College sophomore Conor Turley is a 22-year-old former missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, popularly known as the Mormon Church. Like many members of his faith, he feels a responsibility to live in a way that reflects his beliefs. As one of a relatively small number of Mormon students at Penn, he must represent the ideas of the Church to his peers. Many are curious about his religion and his lifestyle; some are just plain confused.
Turley, who plays varsity basketball, said many of his teammates told him that coming in they weren’t sure how they’d get along with him. “Many of them had never met a Mormon. They didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “They were surprised at my relative normalcy as they got to know me.”
But don’t let him fool you. Turley’s experiences have been anything but normal for the average student at Penn. Before coming to college, he embarked on a two-year mission to a heavily Latino section of South Chicago to spread the beliefs of the Mormon Church.
Young Mormons between the ages of 19 and 26, like Turley, choose to leave behind friends, college, jobs and family to go on these traditional missions. For men, the mission lasts for two years; for women, about 18 months. Members are encouraged, not forced, to serve these missions, which they fund themselves. The entry process is relatively simple: a bit of paperwork, then waiting for the assignment, which can be anywhere in the world — and over which the missionary has no control. Placement is contingent largely on need and the inspiration of the mission leader or president, who is a former missionary contacted by church leadership and elected to that role. For Turley and others like him, the opportunity to serve a mission is a defining experience in their lives.
Once placed, missionaries go to the Mission Training Center in Provo, Utah. At the Center, they polish their knowledge of the Bible and the Book of Mormon, methods for spreading their message to others and the language and culture of their destination country or city. Often, missionaries must learn a new language from scratch. The transition from school to the Center is usually not nearly as difficult as that of adjusting to the mission location, because in some ways training is not unlike college life, said College junior Jordan Bennett, 23. Preparing for his mission to Japan, Bennett spent 11 weeks at the Center, since missionaries bound for East Asia stay for the longest period. During that time, he lived in a room with four other guys who were all going to the same region of Japan. “I spent most of each day — roughly 10 hours— in class studying the scriptures and Japanese,” said Bennett. There was free time for basketball, volleyball and socializing. But at the same time, each member was being prepared for the approaching rigorous and regimented daily schedule of mission life. For Bennett, the hardest adjustments were waking up every day at 6:30 a.m.and spending Christmas apart from his family.
Next Bennett, originally from Los Angeles, arrived at his mission site, Sasebo, a small city outside of Nagasaki where he would live and serve for the next two years. “Almost my entire day involved speaking Japanese, meeting new people and riding a bicycle up steep Japanese hillsides,” he recalled. “The constant physical and emotional exhaustion was something that I hadn’t experienced before. It took me about seven months of living in Japan to fully acclimate.” Missionaries live and work at their placement sites in pairs, and the two act as a mutual support system for each other. This is essential, since missionary work — though rewarding — can be exhausting, challenging and, at times, lonely.
History and law professor Sarah Gordon, who studies the LDS church, explained that the young missionaries are forced out of their comfort zone into a place where they don’t know people and are required to explain themselves to strangers, many of whom aren’t necessarily interested. “So that’s a really demanding environment for anybody,” she said. “The experience tends to force students to grow up quickly and decide what they care about in life.”
Despite the challenges, missionaries return feeling like they’ve gained skills that can prepare them for almost anything. “The character traits I had the chance to develop and the experiences I had were by far the most valuable and enduring benefits,” said Bennett. One of these qualities is the ability to stay positive and motivated, despite rebuffs. Gordon noted that “the mission serves as a very important marker in their lives, teaching them about the rest of the world, about themselves and also about rejection because most of them knock on doors, much of the time without recruiting most of the people that they speak to.”
It’s 134 degrees outside, and Daniel Harbuck is biking through a small village in Brazil, carrying a blind man almost twice his weight on his back seat. Harbuck is infected with a malaria-like virus called dengue fever and hasn’t seen his family and friends in more than a year.
For Harbuck, a 23-year-old Wharton senior who went on a mission after his freshman year, such challenges only strengthened his faith in the Mormon Church. Serving in the village of Toncantins, Harbuck twice caught what is known as “bone-break disease” during the course of his mission. Symptoms are headache, fever, rash, and severe muscle and joint pain that results in difficulty moving and walking. According to local Brazilian lore, the disease can be fatal for those who are infected three times. Harbuck tried to ignore such warnings and his painful symptoms in order to continue carrying out his mission as best he could. Shaking his head slowly, he said he remembered feeling “so sick that I hadn’t been able to keep a meal down in roughly two weeks.”
Despite his illness, Harbuck recalled that “somehow the desire to serve those in that city surrounded me and I felt a peace and a strength sustain me.” One Sunday while he had the fever, three people whom he had been teaching told him they wanted to become baptized into the Church. As he approached a baptismal font, filled with frigid water from an underground water system, locals urged the sick Harbuck not to touch the water, since they feared he would go into shock. But Harbuck continued toward the font — “walking to the font was the only straight line I walked that day,” he said. Touching the water, he discovered with wonder that it was somehow warm.
Even for the healthiest of missionaries, the experience is demanding. Conor Turley described some of the difficulties of being away from home: missionaries can only talk to their families twice a year over the telephone — on Christmas and Mother’s Day. They are given one hour per week to email family from a library, but they are free to write and receive letters. Additionally, “there are no text messages, no computers in the apartment, no television or movies,” Turley said.
Day-to-day life was a challenge. Turley would wake up no later than 6:30 a.m. everyday. “ Before leaving the apartments we would eat, exercise and study from the canonical books of scripture; at least two hours of study daily,” he said. “Because we were learning a language, we would also study Spanish for at least a half-hour.”
Turley and his companion would distribute Bibles, get to know people and try to teach them. “This was the focus of our mission: to show people the happiness that comes from following the commandments of God, to introduce new things to them and invite them to pray.”
A common misconception of the Mormon mission is that it is strictly concerned with evangelization. Turley explained that this is not the case: “I never personally tried to convince anyone of anything.” He said he would often advise people to pray for the truth, rather than take his word for it. “Many people did not accept the invitation. Some did.”
Mormon missions have historically proven effective, and are an intrinsic aspect of the faith, according to Gordon. “The Church itself has been an evangelizing church since its formation, even in the very first years,” she explained. “[Founder] Joseph Smith sent converts out to recruit new people. This has been a very good method of growth for the church and it really has now become worldwide.”
Service in the community is another crucial aspect of the mission. Turley helped people remodel their homes, painted, put up dry wall and worked with plumbing, roofing and landscaping. He volunteered at a food-distribution service and even helped people with carrying groceries. For missionaries, this work is of equal importance to teaching others about their faith. In a sense, it is another form of sharing their beliefs — through living by example. “We tried to be representatives of Jesus Christ in all places,” Turley said. “We tried to help people and teach them as He would if He were here.”
Turley has developed a sense of humor about some of the more indecorous inquiries about his Church he has received. Once, a fellow student confused Mormons with the Amish, asking how Turley manages to live and write papers without electricity. Others have asked him how his “home-made churned butter” is coming along, or how he gets around so quickly in a “horse-and-buggy.” These incidents morph into locker room jokes. “[My teammates] respect my beliefs and I respect theirs,” said Turley. “Some have told me they admire me for sacrificing two years of basketball, girls, videogames and movies for a cause I truly believe in.”
The return from mission life can be as disorienting as leaving home in the first place, as anyone who has studied abroad can understand. Sarah Gordon explained the difference: “In the junior year abroad, we’re supposed to go learn about others and their culture. But missionaries go to teach them. That’s a really sharp distinction in some ways.”
After returning from two years in Brazil, Daniel Harbuck’s mission leader advised him not to make any big decisions for about six months. “There is a definite period of ‘normalization’” he said. According to Harbuck, many students transfer colleges after completing their missions, perhaps to begin anew rather than struggle to reconnect with people and places that seem to have changed while they were gone. Back from Japan, Bennett also had a difficult time transitioning. “For the first week or so, I would feel really anxious when all I heard around me was English,” he said. He also felt uncomfortable around swearing and rock music.
“I remember walking into my room back in Los Angeles for the first time in two years, surrounded by my old computer, TV and game systems, and thinking that I had nothing to do,” Bennett said. “I lied down and took a nap — not really because I was tired, but just because I couldn’t think of anything to do.”
