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LDS missionary service seems to be a hot topic on ol' Twitter today, so I'm gonna share my experience. A thread...
My parents are both converts to the church and my dad served a mission in Brisbane, Australia, so I grew up with the goal to serve when it was my time.
High school wasn't a great experience for me and to make a long story short, I ended up in a little trouble with the police.
High school wasn't a great experience for me and to make a long story short, I ended up in a little trouble with the police.
After this little encounter (I was 16), my parents reached out to the missionaries serving in our location (Auckland, New Zealand), and pretty much forced them to call me up and have me drive them around to their appointments as they were on bikes at the time.
Fortunately the Elders I spent my time with were great missionaries and examples to me, and this was a big reason why I decided to straighten up and seriously prepare to go on a mission.
A mission is a massive commitment, and if I commit to doing something I will give ALL my effort. That's my DNA. Part of this commitment is financial, so after high school I worked in a factory for a year and a half at minimum wage to save up enough money to go.
My job was to literally move tons of boxes of bananas every single day from one pallet to another and check the quality before sending them off to the grocery stores.. It was NOT fun and I hate bananas now 
but it was good, hard work & taught me to grind.
but it was good, hard work & taught me to grind.
I was assigned to serve in the Adelaide, Australia mission, which is pretty much the entire middle third of Australia - a massive area, which includes the outback.
When I got to Australia I thought I was the hottest thing since sliced bread because I had spent a lot of time learning from the missionaries in NZ. I was humbled REAL QUICK. Missions are hard and you're going every day from 6am to 10pm, constantly facing rejection.
I served in some of the craziest areas and conditions imaginable. In Alice Springs we drove trucks because each weekend we would go camping "out bush" with the aboriginal people. In Katherine, it's pretty much 90 degrees year round and 100% humidity, and we rode bikes...
After spending time in the Northern Territory, I went to a small town called Robinvale (population ~4,000). The majority of R'vale is Tongan & we would tell the new missionaries that "hello" in Tongan is "fiekaia" (hungry) & everyone would invite them in for some puaka (pig)
However, the athletic training facilities in Robinvale and on the mission were not great and my diet was pretty much corned beef, pork, and Tim Tam slams...
As you can tell from the pictures, my mission was more than just two years of giving myself bad haircuts... When I went back to Adelaide we met an angel of a lady, Gwenda Longmate, who was 91. She was the only person I baptized & taught me a LOT more than I taught her.
As I mentioned above, I don't do anything with half effort. When we were out, I would speak to everyone I saw. I'm not kidding. However, sometimes these conversations weren't about the gospel - they were about life and how we could help them. How we could be a blessing to them.
My mission was the best experience for me and I couldn't have done anything better for my personal development at that stage in my life, but it's important to remember that you are not defined by one choice you make.
You can be a GREAT person whether you go or not, but if you choose to go then you need to put your whole heart into it and get lost in the work, because a mission is really more for you than it is for anyone else.
With that said, I am FAR from perfect. I make mistakes daily & have many, many weaknesses. I have questions & struggle with certain things, but one thing I know is that you will never go wrong serving people, & you will not find greater joy than that -- with OR without a badge.
