How to Prepare for an LDS Mission: Morgan’s Story #Philadelphia #Trust #Relationships

Meet Morgan M. Tate

Age: 27

From: I was born in Philadelphia, and I was adopted when I was little so I grew up in Davis County, Utah.

Career: I was a teacher, and now I’m an assistant principal. 

Family: I’m practically engaged; youngest of three kids, and my siblings are also adopted; my parents are white, my older sister is white, and my brother and I are both black and from Philly but are not blood-related

Hobbies: Traveling, being outdoors (love taking my dog out when it’s warm), hiking, going to concerts, spending time with friends and family, and weightlifting

Mission: Philadelphia Pennsylvania Mission, and I served from July 2016 to December 2017

What was your process like in deciding whether to serve an LDS mission or not?

So I never wanted to serve an LDS mission. I always felt it was for the most “Mormon” girls, and I’m not that girl. I thought I would never serve a mission.

Then, at my first semester in Snow College in the fall, I was trying to decide what institute class to take. Someone was just like, “Oh, this mission prep teacher is super fun.” I was like, “Okay, I’ll take Mission Prep.” I told my friend we should take Mission Prep, and she said, “We aren’t going on LDS missions,” and I explained that other young women said the teacher is cool, and these girls were here last year, so they know. I just kind of signed up for it, but then my friend bailed and stopped coming with me.  But I kept going, and I really liked it.

Within that class, I was like, “Should I go on a mission? Should I?” And I just did. And like, obviously we’d have assignments, such as read different parts in the Scriptures and stuff. One day in between Thanksgiving break and Christmas, I was in my dorm room reading my scriptures, and I just decided I should go on a mission. And the verse wasn’t even about missionary work. I don’t know how I pulled missionary work from it, but I did. And so I was like, “Okay, I think I’m going to go.”

 And then I came home Christmas break, and I told my parents I’m going to put in my papers and leave next summer, after a whole year of doing school. So that’s kind of how it came to be, kind of random. I wasn’t planning on it, but it happened.

What was hard about serving an LDS mission?

I think for me I’m a very independent person. I also don’t love rules.

So for me, I was like, “Wait, I have to be everywhere with you [with a companion].” Just the structure of it.

For me at the beginning, it was really hard. I had an amazing trainer, and she was really good about following rules, which was good. I’m glad I was put with someone who was very obedient to the mission rules. But being with someone all the time was a little tricky at times, especially if you didn’t love them. Well, you know. Like, if you didn’t, they weren’t your best friend. I think there are companions that you’re like, “I could stay with them forever.” And then there were others that you’re like, “If I can even just make it to transfer day.”

But I also tend to like hard. That’s my personality. I like a challenge.

The mission was hard. I’m sure there are points were one feels like you’re not talking to anyone, and it’s just like failure after failure after failure. And then you keep seeing other people in the mission, who are baptizing, or they’re like teaching [lots of] people or something. And so I think, like for me, I compare. And so I think that was hard for me, being in areas or kind of going through a lull in the mission of like, “I’m not teaching a ton of people,” or “I don’t feel like I’m really doing as much as I should be doing,” you know.

Being with companions or being away from my family weren’t hard for me. There were moments where I missed my family, but it wasn’t too hard to be away in a new city.

I think having a good relationship with my mission president [helped]. I felt like I could email him and talk to him about things. Also, getting to know the other missionaries in my district or zone, and kind of being vulnerable. I’m not like a very big, vulnerable person, so I think the mission helped me become more vulnerable.

So yeah, I would say, the rules also helped me to be more structured. And I’m very structured in my life now. I like to plan and be organized. So I think those things in the moment may have been sucky. But then, as you kept doing it, it was just the way that you were living. And so I think that’s why I just got used to it, really, after a few months.

What did you love about your mission?

I was born in Philadelphia. It kind of had, like a sense of home. Stepping off the plane and then my first day in my area, the temple was being dedicated at the time. We got to do Temple Tours, which was really fun. So the first, like 6 weeks of my mission, was doing the Temple Tours.

Either you were at the visitor’s center by the Philadelphia Temple, like talking to people after they finish their tour, or you were doing the video at the chapel across the street. So that was really fun to do. And you were with all the sisters in the entire mission. We were all in central PA. So that was really cool, because I got to know a lot of sisters and some elders that I probably wouldn’t have known if there wasn’t the Temple Open house. So that was really cool.

So that was probably one of my favorite things that we did on the first part of my LDS mission.

Also, the people. It’s really cool to get to know people’s stories, because everyone comes from different backgrounds and different walks of life. And sometimes [their stories] were wild. I had never heard of those things, or I didn’t know people that did those things. Yeah. So it was really cool to like gain a different perspective of people.

I think it helped me develop a perspective of being curious and not judgmental, being like, “Oh, why do they think like this? Or why do they do this?” Or even with companions, you and your companion grew up differently. And so I think that helped shape how I thought about things and everything like that. I would say that was a really fun thing.

A Miraculous Story

So I’ll just give you the synopsis of meeting my birth family.

So I knew I was adopted from Philadelphia. I thought, “I’m going to meet my birth family. That’s going to be so cool.”

So it was the summer of 2017, and I was serving in Ardmore, PA. We went to this fireside, my companion and I, for family history work.

And so we get there, and we’re talking to some less active members [people who are less involved with Church services and activities]. We brought some new friends of the Church [people interested in learning more about the gospel of Christ]. There were members there, too, including the Ward Mission Leader and the Elders Quorum [an organization for men in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints].

As we were getting it all set up, I happened to talk to a guy in the ward who was a doctor. He also knew a lot about family history, and I said, “I was wondering, if I wanted to do family history for my biological family,  how could I do that?”

He explained it, but I didn’t have time to do a lot of family history. But then he asked, “Where are you from?”

I said, “I was born here in Philadelphia,” and told him the name of the specific hospital.

He said, “That’s where I work.”

This man was moving though on Monday to Virginia, and it was a Sunday.

He said, “I can break HIPAA for you, since I’m moving. Who cares? We have all the hospital records.”

I said, “I don’t know my birth info. I don’t know my biological mom’s name. My mom hadn’t told me that yet.”

He was like, “Dang it!”

But then I said, “You know what, I can’t call my mom in Utah, but you could call her and kind of explain, and then get the info.”

I waited in a different room while the doctor called her.

He called my mom. The next P-day (Preparation Day- where missionaries have time to clean, send emails, get groceries, and do a fun activity) I sent my mom a whole video from my iPad explaining the story to her.

When the doctor got my birth information, he typed in the information. He asked for my birth date, and I gave it to him. He found a name, and I said, “That probably is me,” since I lived in Philadelphia for a year. My mom kept me for a year.

So the doctor wrote down all the information, and found a name that was probably my mom’s. He said, “Best of luck, that’s really cool.”

I was like, “What do I do with this? I don’t know what to do.”

My companion at the time said, “I don’t know. What do we do? Let’s just call the mission president.”

We thought, who cares about the chain of command. This never happens, let’s just call the mission president. So we ended up calling him. He said, “I don’t really know what to do. Let me call the First Presidency tomorrow morning and see what they want us to do.”

I felt like it was fine, like it didn’t really affect me. I thought, I don’t even know them. I said, “Okay, sounds good.”

So he ends up calling us back the following day in the evening, and he said, “Hey, so I think, don’t go to the area [North Philly].”

It was out of my area anyways, so I said, “It’s fine, yeah, we won’t go.”

He said, “Maybe write them a letter.” He also said he was sorry, and I said it’s okay.

My mission president added, “So maybe you can write him a letter, and then we could mail it to him and see if you get anything back.”

I said ok and ended up writing a letter, but then I never sent it. It was weird, like somehow we just got busy.

Then, there were these three guys in my ward, who were so adamant about it, since they were there at the family history night. They said, “We’ll go to the house. We’ll figure it out, let us go.” They kept bugging me for weeks and weeks. And I was finally like, “Sure, you can go.” So I gave them the information, and they went.

My biological mom wasn’t living there at the time anymore. But her neighbors knew, and they were like, “Oh my gosh, yeah, we know who she is.”

Well, then, these guys did some more digging, and they figured out that my grandfather, my biological mother’s dad, was the chief of police at one point in Philadelphia. So they got a hold of him and was like, “Hey, your biological granddaughter! She’s serving a church mission here,” and all of these things.

My grandparents said, “Oh, my gosh! We want to meet her tomorrow.”

So this is probably July at this point, and I get a phone call from the brother in my ward and he said, “Hey, they want to meet with you tomorrow.”

I said, “I don’t know what I can do.”

So I had to call my mission president back.

My mission president said, “You’re going home in December. How do you feel about waiting until December to meet them before you go home, so that way it doesn’t take away from the work?”

I said, “Sounds good to me.” December was like 6 months away. So I just continued on my mission, and I left that area. I went to Delaware to finish out the rest of my mission, and then at the beginning of December, my companion and I drove to a church in northeast Philadelphia. We met my biological mom and her parents. Then, my adoptive parents got to zoom in. That was a very interesting experience.

My biological mom lied about why I was placed for adoption. She told everyone in her life that I died. It was very wild. She told everyone that I died, so I think everyone was like, “Oh, my gosh, this is insane!” I think my mom was a little bitter, and her parents were crying because they thought I had died. It wasn’t the warmest of welcomes.

My biological mom wasn’t very happy about that, and the following weekend I got to go have dinner with my companion, and some of my mom’s family. I got to meet my biological sister, who’s older, and my biological brother, who’s also older. He was in prison at the time, but I got to meet my twin aunts, and then my grandparents were obviously there, and so that was the weekend right before I went home that I got to like, spend the day with them, and everythin

And so that was really cool, but my biological mom was not super accepting. I tried to develop a relationship with her, from about 2017 to 2019. It  was just really hard. I went out and visited like twice.

Finally, I just asked her who my biological dad was, and she took a little time, but finally she gave me the information. So I reached out to him, and he wanted to do a paternity test just to make sure, because he didn’t believe my biological mom, which yeah, I don’t blame him. So we did a paternity test after the pandemic in 2021. It came back a few days before my birthday in February, and that I’m 99.9% his. So I was able to go out in March of 21 and meet him and his side of the family. So that was really cool. Him and I have a really close relationship. We talk weekly.

So yeah. I’m very close with him. My birth mom, unfortunately, we haven’t talked since end of 2020. So I don’t really have a relationship with her. But that’s okay. That’s just how it goes sometimes. But my birth dad and I, we have a good relationship. That was really cool to meet them, and everything at the end like that all came about throughout my mission. So that was really unique.

And my biological family are not LDS (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) at all. I think they’re just like non-denominational Christian or something like that. It was funny, my birth dad was so excited. He called me the other day that he tried to let two sister missionaries into his house because it was raining, and he lives in North Carolina. He said that he showed the missionaries the picture of me, and said, “I have a daughter who lives in Utah. Do you know her?” Because the missionaries said they were from Utah.

I explained that those missionaries are almost 10 years younger than me; they don’t know who I am.

My birth dad said, “I told them the whole story about you, and they wouldn’t come in, they just would stand at the door.”

I asked him, “Was your wife home?” He said no, and I explained that’s probably why they didn’t come inside, because of the missionary rule that sisters can’t come in, if there is not a female in the house. My birth dad said he told them to “come back anytime.”

It was so cute! But my other favorite story about him is he went down to Philadelphia, and he saw the temple.

So he went into the temple, pulled up a picture of me, and showed them at the desk, “My daughter is a member of your church. Can’t I come in and see a tour? Because I know a Mormon, so I can just like, get in for free?” He’s like, why can’t I go in?

So it was funny. He’s like they wouldn’t let him come in, and I was like explaining to him about that, because he won’t be able to come into my wedding. So I had to explain to him about the temple, that you have to be your own member. He was like, “I wasn’t going to do anything, I just wanted to hurry and look at the temple.”

But so that’s kind of a funny story about him. I gave my all my biological family a Book of Mormon with my testimony in it. So that was cool. I don’t know if anyone read it or anything, but I did give him that. When the Salt Lake Temple is rededicated, I’d love to fly him out for that.

So that’s my story. I obviously knew I was adopted, and I always wanted to find them. Because I didn’t have a relationship with them, it wasn’t like pressing to meet them. I was just like, “Oh, yeah, okay, I’ll meet them in 6 months. Sounds good.” I think it was good timing, too, at the end of my mission, because, the rejection from my birth mom, that was a big deal, and I think it was good that I got to go home two weeks later. That was a little tricky to navigate, like, oh, you birthed me, and all these things you want it to be like. So it was good that I left, and I got to work through that at home and everything, rather than sitting on my mission. I don’t know if that would have been productive, so I think that was a good call for my mission president and the First Presidency at the time to be like, “Yeah, let’s wait.”

What did you learn on your LDS mission about yourself and about God?

I learned how to approach conflict and accept rejection.

I think that’s a hard pill to swallow in life, no matter where you’re at. If you’re dating, or if you’re trying to get a new job, or if you’re trying to have kids, rejection is in all wavelengths of life. I think I hadn’t really experienced a ton of rejection. And so for me, rejection felt like the rudest thing ever, but also learning that people have their own perception of life, and they have their own thoughts and their own feelings. For me, I learned about accepting others, no matter who they are and what they are doing. I learned how to take an approach of, “People are who they are, and there are things you can’t change.”

And I think accepting people’s personality. Like with companions, learning that maybe your perception of something is good, but maybe not the best. And learning how to do conflict resolution, and how to approach people even when it comes to feelings, because I think I was more avoidant. And then, I think, after the mission, being able to have bigger conversations, which is good.

What I learned about God is trusting in Him. My favorite scripture is Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, trusting in the Lord. It’s my favorite Bible scripture.

God is in the details. I think about how I was sent to Philadelphia at that time, where I served, and the people I met. If you look back, you’re like, “Wow! He really was a part of everything,” and I think it’s crazy. Even I look back on my mission, with some of the companions I had or the people that I’ve approached, I almost can shift that and relate that to like my job now. You’re like, “Oh, I know how to deal with a person like this.” It’s almost weird. I feel like I have all these deja vu moments. I don’t know if I’m the only one in life. But I feel like I’ve experienced this before, you know. And so I think a lot of like trusting and understanding that God is in the details of our lives. I’m a planner. I like to have my life planned out, and so I think sometimes also, knowing that His plan is probably better than the plan you could create for yourself.

Yeah, I’m like, it’s okay. My plan was that I was going to be married at 21, and have like 8 children now. So sometimes the way your life goes is supposed to go that way, even though for you, you’re like, “No, no, no, no, no, this is how it should be.” And then when you look back, you’re like, “Oh, I see why I needed to be here, or I needed to be doing this,” or you know, it makes a lot of sense, after the trial.

Yeah. So I think that’s what I definitely learned was, I’m not the full driver of the whole Morgan life, you know. Like I can’t be in control all the time, like it’s not my full control. I have to rely on Him.

Your advice on: How to prepare for an LDS mission?

There’s a family of four we are super close with, and their kids are like my little siblings. The twins are on LDS missions right now. One’s a boy, serving in Peru, and one’s a girl, serving in Hawaii. I was actually talking to them about this before they left. Obviously, it’s been a minute, since they come home this summer.

But my advice is to just accept your companion and really look at, “What is this person teaching me for future relationships?” No matter if it’s a romantic relationship, or a relationship with a coworker, or with a boss, or with an in-law, you know, like any type of relationship you go through, what is this person teaching me?

I loved my mission president. I was probably out a month, and he talked about each of your companions are going to make up people in your life, whether it’s your spouse or different relationships in your life. And I’ve really tried to be like, “What can you learn from them?” Even if it is annoying, what can you learn from the person. Because everyone can learn something from someone. And so I think, definitely be open-minded and accepting.

I would also say, you know, don’t focus on home. Things will happen at home. You’ll miss things, maybe, like marriages or births, or you know, some fun things. But don’t focus on home and give yourself to God the whole time, because that’s going to be the most productive part of the mission. When you come home you’re going to be like, “Wow, I really laid it out all out in Philadelphia.” That’s why I always used to say, “I’m laying it all out here.” Obviously, you can come home and be a member missionary. Focus on the work and don’t focus on, “Oh, I missed this concert;” don’t worry about home life too much.

Also, another thing is, trust yourself, your gut instincts. If you feel like you need to knock on a door, or you need to call someone, or visit someone, just do it. Even if there could be 9 million excuses not to, such as: It seems totally out of the way,  you’re not even going that way, they’ll probably not answer, etc. Trust that feeling and listen to promptings. If you have a feeling to visit someone, don’t be like, “We could do it tomorrow, because we’ll be in that area.” Do it today.

Be Yourself

I’m a very outgoing person. I’m not a reserved or quiet person, but when I first started my LDS mission, I was like, “I have to be super reserved and quiet,” and I wasn’t happy. I was kind of getting up every day, and I was like, “I’m not me,” and I felt like a robot, almost.

And I think like, if your personality is to be outgoing and funny and make people laugh, or talk to anybody, then do that. If your companion is not that way, that’s okay. And if you’re the opposite, if you’re a very shy person, find your strengths. You might be shy. But like, maybe you have a great testimony to wrap up a lesson or something, or maybe you know the scriptures off the top of your head.

Remember you are placed in your mission in a certain area with a certain companion and people in the ward and are there for a reason. You are there for a reason, and God knows who you are and what your strengths and weaknesses are, and what efforts you would put in, and He knows everything. So be you.

Drawing upon that perspective of like, I am enough, and what I bring to the table is enough: Even learning about yourself helps. You can learn about yourself on your LDS mission and write about that in your journal. Like, okay, I’m this way, and maybe I shouldn’t be this way. Or, you know, like you really find out about your strengths and your weaknesses, like, maybe I don’t always have to share a 10-20 minute testimony at district meeting. Maybe I’ll let other people who are quiet speak up more. Or if you are shy, maybe I should speak up more because I have this good idea in district meeting or zone conference [missionary meetings].

Taking time to do some introspection with yourself, too, while you’re out on the mission.

For more tips on being yourself and not a Barbie Robot on your LDS mission, check out YOMO! You Only Mission Once: A Guide for Sister Missionaries, coming out in March 2025.

Success Story

We were in Delaware. It was in the fall, and we were just walking for an hour with no success. And then another hour went by, and finally we were just about to go home, and I was like, “Why don’t we go up the street and then go back to our apartment.” And we ended up knocking on the door of this African family, a mom and two daughters at the time. The mom had four girls, and two got baptized. And then when I left, the next one got baptized.

It’s OK to Take a Break

Using downtime can be beneficial, and also [taking a break] is good, too. Sometimes you might feel like, I just need to work all the time, 24/7. We have to be going, going, going. And even if you’re tracking, talking to your companion, that’s when you’ll get to know each other and discuss things. And you know, even that’s good, too. That’s not the end of the world. I think sometimes people get in this mindset of every minute, we need to be seeking and finding. And it’s okay to like, just breathe a minute, too.