In February my son, Taft was extended a call to serve a 2-year church mission with the assignment to labor in Lima, Peru. According to that original plan, we would have put him on an airplane to the missionary training center (MTC) in Lima this morning—June 25th. Of course a worldwide pandemic in March has altered many of the hows and wheres of missionary preparation and service since then.

Note: You can read more about the feat of bringing tens of thousands of foreign-serving missionaries home safely, here.

My son, Trey, who was serving in Sonora, Mexico was one who’s mission was cut short. He returned home on March 31st.

Without hesitation, our biggest pandemic perk has been having these boys at home together—in this unexpected way—and I couldn’t resist sitting them down to talk openly about returning home from and heading out to a mission—this most fascinating aspect of our religious culture.

We are definitely a missionary family. Both Geoff and I served as young adults (Geoff served in Boise, Idaho and I served in Frankfurt, Germany) and Taft is now my 4th son to serve. Clark served in Salt Lake City (the south mission, speaking Spanish) and Chase served in the Missouri, St. Louis mission. For this conversation I solicited questions via social media and we were able to discuss most of them. I hope you’ll don your curiosity cap and listen with an open mind. This is not about what we believe so much as it is about the life and experiences of a young missionary.

Of course I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, and there is plenty more to explore if you keep reading.

I must admit that recording this conversation with my boys is selfishly motivated—we’re living through such an interesting time in world history—that I am grateful to add this to my growing collection of Covid-19 experiences.

[photo] There’s a decent chance that you either know someone who has or is currently serving a mission for the LDS church—you’ve likely seen two white-shirted men on biking or walking on the street before and you have even had a pair of Elders or Sisters on your doorstep, but they and what they do may still be unfamiliar to you. For this reason, here are a few additional resources …

A concise list of 10 Things to know about missionaries.

LDS missionaries on Wikipedia

Life in a Missionary Training Center (video)

What missionaries teach and what we believe can be explore at comeuntochrist.org . Right now, missionaries are doing most of their teaching online, via Facebook and Zoom, so it’s easy to connect with them.

We (the Julians) respect everyone’s right to believe or not believe as they choose, but I love the scripture my son, Clark sent in a text message to Taft this morning (see below.)

He added, “Elder Julian has been sent!”

[video] A glimpse into the life of a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

[video] I opened this episode with the song, Called to Serve as sung by a choir of missionaries.

As always, thank YOU for listening!