It takes most of the mission to learn enough Japanese to have decent conversations in areas outside of the memorized lesson plan whereas my brother could teach the gospel effectively from day one. I had about 6 or 8 months of truely effective teaching beyond tagging along or floundering, he had 23 1/2 months of effective teaching. The difficult languages tend to drive a more rigid hierarchy since you can’t function as a senior companion without some language skills. Often the hardest problems (like that time my companion told our land lady that in America the whole country was clean enough that we didn’t need to take our shoes off indoors and she kicked us out) require advanced diplomatic language skills. At least the DL needs to be able to survive independently. There is definitely more of a Senior-Junior companion relationship instead of equality and teamwork. My brother was a ZL at 3 months in Missouri and in Japan 15 months minimum for anyone that I knew who made ZL.. And if they send all the “stars” to Japan, that explains why I never did make ZL (not my skeptical obnoxious attitude). My brother had more opportunities to see how wards function and learn the leadership skills helpful for further service in the church today.This might be the most valuable aspect of a mission. He fits into a ward far better than I do. Most of the small branches in Japan where I served functioned more like girl scout troops than churches and did little to prepare me for future callings, beyond basics like prayer and follow the Spirit.

It is much harder to keep in touch across an ocean than across a few states. My brother can go back and see people in Missouri, I have never returned to Japan and may never be able to. I can’t even write coherently in Japanese and two of my native companions could not communicate in English so I could never keep in touch with them. Some of the people we taught were pretty good in English but as time goes by they loose it and contact becomes more difficult. Long term retention in Japan is under 10%; where the church once was something that brought us together, it becomes a reason to avoid each other.

Then there is the little problem of wanting to marry someone from your mission since missions are done during the height of the marrying season. Marriage to a Japanese woman, regardless of her personality, would entail enormous lifelong cultural accomodations that a 21 year old can not possibly comprehend. For some, it can be done. But for me I think this would have been a grave mistake, nothing short of a disaster. Marriage to a woman from Missouri would depend entirely on the person and not be the same sort of a problem. My brother married a wonderful girl from Idaho; something to keep in mind when serving there, they raise mighty fine women.

When I came home, I had not even seen more than 3 or 4 American women for more than a few minutes the entire 2 years. My perception of what was attractive in a woman had changed so drastically that I found every American girl to be, quite frankly, ugly. All were too tall and gawky with wide pale eyes, funny colored frizzy hair and enormous noses and ears and monstrous feet. Not to mention other anatomic features that seemed grotesque to the extreme. And they dressed like whores. And they seemed so obnoxious, selfish, impolite, aggressive, demanding and crude. This was all due to cultural differences; I had grown accustomed to one thing and needed to re-adjust. Add to it the injunction given by my MP to get married within 6 months and it seemed that only a Japanese girl would do. It took me 6 months before American girls were even tolerable to be around again and by then I was seriously dating a beautiful Japanese girl.

Fortunately we did not marry. But I watched 4 of the Japanese girls I dated, including her, go through nothing less than hell over the next decade as they got involved with American return missionaries and the relationships or marriages failed in various ways. These exotic foreign missions can mess with your mind in ways you never imagine.

I agree with the general trend of this thread that we should count our blessings and be grateful for the gifts that God sends to us and not envy others.

I was home for the summer working as a delivery driver for a dry cleaner when my mission call came. I swung by the house in my truck to learn that I was going to some mosquito-ridden banana republic, and then had to finish my route.

My brother received his mission call to serve in Minnesota. We lived in Wisconsin at the time. My dad called the missionary department and said “This is great! Parts of that mission are only five hours from our house. He can come home on weekends, we’ll do his laundry…” His call was changed to Texas.

I bitterly regret that it is eternally too late. My mission discouraged it some, but mostly its my own fault.

But I still wish I’d been advised to keep track of people. Some might have stayed in the Church; some might have joined. And I would have been strengthened by hearing from those who stayed without my help.

I struggled as missionary, but I did have the good fortune of being able to peg Grant von Harrison’s ideas (as they were explained to me by missionaries who’d read Drawing on the Powers of Heaven) as ridiculous. I think he was the “inspiration” for our many zone conference themes that turned D&C 82:3 on its head, too: if we promise and do X, the Lord would be bound to do Y and, best of all, we can define X and Y! (The APs re-defined X and Y every conference. One month we collectively promise God that every day we will have companionship study, be out of our apartments on time, and make 10 street contacts. By keeping our X promise God would be “bound” — a la D&C 82:3 — to produce 30 mission baptisms. Etc.)