More LDS Young Women Should Serve LDS Missions
Anyone that knows Kristy and I well, knows our story. We met in the summer of 1991 not long before I turned 22... and just barely before Kristy turned 20. We dated for about two weeks in San Diego and then continued dating while attending BYU (in Provo, UT) for the next two semesters. The following summer (1992) I worked down in Arizona while she returned home to San Diego. She filed her papers to serve an LDS mission that summer and left to serve in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She served for 18 months, during which time our primary (and practically only) source of communication was by postal mail. Not long after she returned home, we were married in May 1994... nearly 3 years after we had met.

I would not have had it any other way.

When I was serving my mission, I met and served with a great many sister missionaries. They were all strong, capable, competent, and confident women... perhaps partly because of who they were before they were called to serve, but I think that it was largely because of the their experiences as a missionary. Most of those sister missionaries, I'll probably never talk with or see again for as long as I live. Such is the way of the LDS missionary... you meet a great many people, many of them add a little something to your life, and then *poof* they are gone. But some of the sister missionaries I served with became close friends... such as Sisters McHardy, Grover, Quinn, Call, 馬, and 楊. So great was my impression of these fine sisters that while I was traveling back home to the states, I resolved that I would marry a returned missionary (not specifically one of those named above per se, but simply *a* returned sister missionary).

So, when Kristy disclosed to me very early in our dating life that she was going to go on a mission... I was completely supportive and all for it. I would certainly miss her while she was gone I presupposed (and I did in fact miss her a great deal), but like I said...

I would not have had it any other way.

I never put any pressure on her to forego her mission. (It would have been pointless anyway.) Why would I? She is, without a doubt, someone who is worth waiting for. We were planning on getting married; it was pretty much a done deal. So why not wait? Why not marry without regret? I couldn't think of a single compelling reason to marry as young as we were with the one exception of, *ahem*, spending a whole lot of intimate time with her. But that could wait: wait while she spent some time serving others - experiencing some small corner of a world where she possibly could make a difference in the life of someone else, wait while I finished school (I graduated with my BS just after she returned and just before we were married), wait while I saved up a bit of money to start a life together, and wait until we were older and more mature. It worked out perfectly for us. We have been living happily ever after since then.

I would not have had it any other way.

So why don't more young women go on missions? I have no idea. Since we moved here to Sammamish 9+ years ago, there has not been a single young woman in our fairly large LDS ward that has served an LDS mission. There is one young woman who recently filed her papers and received a call (to serve in Russia). When she filed her papers, she was intent on serving. But since that time, she met (and presumably) fell in love with a (presumably) fine young man. Her now three-week-old boyfriend has recently asked her to cancel her plans to serve her mission and marry him instead. She hasn't said "no" yet.

*sigh*

It may be that Eliana (currently age 5) will be the first young woman to serve an LDS mission from this ward that we reside in... some 16 years hence.

Such as it is, I am certainly grateful that my daughters have the mother that they do. If nothing else, Eliana and Olivia will know that their mother chose to postpone compelling interests (e.g. me!) and serve. And they'll know Kristy was much better because of it, and they'll know that because Kristy will tell them from her own personal experience. Kristy's sisters all served as well, and the one sister-in-law that lives up here... Aunt Angela also served. Those are good influences on my girls and good examples to my girls - very good. My nieces will all probably serve (well, hopefully). There is a strong missionary pedigree in the Sorenson clan that lives up here with us. So that's a plus.

I know we won't be able to force Eliana or Olivia to serve LDS missions. Hopefully, we can persuade them to go. Please God. Amen.