A two year mission term is not a trip, it is a life change. I moved across the country to a remote place in Alaska, and by the time my two years as a missionary concluded, people back home had moved on to new things and so had I. After a week long visit to see my family, I returned to continue my life in Nome.
That week was full of much needed time with my family, but it also brought up some confusing emotions for me. I wondered if anyone really cared to hear about the kind of work I had been doing here, or if they would just prefer to hear exciting stories about living in a state most people have only seen on T.V.
It was recently suggested to me by someone who had no idea that I like to write that maybe writing would be a good way to process my emotions about the two year mission experience that is now over. I did not tell that person that I have not written about those experiences because I have become doubtful that anyone truly wants to hear about them in detail. But, writing is what I do, and so here we are.
I may have written this before, but there was a very poignant moment on the last day of training when we were practicing for the commissioning service. We were reciting the Wesleyan Covenant Prayer, which contains the line "put me to doing, put me to suffering.". We were made to recite that line several times until we said the words "doing" and "suffering" with equal enthusiasm. Throughout my two years, "put me to suffering" became the first phrase to enter my mind whenever something stressful happened at work. Whether I was asked to take on a weekend project on a week when I had already done at least 40 hours, or when I was trying to juggle multiple tasks and find solutions for constant crises while coworkers twiddled their thumbs, my internal sarcastic mantra was "put me to suffering." It eventually became a twisted joke between myself and my cohort of missionaries whenever one of us was given some extra task to add to the multiple projects we were already responsible for.
When I said the words "put me to suffering", I was picturing occasional, intermittent suffering. I did not realize that for much of my time as a missionary, it would become part of my daily life. I imagined suffering because of the issues within the community, issues I believed I would work with my placement site to improve. It never crossed my mind that the majority of my suffering would be at the hands of the people who I thought wanted me here. I naively believed I was going to a placement site that had a genuine passion for the causes that the US-2 program is geared towards and I never suspected that young adults moving across the country to work with communities around social justice issues would be taken advantage of by being overworked. US-2 missionaries are on a stipend and therefore did not get paid overtime. From a financial standpoint, I guess it made sense to have us work as much as possible, but from a mental health standpoint it was a very difficult role to play.
The realization that an apology for this treatment is never going to come is an difficult fact to live with. Learning how to forgive people who don't even understand why they should be sorry is a huge challenge for me. But for the sake of my own well-being, I'm trying.
The missionary experience was not what I thought it was going to be. I was put to types of suffering that I never saw coming, and my inability to live up to the standards of what others thought a missionary should be caused me to doubt myself at times. But even with the struggles, I still believe the good outweighed the bad. I got to experience what it feels like to become a trusted adult for youth who have every reason not to trust anyone. I developed the kind of friendships that only form when you endure suffering together. And if I ever have to work 60 hour weeks in the future, I have lots of experience to draw from.
