Cover image via Gospel Media Library.
The holiday season can be a difficult time for missionaries. They may feel homesick as they recall the family traditions they are missing while they are away. Once upon a time missionaries only spoke to their families twice a year, on Mother’s Day and on Christmas Day. They could not be as involved in their family’s activities at home because communication was less frequent. However, with the opportunity to call home every p-day, your missionary may be tempted to call home more often, to think more about what is happening at home than what is happening in the mission. When you speak to your missionary, they may quiz you about your holiday plans, wondering who will be visiting, and what Santa is bringing for Christmas. They miss Mom’s excellent cooking and their favorite holiday treats. FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out is very common at this time of year.
Loved ones can make the holidays wonderful for their missionaries when they resist the urge to dwell on what the missionary is missing and focus on what he can enjoy. The following are some topics of conversation that will encourage your missionary and help him or her treasure their time away.
Questions you can ask your missionary include:
- Have you learned anything from the scriptures recently that had particular impact on you?
- What have you been learning from your leaders?
- What have you found to be your most effective finding tool at this time of year?
- Who are some of the people who have responded to one of your most recent invitations?
- How do they celebrate the holidays where you are serving?
- Are you doing anything as a mission to celebrate the holidays?
- Do you have any suggestions for making Christ the center of our celebration at home?
Topics your missionary will be happy you shared:
- Exciting insights gained from your own scripture reading.
- Israel-gathering Invitations you have extended
- Spiritual progress of family members or ward members
- Service you are providing for needy families or organizations
- Ways you are working to make Christmas more Christ-centered
Your missionary may repeatedly attempt to re-focus conversations on what she is missing, but you can briefly respond without dwelling on the topic. It will be difficult for your missionary to hear lengthy descriptions of family gatherings, complete with details about familiar ornaments that you hang on the tree, surprising gifts that you didn’t expect, delicious goodies on the menu.
Elaborating on a sibling’s worldly achievements may also make it difficult for your missionary to be away from home. Although buying a new car, getting into a university or winning an athletic competition are noteworthy events, it’s important to make sure your missionary doesn’t get the impression that such worldly achievements are more important than the goals he is accomplishing in the mission. As President Nelson reminded us, there is nothing more important on earth right now than gathering Israel.
Missionaries need to feel that you agree with President Nelson’s statement, and that there is no place you would rather your son or daughter be at this time in their life. Although you surely miss your child, especially during the holidays, and you long for them to be back with the family, it is disheartening for a missionary to hear such a sentiment and worry that he is letting you down by serving The Lord. Not only is it tempting to tell your missionary how much you miss him or her, it is equally tempting to disclose that you can hardly wait for him to return home. A young person who wants to please his parents will feel conflicted if his parents want him home while he is serving a mission.
It may come as a surprise, but even as mission leaders my husband and I were homesick our first Christmas in the mission. Our children all gathered for the holidays, along with all our grandchildren. They made food assignments, exchanged gifts, and their celebration sailed on smoothly without us. It was quite a shock to discover how independent they had become, and how little they needed us at this time in their lives. We decided to be grateful that we were in a place where we were needed, and we focused on what we could enjoy on the mission.
I have long been an enthusiastic baker of Christmas goodies, but I have never had consumers as appreciative as our missionaries. I baked and baked and baked and baked. We wanted our missionaries to be focused on giving rather than receiving, so we invited the sister missionaries to come to the mission home, one zone at a time, and they made matching ties for the elders in their zone. My husband, Bret, who is an excellent cartoonist, designed a shirt with a missionary jumping in the air and kicking his heels together with enthusiasm. Each missionary received one as a Christmas gift. We distributed truckloads and truckloads of packages to the missionaries, marveling at the sensitive parents who sent double of everything to make sure companions were well thought of.
We enjoyed celebrating the holidays ourselves in new and unusual ways. We attended an outdoor theatre where they reenacted the Christmas story in Spanish with elaborate lights, costumes, live animals and music. We attended a concert where the young men and young women played bells, something we had never seen before. The Christmas choirs in every ward we attended were dressed in festive red and green, each member wearing a matching corsage or scarf to identify them as choir members.
I saw purple Christmas lights for the first time ever, and decided to adopt this tradition. We attended craft fairs where we bought hand-made nativities and other items we would never find anywhere else. The Christmas trees we saw were decorated in a unique manner: instead of a star or an angel on top of the tree, all the trees had bouquets of flowers, or feathers or something equally festive extending toward the heavens.
Instead of dressing our primary-aged grandchildren as shepherds and wise men, we gathered our missionaries and they filled those roles. We laughed and giggled as we reenacted the Christmas story in a room full of adults. It was a beautiful time of celebration, one I still treasure and would not have missed, even to be with my own children.
Holiday traditions in every mission will vary, and they will vary from the missionary’s traditions at home. The holidays should be a time for missionaries to relish a new experience, grow in ways they would not grow at home, strengthen their faith in and love for our Savior and create memories they will cherish for a lifetime.
