Avoiding Missionary Opportunities

Loran C., England

When I was 14 years old, my sisters and I were the only members of the Church to attend our school in England. People began to discover that I was a Mormon, and it was not uncommon to have jokes or weird looks directed at me. While I did get questions, they were limited to rumor and gossip, and I soon grew tired of the negative attention. A lot of students simply avoided me. One girl in particular seemed quite wary of me. One day I bumped into her in the hall and felt that I should talk to her, but she would not talk, and without saying anything, she rushed away. This gave me the false resolve that church and school were two different worlds and should never meet.

A year later an American family moved into my ward, and their children attended my school. One of them, Annie, was in my year and soon became quite popular. I started seeing students from my school appearing at ward youth activities. One evening at a joint Young Men and Young Women activity, I saw the girl who had always avoided me. She was a friend of Annie’s, and she sheepishly came over to me. It turned out the reason she had avoided me was she had been told some outrageous stories about the Church, so she was afraid of talking to me. She ended up coming to seminary and taking the missionary discussions.

I realised that I had been wrong in keeping my two lives separate. Annie was the example that made me understand that I had missed so many opportunities for missionary work. I felt ashamed. If I had been more diligent, maybe I could have been a better example to those who might have been looking for the truth only the Church could provide.