There’s also a target date, a commitment point: age 19 or 21. Seniors never really face a commitment point which would serve to focus peer pressure and guilt projection onto seniors who don’t go. You just don’t hear this in church: “Oh, you’re turning 65 . . . so when are you going on a mission?”

Lest I come across as too harsh, I will disclose that my parents served a “local mission” of the service as opposed to proselyting variety, and appeared to get a great deal of satisfaction and enjoyment from their service.

They just finished a local mission, and loved it.

How could they possibly push it any more? It’s mentioned almost every conference, and we have that horrible (at least I think it’s horrible) poster that shows grandparents with their grandkids and says, “If you love them, leave them.”

If people want to and can afford to go, then I definitely think they should go. It can be a spiritual time for couples and an opportunity to serve that perhaps they didn’t have while they were raising kids and building a life.

But I’m troubled by the pressure that seems to be put on the elderly in the Church to go. Some people just don’t want to. They want to play with grandkids and enjoy their retirement, and I see nothing wrong with that. Many of these people (especially the women) have spent their whole lives focused on anything and everything except themselves thanks in part to the Church. They raise their kids, they perform Church callings, they attend the temple monthly, they participate in canning and other service assignments, etc. I know many women who fit this category and never, ever take a moment for themselves. Heaven forbid when they retire they actually do what *they* want.

I also think there’s a tremendous amount of pressure to *love* your mission no matter what. My wife’s grandparents went on a mission and I could just tell it wore them out and they didn’t love it. They chose to go for the shortest possible time and it still wore them out. But of course when people ask, they have to tell everyone how much they love it.

Er, I meant to use the word “insight” there instead of influence. Duh.

I’m guessing when the grandsons are a little older and more subject to influence/example, my parents might consider doing the mission in order to have some grandparently influence on these future elders. After being raised by them, I think I have that much influence into their decision-making processes. But we’ll see.

One other odd rationale … my Mom probably does genealogy for 8+ hours a day. In her mind, that’s serving a mission that’s just as important as going off to some distant or not-so-distant place to work with the living.

Doug E–Thanks for sharing your experience. I have to say I’m jealous about driving the fork lift around, one of those juvenile fantasies I just haven’t managed to make happen yet. I’ve been boating on the Fraser River near Maple Ridge–beautiful place.

My parents have served 3 missions, one foreign temple, one visitors center, and one local. I stayed with them on both of their away missions….I lived in Sweden with them for two months during a college summer, and then visited them several times in Kirtland. I can tell you that my parents had the time of their life in both places. Further, they were never particularly social while I was growing up. Ward friendships were centered around callings, and they were pretty busy as we were growing up. Now they have incredibly active social lives with all their returned missionary buddies from all their missions, and I’m pretty sure that in the next year or two we’ll be wishing them bon voyage again.

Maybe we think that seniors just want to be left alone to rest, while really, they want to feel needed like they have their entire lives.

Finally, seniors do have a certain amount of control over where they go–and can pick the amount of time. One of their calls–to the temple–was orchestrated by a former temple president because my dad spoke a language they needed. The local mission came about because of connections from the temple mission, and the third was just a luck of the draw–although they did choose to just go for a year on that one.

Oh, and seniors get t.v. on their missions….much to my mom’s dismay! :o)

They lived in Belmont, MA, all during the 90s, and dealt with the harsh reality of building a temple there. As it was readied for dedication, my parents (each, separately) decided the time was right to move to Utah. After all that, they didn’t even attend the dedication of the Boston Temple (which is IN Belmont).

I think they didn’t want to be temple workers, and that’s the whole truth of their situation. They are incredibly active in their ward in SLC.