Hero's Welcome

The Angry White Loner's cousin returned from her mission abroad late Saturday night. Where she went is not important—at least, it's not relevant to today's post. But an important fact is that she came home after serving for only a handful of months rather than the 18 months usually served by sister missionaries. The reason? She had aggravated an old injury that was making it physically impossible for her to continue in the day-to-day labors of missionary work.

I joined with several other family members in greeting my cousin at the Salt Lake City airport, giving her a hero's welcome. Those people watching us—including BYU football coach Bronco Mendenhall, who was also on the flight!—were none the wiser that she had been out there for only about seven months. It was great to be a part of, and it was also fantastic to sit back and watch.

Earlier in the week, I reviewed some old mission photos of my own and remembered that this same cousin, at age 6, was there when yours truly walked off his own plane coming back from South America.

I wish the hero's welcome were always the case for missionaries who are forced to return from the field due to a physical or mental condition. Sadly, it is not. I fear that far too many people incorrectly judge these missionaries as being unworthy, unmotivated, lazy, or cowardly when they don't know all of the facts. Few of these RMs get the hero's welcome that my cousin did.

To this end, I recently read an article about a support group called Sick RMs, which was recently organized to help people such as my cousin. It was a very eye-opening piece. For one thing, I learned that missionaries who return from their fields of labor early often fail to receive proper treatment for these very health issues both during and after the mission and needlessly go on suffering for months or years. As a result, one of the goals of Sick RMs is to push for more doctors, psychiatrists, and other medical professionals to be made available to missionaries currently serving and recently returned. (Yours truly would really have benefited from this.)

A few other facts I picked up from the article: Only about 50 percent of Sick RMs end up giving a "homecoming" talk in their wards/branches. Seventy-three percent feel like they have been a "failure." And more than a third of them end up becoming inactive in the Church.

Add to all of that the stigma associated with being someone who reappears before crossing the so-called finish line, and these RMs are put into a very difficult situation through absolutely no fault of their own.

A good friend of mine had to return early from his mission a number of years ago. I remember him expressing a lot of the same frustrations shared by Sick RMs that were mentioned in the above article. A part of him also feared no girl would want to date him because he had served for only a few months and not two years.

It's been a decade since that time, and this friend, as far as I can tell, has been happily married to his wife for over six years.

This is just to say, cousin, as well as to all of those other unheralded and unsung Sick RMs, that you are not a failure—far from it, in fact. You have fought the good fight, you have finished your course, and you have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7). In the Lord's eyes, you are no different and no less appreciated than those who serve for 24 or 18 months.