Many LDS young adults, and some senior couples, serve full-time missions for the church. At 19 or older, young women (18 or older for young men) can choose to submit papers indicating their desire to serve, after which they are issued a call from the First Presidency of our church. The prospective missionary has no idea where he or she will be called—there are currently more than 400 missions all over the world and a missionary can be called to any one of them. Many missions require learning a foreign language, even some in the missionary’s home country. For the duration of their missions, missionaries are official representatives of the church and focus exclusively on preaching the gospel and serving others.
Each mission is headed by a president and his wife. Missionaries work as pairs with others of the same sex, called companions; the mission president changes companionships roughly every few months. Missionaries’ communication with family and friends is limited to weekly emails and letters and twice-yearly phone calls with immediate family (on Christmas and Mother’s Day) and they don’t work to earn money, date, go to movies, watch TV, read for entertainment, or go to school. They or their family usually finance the mission themselves—they are not paid for their service. It sounds pretty rigorous and grueling, and it kind of is, but it’s a unique opportunity to dedicate oneself to the gospel and service.
For more information about full-time missionaries for the LDS (or Mormon) church, you can look at this page on mormon.org and this one on lds.org.
To learn more about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you can go to these sites: mormon.org or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
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