“Service Missionaries: Building the Kingdom through Service and Love,” Liahona, July 2022.
Young Adults
Service Missionaries: Building the Kingdom through Service and Love
I wondered if serving a service mission meant that I wasn’t “good enough.”
When my stake president first asked me if I would be willing to serve a service mission, my first thought was, “Yes!”
I trusted that the Lord had a work for me to do, and I believed that whatever He wanted me to do would bring me growth and happiness because He loved me and wanted what was best for me.
My second thought was, “What’s a service mission?”
My stake president explained what a service mission was as we met together in his office on that Sunday, but I didn’t really understand it or the importance of it until much later. At the time I even wondered if this calling meant there was something wrong with me, because I didn’t yet see the bigger purpose behind service missions.
Was I Needed?
I received my call to serve about a month before my mission actually started. This meant that I met my service mission leaders, attended a service mission conference in my area, and was even asked to lead companion study for the other two sisters in my area before I had been set apart.
I used the month between getting my call and giving my “farewell” talk (even though I didn’t go anywhere) to learn about service missions and the service missionaries around me.
At the service mission conference I attended, I learned that a lot of service missionaries, when they are first called, feel like they just weren’t good enough to serve a proselyting mission. I sheepishly recalled my own initial reaction to my call.
Ultimately, I realized that I wasn’t called to a service mission because I was inadequate, but because this was Heavenly Father’s direction for me. I wasn’t “less than” proselyting missionaries; rather, He needed me to help build His kingdom through other means of service. I received a strong testimony that all missions are important to Heavenly Father and important in His work, because all missionaries desire to serve Him and serve His children.
After learning about the other service missionaries in my area, meeting them, and hearing their stories, I knew they were wonderful, righteous servants of the Lord. I realized that even though some of us had felt a little sorry for ourselves at the beginning of our missions, we all came to the same conclusion: the Lord loves service missionaries and that we are right where He wants us to be, learning and growing while serving Him as His hands on the earth.
How Service Missionaries Build Zion
Missionaries are so important in every capacity that they serve in. We need missionaries who leave their families and their homes for up to two years to teach and preach the gospel to all the world. But we also need to build Zion communities filled with love for others and a desire to serve and to lift the least among them. This is what service missionaries do. We build Zion by creating a culture of love and service. This creates a welcoming, righteous, and uplifting community for all members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—lifelong members, new converts, everyone.
My service mission with the Church magazines has helped me see how truly blessed I am. I have been able to use what I have learned about my trials throughout my life to help lift others who struggle. I have tried to share my experiences with others and in doing so encourage others to share their stories. All of God’s children are important. My service mission has helped me allow them more grace and enabled me to love them as they are as we strive to come unto Christ together.
Service missionaries spend their time and energy creating Zion in many different but useful ways. Some help with physical service in places like Welfare Square or local food pantries. There are service missionaries who beautify temple grounds and who serve as ordinance workers in the temple. Some help distribute food to children who don’t have any when school is out and serve them by building them up. Others help spread the gospel and strengthen the members who already have it. There are even missionaries who help to maintain various types of Church workforce vehicles.
Service missionaries also serve in other ways like making signs for bishops in Church buildings, working with the Church’s motion picture studio, and cleaning many, many things to keep everyone safe in the midst of COVID-19. Whatever our various assignments are, we help build Zion by cultivating an environment of love and selfless service.
All of us missionaries participate in daily scripture study, teach lessons, attend lessons and district councils, and strengthen and lift one another and everyone around us, whether or not it is part of our formal assignments.
One of the most important things I do is less related to my official assignment with the young adult content team for the Church magazines and more related to serving the other missionaries in my group at the Temple Square campus. I serve by making sure they feel seen and heard and that they know that I care about them and that they belong.
Isn’t that what all missionaries do? Don’t all missionaries reassure everyone around the world that here, in God’s kingdom, there is an important and individual place for all of His children? Proselyting missionaries help teach the world that God’s kingdom is on the earth, and service missionaries help others see what that kingdom should look like as we prepare for the Savior’s Second Coming—a place where our hearts are turned toward others, where we serve without reservations, and where we help others know that they belong.
Serving as the Savior Would—by Reaching the One
However we serve and wherever we serve, there is one thing all missionaries do—serve as Jesus Christ did, by ministering to the one.
More than fulfilling our individual assignments, “our purpose is to help others come unto Christ by serving them as the Savior would. We serve voluntarily in charitable organizations, Church functions, and within the community. We will minister in His name to the one, just as He did, expressing His loving-kindness.”1
We service missionaries cherish the words in our purpose because we know the Savior ministers to us as individuals and we have felt His loving-kindness. I have felt the loving-kindness of the Savior on my mission as I have come to better know Him, as my trials have been made light, as my testimony has been strengthened, and as the missionaries around me have loved and lifted me.
Service missionaries seek to share Christ’s loving-kindness with everyone around them, and we dedicate our lives to doing just that throughout the duration of our missions—and throughout the rest of our lives.