News
Features
Calendar
Community Outreach
I Hope They Call Me on a "Service" Mission
A Mission Mental Health Advisor speaks about normalizing Service Missionaries
Vivian Foley, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (Shoal Creek Valley Ward)
Foley served as the Mental Health Advisor for seven missions in the Asia Area from 2023-2025.
Back in my young adult days I made the decision to serve a mission. I received my call and served for 18 months in the Ecuador Guayaquil Mission. Some things have changed since then: At that time Sisters couldn’t serve until they turned 21 years of age, there were only proselyting missions and no such thing as a service mission. As missions have evolved and I have learned more about service missions and the wonderful opportunity they are for so many of our young adults, I have often thought that I would have been better suited for that type of mission. In my missionary days, there was sometimes a stigma that sisters who couldn’t get married served a mission. Of course that was not true, but it is interesting in our day that we are still battling stigmas around missionary service. Now that stigma sometimes follows missionaries who are assigned to service missions instead of proselyting missions.
Flashing forward to 2025, my husband Sean and I recently returned from serving as missionaries in the Asia area and Singapore Mission. I was blessed to be able to use skills I developed in my career as I served as one of the Asia Area Mental Health Advisors (AMHA) covering seven missions. My primary responsibility as an AMHA was to support mission leaders in their work with the young missionaries. I did this by meeting with leaders and other health advisors in a monthly mission health counsel, providing crisis management, and meeting with missionaries individually for pastoral counseling. After spending 18 months working with around 200 missionaries in more than 1100 hours of counseling, I can definitively say that the young adults of the Church are amazing!
I primarily worked with missionaries who were struggling with adjusting to missionary life and who often experienced depression and anxiety as they tried to learn how to live the rigorous life of a proselyting missionary. I also worked with a few missionaries who had mental health issues develop while they were serving in the mission field. These cases are less common, but many mental health disorders are first manifested in the age range of our young missionaries. But the hardest work I faced was working with missionaries who had previously experienced mental health struggles and didn’t disclose them on their mission papers. Out of the 200 missionaries I worked with, 90 percent of them were able to continue their missions successfully with the extra help that I and others were able to provide. Others needed to make a transfer from being proselyting missionaries to service missionaries or to complete their missions early.
I have always been amazed by the courage of the service missionaries I know who serve faithfully while continuing to fight the cultural stigma that somehow their missions are “less than.” As I worked with our missionaries and the unique struggles they face as missionaries in our current world, I was always amazed at the strength they have developed to face unique challenges. Those of us who served missions in our young-adult days often think that missionaries are facing the same things we did. We might feel that young adults now should be able to cope like we did. I have seen that what our missionaries are facing today is unique to their time, just as our missions were unique to ours!
I believe that we can help our youth prepare for either service or proselyting missions by proactively working with them in the following areas:
Develop Emotional Resilience
The church has wonderful resources that can be used to proactively help our youth develop emotional resilience. Proactively and honestly preparing missionaries for the stress of missionary life is one of the best ways to help them be successful! Those who desire to serve a mission are well served using these resources to prepare for missionary life:
> Adjusting to Missionary Life
> Adjusting to Service Missionary Life
> Finding Strength in the Lord: Emotional Resilience
Encourage Full Disclosure on Mission Papers
One of the saddest things we had to face as an Area Health Counsel were missionaries who had not disclosed physical or mental health needs on their mission papers. Sometimes this lack of disclosure caused extreme difficulties for those who came to serve in countries where they could not get medications or treatment they assumed would be available everywhere. For example, many of the countries in Asia do not allow the use of medications commonly used for treatment of ADHD in the United States. Missionaries sometimes told me they did not disclose such things on the advice of parents or leaders who told them that full disclosure might impact their mission assignments. That was always unfortunate as full disclosure helps the missionary be assigned to an area where they will have the most likelihood of success given their particular needs: as President Nelson has taught, “Good inspiration is based upon good information.”
Disclosing previous physical or mental health issues is also important in that some old issues can reoccur with the intense stress of adjusting to the rigors of missionary life. Disclosure means that mission health councils are aware and can keep watch over missionaries to help them be successful.
Normalize Both Service and Proselyting Missions as Equally Valid Opportunities
We can all be part of changing the culture and breaking the stigma around service missions by educating ourselves about them. The church has many resources for service missionaries that can also help us learn about and teach others about service missions. Service missions accommodate for individual needs allowing missionaries to live at home and receive needed medical or family help while still having opportunities to serve and grow as a missionary. Service missionaries create a mission that works for them and can include many different ways to serve in the community, Church and temple.
I recently asked parents of a service missionary about what they would want others to know. One thing they shared was the importance of the language we use about service missionaries. When missionaries are called, they are assigned to a service or a proselyting mission, and that assignment can change under the inspiration and through priesthood keys throughout the course of their mission. Both service and proselyting missions are “real,” “normal,” and “full-time.” They are both opportunities for tremendous growth in testimony and sharing the gospel with others. Even though we see service missionaries with their families and in their wards on Sundays, they are still “serving a mission” and we should treat them as we would any other missionary.