Way to go, Chris!

I hope I'm not alone when I confess that as the mother of a missionary, I had no earthly idea what my son was going through. I didn't know what kind of a missionary he was. I didn't know what his challenges were. And he, like every other missionary out there, never really wrote the truth because he didn't want his mother freaking out.

One of the unfortunate things that happens as a result of working in a mission office is that you find out missionaries really are 19/20/21-year-old young men/women and are still gathering wisdom to themselves. Sometimes they make some pretty bone-headed choices. And because you are in the office, you hear about most of them. Chris wisely counseled me early in my mission not to focus on those things.

President Sloan tells our missionaries that their parents think they are the best missionaries that ever walked the face of the planet. He tells them, "You be that missionary." I believe that Chris was the best missionary ever. Was I mistaken?

It was with great pleasure that I listened to this story that Chris told me about the conclusion of his mission. As background, it is very difficult for missionaries to stay focused on the work as their time comes to an end. It is the rare missionary that can keep working to the very last minute. They are a rare breed.

In his last change, Chris was assigned a companion who said to him, "You are not working very hard." Chris pointed out that he and his previous companions had had more baptisms in one change than had occurred in the previous year. Still, the companion stuck to his guns. So Chris shifted it into the big gear, and they worked, and worked, and worked until the very last day of his mission.

Some years later, at a mission reunion, the junior companion approached Chris and apologized for telling him he was not working hard. He said his inexperience led him to the conclusion, and he later found out that it wasn't true. Chris told him he had no need to apologize, and that he felt really good about how he had completed his mission as a consequence of the junior companion's comment.

As a mom, it was good to know that my dear son is one of the few who managed to work until the very last day. Way to go, Chris!