts with a little spiritual moment where I, or someone else, saw Christ on campus that week. And then I’ve collected a list of harder questions about Jesus Christ for my fellow college students, and I attempt to answer those questions doctrinally using scriptures and General Conference quotes, so it’s not my opinion, it’s doctrine. The point of this is to speak of Christ, as Nephi says in 2 Nephi. So it’s a doctrinally focused podcast to bring me and hopefully others closer to Christ.
Check out the Christ on Campus podcast here.
This is something that God decided I’m working on, and I’m just trying to keep up.
What was the process like for you in deciding whether to serve an LDS mission or not?
Growing up, I never wanted to serve a mission, ever. I thought, “I’m so glad I’m a sister, because I don’t want to serve a mission.”
But then I was in high school, in Utah at the time. So there’s seminary, a scripture study program for youth. In Utah, they have seminary buildings right next to the schools, so you can just go during a school period. You don’t have to wake up at 5am to go [like in other places outside of Utah]. Yes, I know, I got a little privileged for that. I wish everyone had that. Anyway, because there were occasionally lunch activities there, I went to one, and there were sisters speaking, and there was pizza. Someone asked them how they decided to serve a mission. And I just idly thought, “Hey God, am I supposed to serve a mission?”
And you know how Joseph Smith, when talking about the Restoration, says like the scripture, the Spirit came in with force? Yeah, I felt the Spirit like a ton of bricks. A train full of bricks. Whoa! And the Spirit was like, “Yes, yes, you’re going on a mission,” and I was like, “Oh, okay, I’ll trust you on this.”
The spiritual prompting was very impactful, like I know I would have known and understood, even if it had been quiet. But I think the force of it helped me understand how important it was.
From there it’s kind of interesting, because I knew I was going on a mission, but I didn’t know when. I actually took a gap year after I graduated before I did anything, because junior year, I got sick. I ended up coming out with some extreme brain fog, chronic fatigue, just a lot of symptoms that made it hard for me to function like I once did. So I took that time. I worked, I got some functionality back. It was a hard fight, but it was worth it.
But eventually, after putting it off, because it didn’t feel like the right time, I finally submitted my papers, because it finally felt right. I got my letter back, and I actually opened it by myself, with maybe 3 other people in the room. (You receive a letter from Church leaders explaining the call to serve and where you’ll be serving as a missionary).
I didn’t wait for my mom to be back from her camping vacation. I don’t know how she feels about that. She hasn’t tried to shame me for it thankfully, but I feel kind of bad for not waiting. But I was very excited. And I also kind of didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. No shame to those who decide to do a big opening. If you want to do that, that’s totally up to you. But to me I wanted it to be a little bit more of a personal spiritual experience, like to have a knowledge that God knew where I was supposed to be, because I was a little worried about going on a proselyting mission. I have anxiety. I don’t like the idea of knocking on doors all day and having people potentially shout at me. That’s not my vibe.
So I was really happy I was called on a service mission. Actually, me going on a service mission, convinced several other people I know to turn in their papers to try for a service mission, and they are now on or have finished their service missions. And they’ve said it’s been a really great experience for them.
What was hard about serving an LDS mission?
So the thing about a service mission is that you live at home, and the PlayStation is right there! And your friends are only a phone call away, so you are very much still in the environment you were in before your mission. You just have to make the conscious choice to follow the mission rules anyway. Like technically, there’s nothing stopping you. You don’t have a companion to keep you from going on a date. You have to make the conscious choice to do that, and sometimes that was really hard. So I’d say it’s stuff like staying focused, choosing to treat every day like the Sabbath, which was the hardest part, especially at the beginning. But as time goes on, it gets a little easier, as you adapt to a new lifestyle that a service mission kind of provides for you.
The other thing that was hard for me came from being in leadership positions. First, I want to say I was no better than any other missionary there. We were all treated equally by the leaders, and so I don’t consider myself better than any of the others. But being a leadership assistant did change some things for me. For example, since I started in 2020, everything was online for the first half of my mission. It wasn’t until August of 2021 that we started going back to the building, but I was one of the first to start doing that.
As more people started coming in, I was seated next to a sister in a wheelchair, who needed someone to be next to her. Across the hallway, there were the other missionaries, and we could come over and say hi to the other missionaries when we wanted to. But she wasn’t there every day, and I didn’t actually have a lot of opportunities to interact with a lot of the other missionaries. So to a certain point it felt kind of isolating.
I love and respect all of the missionaries, but they have closer friends from the mission, and I’ve come to peace with that. I was just kind of put on a pedestal in a way, that I kind of wish I had fought against more. But I suspect that this is something that other missionaries struggle with, like assistants to the president or district leaders on proselyting missions. Being put in a position of responsibility and quasi leadership can have that effect.
What did you love about your mission?
So, I was good at it. A lot of the skills I used were things I already knew, but was kind of relearning after I got sick. I actually had the most improvement during my mission. My mom says looking back, she saw me grow in leaps and bounds over the months I was serving, and it really is true that when you’re serving God, He will strengthen you to be capable of the things that He needs you to do, and sometimes you can even keep that after your mission, like I did.
And like I was talking about before about community, I might not have been able to make a lot of deep connections, but there were so many wonderful people, including my fellow missionaries, the leadership I worked with, including Elder Neville and Betty Stearman.
There are also so many projects you juggle to keep everything running smoothly, and so it’s a big responsibility, and there’s a lot of work to do. I liked being able to do important work. I felt like I was making a difference.
In feedback work, we’d get responses sometimes, it’d be like, “Thank you, this made it so that I could give my Sunday school lesson or sacrament meeting talk.” Or, “Thank you, our missionaries couldn’t find Preach My Gospel, and you made it possible for us to find it again.”
So it’s really fulfilling in a way that’s different from having a baptism goal. The goals are different in a way that I really appreciated.
I am good at Excel. That’s the thing that I was best at, that I was able to make the most use of. I was able to innovate, and improve, and help, and take on projects, and help lift loads off of other people’s shoulders. That to me was the most fulfilling part of my mission, feeling needed, and feeling like I was doing a good job. It didn’t always feel like that, just to be clear. It didn’t always feel like that, but the moments it did were probably the highlights of my mission.
There was also the one conference I was able to go to, (since sisters only serve a year and a half, some of us only get to go to one.) But the one I went to, Tad R. Callister spoke, and that was really cool, and I really enjoyed that. I really look up to him. I have two copies of the Infinite Atonement, which is a book that he wrote.
What did you learn on the mission about yourself and about God?
I think the two biggest things I learned are intertwined:
God will give you something to do, and then He will make you able to do it, when you put in the effort.
So I learned that trying is enough. Putting in the effort is enough, and God will make it enough.
Another thing I learned is the joy that comes from being an instrument in the hand of God.
Like being able to represent Him in a way, and to serve others and help others feel His love and see His light. It’s just something that I grew to love so much.
What advice would you give to young women preparing to serve missions?
First thing I’d say is strengthen your relationship with God. Your mission is one of the times when He’s going to be the closest to you. Just having the name tag on makes things different. He’s like right there, and the closer you are to Him already, the more you’ll feel His presence.
Being close with God will make it easier to follow promptings. It will make it easier for you to choose hard things, for you to do hard things, for you to accomplish what’s scary. It also helps you in the sleepless nights. It helps you when you doubt your abilities, doubt your choice, to go on a mission. Having God there as someone to hold you up and carry you, when you can’t carry yourself, which is something that a lot of service missionaries and even proselyting missionaries experience.
I met a lot of missionaries on my mission who started in proselyting missions, and then were transferred to service missions, and it was really hard on them at first.
But we all work together to build the kingdom of God, just in different ways.
A castle needs both carpenters and masons to be built. They have completely different work, but they’re both building, and they’re working together to create something beautiful that can provide shelter for others.
My other tip, start lifestyle changes now. If you’re going on a proselyting mission, start waking up closer and closer to the time that proselyting missionaries wake up. It’s so much easier if you’re already used to it. I wake up at 5am right now. It’s so much easier when you’re already used to it.
Try and gradually change your focus to things more Christ-centered. Choose to listen to maybe Christian rock instead of the new pop song. The pop song will be there later, I promise. You can surprise yourself later and have fun with that.
There’s also a lot of great Christian music out there. A lot of it isn’t going to perfectly align with our beliefs. But Mandisa is a great one, Britt, Nicole. There’s just a lot of great music you can listen to that isn’t hymns.
And that’s in addition to the Strength of Youth albums which are fantastic. And I listened to them all the time on my mission, but I understand it’s going to be up to your mission president, what you can and can’t listen to of that type.
Start making lifestyle changes now, so that when the time goes for you to start being on your mission, you can jump in feet first, all in, let’s get started. Dedicate yourself to serving God, instead of floundering and struggling to get your feet under you from being tossed in head first.
Serving Before Flirting (on an LDS mission)
There is a particular missionary that I had a huge crush on, like mega huge. It was like even after I finished my mission before he finished his, I was still gaga over him.
He’s married to someone else now, and I’m very happy for him, because that’s how it goes when you love someone, you’ll support them in their happiness, even if it’s not with you.
And so there was a very fine line I had to walk, because we worked together a couple of times. I got to make the conscious choice to not express interest, to remain professional, to focus on our joint purpose, and to focus on Christ.
You know, I’ve heard some people who are like nuns say, I’m married to Christ, I’m married to God, and I think we can look at it as a missionary kind of metaphorically, you’re dating Christ for 18 months of your life.
You’re spending a lot of time with Him. You’re feeling His love. You’re loving Him. You’re having new experiences together. You’re trying new things together. You’re not actually dating him, to be clear. But metaphorically it can help, if you think of it as you can’t date this guy, you’re already committed. You can’t cheat!
More questions about serving before flirting? Read YOMO! You Only Mission Once: A Guide for Sister Missionaries coming out in March 2025.
Joy vs Fun
I would also say there’s a difference between joy and having fun. Going back to the whole thing, where the PlayStation is right there, you have to choose to seek joy in the gospel of Christ.
There was a part of my mission, where I was really struggling to make it through the whole day without a nap. I was just so tired. This was before I went back into the office, and my mom told me a story about my Nana, when she was younger and had several small children. She had the choice when all of her kids were put down for a nap, she could either take a nap herself, or she could do her scripture study. And what my mom told me, what her mom told her, is that when she chose to read her scriptures, she was always better rested, than if she’d taken a nap.
So I tried it, and it works! If you’re in that situation where your choices are take the time to do your scripture study or take a nap, if there’s not another time you can do your scripture study, do your scripture study, because God will make it enough.
You can have fun and feel so much joy on your mission! To learn more, check out YOMO! You Only Mission Once: A Guide for Sister Missionaries coming out in March 2025.
Any other thoughts you’d like to share?
I think the biggest thing I’d say about a mission is that you get what you put into it.
If you go in half-hearted, like I’ll do it because everyone expects me to, you’re [not going to get as much out of it]. You need to go in with the right attitude. You have to serve with all your heart, might, mind, and strength. You have to choose to dedicate yourself for the entire 18 months or 2 years.
And when you do, when you’re all in, God will go all in on you, because He knows that you will do what He needs you to do.
You’ll get more of that personal conversion. I’m not going to say that you’re going to magically get more baptisms, because it’s not the case. My dad never baptized a single person on his mission. But he sowed gospel seeds in Japan, and that was enough for him. So even if you don’t see the results you’re expecting, you’ve still made progress, you’ve still done something, even if it might not be what you had expected to do or had hoped for.
Another thing is God knows you and knows where you need to go, and why you need to go there, even if you might not know. Looking back, I know why I had to turn my mission papers in then, and I know why I had to stay at the GSD the entire 18 months. They just needed me there.
And something that people get stuck up on, is when you get your mission call, in the letter, it says you are assigned to a specific location. When you are reassigned, that’s not a sign that something is wrong.
That’s a sign that someone needs you somewhere else now.
God’s plan: He doesn’t have a Plan B, because it’s all Plan A, because His plan is perfect. There’s nothing wrong with being reassigned.
Post-Mission Advice
Just keep the good habits from your mission. You don’t have to keep the whole hour of scripture study, but cling to your scripture study.
When you’re on your mission, you went in feet first, and you’re all in, and you have these miraculous experiences. Then, you go home, and that’s when Satan is going to try to get you, because you don’t have the name tag anymore, you don’t have the same protections.
And he can say, don’t worry, you don’t have to do your scripture study today. It’s okay, the scriptures won’t help you find answers to your questions, anyway. They were just written by white old men millennia ago. What’s the point? But we have to keep in mind that God knows more than we do. And we need to follow His directions, even if we have questions.
And one of the things I’m going to focus on in my podcast is the difference between having a question and having a doubt. Having a doubt stops you. You start questioning everything you already know. You start looking around into the fog of darkness and asking yourself, “Is there light somewhere else, maybe? Is this light dimmer? I’m not sure I like this light.”
A question, you say, “Okay, I want to find an answer to this. So I’m going to keep hold of the iron rod, and I’m going to keep going, and I’m going to keep looking for an answer to that question. But I trust what I already know. I know that God loves me. I know that the Book of Mormon has words of God. I know that I can feel the Holy Ghost with me when I pray and when I read my scriptures.”
Questions over doubts. Questions are good, doubts are not.
A Note On Coming Home Earlier than Planned
You can choose every 6 months on a service mission whether or not it’s time for you to be done. You definitely council with God and your mission president with that.
Sometimes, God doesn’t need you to stay the whole 18 months or 2 years.
That doesn’t mean He doesn’t need you, and that doesn’t mean that your service wasn’t good enough to be still required. It just means that you’re needed somewhere else right now.
0 Comments