By Abbey Olsen
After five months of indecision, pleas for guidance and fasting, Kassie Campbell, then a BYU history major, knew she had to make a choice about serving a full-time mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“I decided not to go.”
Though she was close to graduation, had taken the LSAT and was researching law schools, Campbell doubted her decision.
“Maybe you should go,” she thought, realizing that all she had to do was make a decision to recognize the right one.
In November 2002, Campbell mailed her papers to church headquarters the same week she got them. Two weeks later, she received her call to Quito, Ecuador. In December, she had her undergraduate diploma. In February, leaving a boyfriend behind, Campbell entered the Missionary Training Center. The baby in a family of siblings who had served missions had decided to go.
For BYU students like Campbell, especially those who have graduated, the decision defies logic. They put off education, marriage and career to do something they are not required to do. They desire to serve, but unlike the young men, how they serve may not mean going on a mission. But for those who choose to go, a mission is an education in itself.
Jayrin Farley, a junior majoring in applied physics, is completing her mission papers. A mission has been at the back of Farley”s mind since she followed her older brother around collecting change as he began his mission fund. Farley will turn 21 in July, but she started praying about a mission while still in high school.
“When you get so much closer, everything that you felt before is still a really guiding force in your decision, but you have to make it all over again because you finally realize the full weight and magnitude of the decision you”re making,” Farley said.
Farley said she worries that school, already a challenge, would be even more difficult if she left right now – when all her classes are building each other.
“I”m afraid when I get back, I won”t remember stuff; I won”t be able to do well in my classes,” she said.
Farley questioned what to do about dating. She still dates but tells the guys she wants to serve a mission.
Farley also worried about her ability to give enough of herself, but most of the concerns lessen as she gets closer to getting her papers in.
“You just feel comfortable with your decision,” she said.
On the day the missionaries arrived at the Provo Missionary Training Center, Donald Q. Cannon, who served in a branch presidency at the MTC from 2001 to 2005, asked the missionaries, “Tell me why you came on a mission.”
He said many of the sisters had graduated from college, hit a junction in their lives and, not knowing quite what to do next, thought a mission was a worthwhile thing to do in the meantime. He said, for other sisters, it was, “I”ve always wanted to serve a mission, ever since I was 3 years old.”
For Brooke Grant, the inspiration came when she was 4 years old. Traveling in the car with her mother, Grant saw some missionaries riding bikes and said to her mom, “What do missionaries do?”
Her mother explained, “They tell people about God.”
Leaning her small body over the front seat of the car, 4-year-old Grant said, “Mom! I”m going on a mission.”
“I never questioned it after that day,” Grant said.
But when 21 came around, Grant hesitated.
“My dad was my bishop at the time, and he said, ”Are you? Aren”t you?” I said, ”No, I am, but I don”t know for some reason,”” she said.
One day her dad came home with a stack of mission papers from church headquarters, slammed them down on the table in front of her and walked away.
“It was as if God had put them in front of me and said, ”It”s time to go.””
Grant turned in her papers a week before her 22nd birthday. She served in the Madrid Spain Mission while the temple was being built. After completing her 18 months, her mission president came to her and asked her to extend almost two months to help at the temple open house.
“Had I gone even a month earlier on my mission – much less a year – I would have missed that opportunity, which was phenomenal,” said Grant, now an English graduate student who teaches an English 115 course at BYU.
For other young women, the desire to serve at primary age builds and culminates right around age 21.
This was the case for Brittany Beahm. Beahm”s excitement when she turned 21 was confirmation enough.
As a 7-year-old, Beahm and her only sibling, a brother who is two years younger, were talking one day about how they could go on a mission at the same time.
“We ran and told my mom, and she burst into tears,” Beahm said. “She hadn”t expected me – her only daughter – to want to serve a mission.”
Beahm and her brother got their calls the same day, entered the MTC the same day and departed to their missions on the same air plane (she to Toulouse, France and he to Porto, Portugal).
Beahm, who left for France before she received her undergraduate degree, jumped right back into BYU after serving. She said it was easy with one phone call saying, “I”m coming back.”
For students in other nations, jumping right back into school is not as easy. In France, Beahm said, once students leave certain programs, they often are not allowed to come back to the program without reapplying and retaking classes. Beahm said she watched missionaries choose to serve, sacrificing their acceptance into a professional school to serve a mission.
“We make it out to be more of a big deal sometimes, when in reality – when you see what people from other nations are facing – it”s relatively simple for us to leave and come back and feel like we haven”t really missed a beat,” said Beahm, who is now an English graduate student.
Returned sister missionaries say that a young woman does not have to choose just one option in the decisions of a mission or marriage, higher education or being a mom.
But sometimes the right thing is not to go.
Wendy Nielsen, who served in Munich, Germany, said a mission is difficult.
“As sisters are not required to serve, it makes it hard if you don”t have a reason for being there,” Nielsen said in an e-mail interview. “I saw/experienced how uncommitted sisters can affect a companionship and district let alone the questioning within the individual herself.”
David Pratt, who served in Bogot?, Columbia as mission president, said some sisters in his mission served for the wrong reasons, but the majority of the sisters were there for the right reasons and worked hard.
“A mission is work,” said Beverly Pratt, his wife. “It is not going off on a vacation to see the world … It”s your total dedication to the Lord.
“If they think they”re going to go out and have a lot of baptisms and think everything”s going to be hunky-dory, they”re in for a big fall,” she said.
A mission is difficult work, but it can prepare a young woman for challenges and opportunities when they returned home.
Catherine Chou, now a third year law school student, chose to serve after her first year in law school. She served in Taichung, Taiwan, and returned last winter semester when everyone was already in the academic mode.
“I had to dictionary-dot-com stuff during my classes while the professors were talking because I didn”t remember legal words for sure, and I didn”t remember a lot of normal English words,” she said.
After serving a mission, Chou”s goal to balance a part-time career and have a family changed to wanting to use her education for her children as a stay-at-home mom.
“Some of the opportunities that are showing up now, I definitely wouldn”t have had if I did the traditional three-year track,” Chou said.
Within the first few months of returning, Chou found a job through the Career Services office that combined economics (her undergraduate degree at BYU), legal work and health care, a subject she wasn”t familiar with. When she graduates in December, she plans to work at the capitol to help change health care policy.
Like Chou, Kassie Campbell also put off law school to take advantage of an 18-month gap to go on a mission and be back on schedule for school at the beginning of a semester. Campbell, now a second-year law student at BYU”s J. Reuben Clark law school, returned from her mission 10 days before her first year in law school began.
“Our lives have seasons, and we can do all things in their season,” Campbell said, whose previously supportive boyfriend didn”t write her when she entered the MTC.
She got no response to the letters she sent him.
“I worked, and the Lord helped me, and I forgot about it,” she said.
Some women have to face staying single, but the mission is not the reason for not getting married, she said.
“If the mission is in the cards, everything will work itself out,” Campbell said.
She said a mission is not for everyone, but a person – young man or woman – should pay the price to do the research, fast and find out.
“One prayer doesn”t cut it,” Campbell said.
Campbell, who said she also wants to use her education as a mother, said she learned more on her mission than the 21 years preceding it. She also said she has learned more about herself and the Lord in law school than ever before.
“Life”s decisions are left open to us, and we are free to choose the manner in which we use our talents,” she said. “There may be one right or wrong destination, but there is not necessarily a right or wrong manner to get there.”
