Pray for the Missionaries

Recently, I received an email from a friend currently serving a mission for the LDS church. 

"Waiting is hard, missions are hard. Some people said they always heard of missions as glamorous and weren't prepared for all the hard stuff it has. I was always afraid of it, especially my last semester, because I knew I guess? Or I was scared. All of the above. Getting my mission call was exciting but frickin scary. I tried to pretend I wasnt going unti lthe last second. They seem glamorous and fun in the pictures people get. Its funny. Ill have people email me and say "Wow, you have 18 months left now! It's already been 6, that went by so fast didn't it?" And all they see are the nice pictures every week of us smiling, with happy people, doing cool stuff. Highlights. Pictures only. They dont see the long hours of study, early morning wake ups, physically exhausting work of walking everywhere in weather that makes you so drenched to the bone in sweat. Dripping from your pants. You dont see missionaries' insane longing for home. How little things remind you of loved ones. How little things like seeing tacos or hearing a familiar song remind you of your girlfriend or something and then you can only think about how far away she is, how long you have left, what if she forgets me, forgets the feelings and relationship we had, all of that.. You dont see the rejection the missionaries face every day, the derision, the stress. Sometimes fear. Depends. You dont see random sickness from sketchy foods, being bent over a toilet for long hours in the early morning because an investigator offered you food that you ate so as not to offend them.      Nah, people only see the highlights. Hear from us saying how fun it is, how we are having a blast and learning a lot and making friends. Which is mostly true, but thats not all. There is a lot more, but you don't tell everything to your loved ones at home. You have to be brave for them, put on a good face, be a good sport. Im not sure if it's different serving in the states, probably depends on the area, but especially for missionaries in places like the Philippines or Nicaragua.... is a whole different world. And its hard. But people on the outside don't see that. Missions are hard as balls. They can suck at times. They definitely are rewarding and worth it, but that doesn't mean the are easy and glamorous."

It's hard, as the girlfriend of a missionary, to read this from another's perspective. Yes, Chase tells me that he misses home and that he gets tired and that he gets drenched from rain every so often.

 But that's it.

This email really opened my eyes as to what exactly missionaries go through. It made me realize how much we, as family and friends back at home, don't know and don't understand. We assume that walking around in the heat (or freezing weather in some places) must really suck. But we don't realize quite how awful it can be. We assume that they miss home. But we don't realize how torturous it can be for them. We assume that they'll eat some weird foods. But don't realize how awful it could be and affect them.

 We just don't know. 

So I guess my point in this is to remember to keep the missionaries in your prayers. Always. Even if you don't personally know a missionary, pray for all of them. Pray that they will have the strength to get through another day of this grueling work that that are sacrificing two years of their lives to do. Pray that they will find investigators, or that their investigators will keep commitments, or accept baptism, or accept the missionaries into their home. Every small prayer can help. 

Pray for the missionaries.