MOTHER'S DAY IN THE MISSION

Sister Lindsay, missionary "grandmother"

This past Sunday Sister Lindsay and I were reminded of the occasional telephone calls from far away places that we received in years past from each of our sons and daughters while they served as full time missionaries. Now as senior missionaries ourselves, we have been able to observe firsthand what it is like when the young adults with whom we serve are calling home to speak with their parents.  

Mother's Day and Christmas are the only two days during the year when young full time missionaries are collectively authorized to communicate by telephone with their families back home. For most of these young people being on an 18 month (sisters) or 24 month (elders) mission represents the longest continuous period of time in their young lives that they have ever been away from their parents and siblings.

To say the least, calling home on these special occasions is a big deal for everyone involved, and it requires some orchestration and planning to make it work well. First, the missionary needs to find a Church family that is willing to allow them the free use of their telephone for up to an hour; and since missionaries work together in pairs, that really means up to two hours of talking time. Since Mother's Day is always on a Sunday, the available time for making these calls is further compressed due to the hours spent involved with missionary responsibilities at Church.

Now add into this equation the probability that the families who invite the elders and sisters into their homes may also have telephone calls to either make themselves to a mother who lives far away or incoming calls to receive from their own adult children or grandchildren who are living or working somewhere else than here. And, of course, these missionaries have to match their available schedule to initiate the call home to their family with whatever might be going on at home revolving around other people's schedules. Just for good measure, throw in a time zone difference of a couple of hours or more (we actually have an elder whose family lives in Alaska, which is a time zone difference of  4 hours from Baltimore).

For us personally on this Mother's Day, we ended up feeding dinner to six missionaries; and then afterwards, providing telephone time for two of them to call home to Idaho and Utah. Our eight sons and daughters were greatly challenged in their efforts to speak with Sister Lindsay, because the phone was always busy. Seven of them were ultimately successful by the time we finally went to bed, and our eldest daughter (who told us that she gave up on Sunday night) called in early on Monday morning.