November 23, 2025 Michelle Bulsiewicz

With the recent announcement of lowering the age for sister missionaries to 18, it brought to mind a lot of complex emotions from my own mission more than a decade ago. I’m reposting this essay originally published in the At Last She Said It newsletter, considering what these young girls will have to face and how much inequality is still before them in the Mormon church.

As my faith has transitioned, so have my feelings about my mission to northeast Brazil. I have so many fond memories. I met so many wonderful people. I learned so much. But there’s also so much I regret. From almost the moment I came home I was plagued with feelings of guilt and inadequacy. Looking back, I can see how much it harmed my mental health, even as if changed me for the better in so many ways.

Like everything else, it’s complicated.

I wanted to go on a mission my whole life. Both my mom and maternal grandmother had served missions, and I wanted to be like them. Also, I was something of a born feminist and I hated that boys were expected to go but girls were just supposed to get married. I wanted to prove that I could do it too. I wanted God to be able to expect of me just as much as he could of any young man.

After experiencing the incredible difficulties that come with mission service, I almost immediately changed my tune once I came home. Now, I don’t think anyone should be required to go, boys or girls. It’s way too much to force on anyone who isn’t thrilled out of their minds to be there. Only one hundred percent enthusiasm and certainty of purpose can get anyone through the trials of that kind of experience.

I would like to preface everything else I’m going to say by stating that this reflects the circumstances of the time and place of my mission and my experiences in it. Not everyone will feel the same, not even people I served with.

With that said, here’s a list of the pros and cons of my missionary service:

Pro: It expanded my world. I was completely immersed in the language, culture, and experiences of people who lived very differently from me. I honestly think you could serve a mission in your hometown and you would still get at least some of this experience, because as a missionary you talk to everyone. Your tiny group of people you normally interact with who are usually from a similar background, education, and socioeconomic status as you is blown open and you are exposed to people from all walks of life. Getting thrown into a world where most people had little concept of how I’d grown up was so isolating and difficult at first, but in the end so worthwhile. Honestly, everyone should experience what that’s like to some degree. It connects you to everyone else in humanity.Pro: It matured me. I went on my mission a few years before they lowered the age limit the first time, so I was twenty-one and had already gone to college away from home for a few years. Still, I had been mostly sheltered all my life and BYU had not really prepared me for all that was out there. Serving in one of the most dangerous cities in the world definitely exposed me to a lot. But most of all, I had to learn a lot of emotional maturity. I had to learn how much it wasn’t about me. I had to expand my view so much wider to those around me than I ever had before. I had to learn about patience and growth and things not working out the way you wanted them to. This prepared me for adulthood in an intense, sped-up way not much else could have provided.Pro: It taught me how to handle difficult things. Like I said, I really hadn’t gone through very much before my mission. After my mission, I knew how to kill a mouse with a broom, get rid of head lice, live without running water for two weeks, face down a mugger, deal with the worst sides of all kinds of people—I could go on and on. Not everyone’s mission is this stressful, but I do think I needed these experiences. Now, no matter what emergency I’m faced with, I’m calm. I’ve dealt with worse. I know I can get through it.Con: It taught me to submit to leadership even when it contradicted my intuition. I wanted to be the most obedient, best sister missionary there was. In my mission, sisters had a reputation for being lazy and whiny. I never wanted to fall into that stereotype, though quite frankly oftentimes it was inevitable. Still, I tried so hard to be different, and because of this I tried to do everything my nineteen- to twenty-year-old leaders told me to do, even if it didn’t feel right to me at all. I ignored the fact that I knew and interacted with the people I was teaching, and they often did not. I ignored the fact that I had stewardship over these people and needed to follow my own intuition and revelation about what was right for them. Instead, I worried about pleasing the elders, often to the detriment of myself and those I taught. This is the number one thing I would go back and change if I could.Con: It taught me to value numbers and appearances over people and experiences. My mission in particular focused a lot on numbers. There’s a lot of talk out there in the teachings about missionary work about focusing on people instead of numbers—but my goodness is there a whole lot of focus on numbers. Elders in my mission were hounding me about them nearly every day. I will tell you many of them did not worry nearly so much about the people behind them, either the people we were teaching or me and my companion and how we were doing. It was all about why we didn’t teach enough lessons, didn’t have anyone coming to church, didn’t have anyone committed to baptism. Never mind that we had worked ourselves to the bone trying to make it happen. Never mind that the people we were working with had struggles and doubts and concerns that were not so simple to overcome. Never mind that maybe it was important for them to actually be converted and committed to a church before they joined it. They only wanted the number. I fell prey to this, because, again, I wanted to please my leaders. I know the people I taught could tell. I really feel like I failed them in this way.Con: It made me feel like a failure. Speaking of feeling like I failed—I do not have the ideal missionary personality. I’ve begun to suspect I have some neurodivergence in me, but I know for a fact I’m highly introverted, shy, anxious, and socially awkward. Jana Riess put it well in her book The Next Mormons, that certain personalities feel like they have to “foot bind” themselves to fit the mold of what a missionary is supposed to be. The result is a bundle of exhaustion and anxiety. The fact was, no matter how hard I tried, I was only able to be myself. I wish I would have practiced more acceptance of my strengths and weaknesses instead of trying to force myself to be someone else. But the environment of a mission can lead to a whole lot of comparison and self-flagellation and in a lot of ways I’m still coming to terms with this.

I could go on. This only barely touched on the sexism inherent in missionary service in the LDS church. It was so blatant to me in the lack of leadership opportunities and training available to sisters. I know some things have improved thanks to lowering the age limit—but still much has not.

I can only imagine how much harder this whole experience would have been for me if I had gone straight out of high school. These new eighteen-year-old sisters are going to be in for a lot.