What Mormon missionaries really experience during their missions is something of interest to many people, regardless of their own religions. One such missionary, Brandon Riggs, was recently profiled in the Ledger-Enquirer of Columbus, Georgia. He had recently returned to Columbus from his two-year mission in Japan.
“The whole thing was a learning experience. There were things I could never have learned in a classroom or in the Peace Corps. It was rare, unique and difficult — but I wouldn’t change it for anything,” said Riggs to the Ledger-Enquirer.
His experience began in December 2005 when he was 19 years old. Like other newly-called missionaries, he left his home in Georgia and first traveled to the Missionary Training Center (MTC) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Provo, Utah. There he spent the next 2 months learning to become a missionary to the Japanese people. All missionaries receive training in teaching the gospel and ministering to the people they will be serving, but those serving foreign-language missions also become heavily immersed in the language in which they will be teaching.
“They train you spiritually and lingually. You are learning to teach the gospel and to express your feelings of the gospel in Japanese. I found that when I had the desire, I could excel, because God gives you help to do those things,” Elder Riggs said.
When the time for his training was finished, he went on to Tokyo. But, like other missionaries, he did not stay in his first area for long. Missionaries usually serve in several different areas throughout their missions, and work with several different partners, or “companions,” as well. Elder Riggs served with a total of eleven different companions during his mission. According to the Ledger-Enquirer, here’s how his day typically went: “Each day, he and his (companion) would wake up, eat breakfast and study all morning. Then they would venture out — usually on foot, or bicycle if they were in the countryside — and strike up conversations with the locals.”
Elder Riggs said that sometimes he and his companions would talk to families in restaurants. They would also meet people by performing music and teaching English classes. “English schools there are really expensive,” he said. “We weren’t professional, but we made up games and songs so they could learn. We gained relationships with the people in the program.”
He and his companion also looked for ways to serve the people around them, such as picking up trash and cleaning up trains. He did see people baptized as a result of his efforts, but he also just wanted to serve the people. “I didn’t go there simply to baptize people. I have found happiness in my religion and I went to share it with them. But if it’s not what they wanted, it was their own choice,” Riggs said.
Besides learning to love foods that were new to him such as octopus and squid, Elder Riggs learned about the true heart of missionary work. “When I went to the MTC, I thought I needed to become an expert in Japanese and scripture,” he said. “But ”
Of the missionaries who serve faithfully, Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has said, “From personal experience I can tell you that they study, they pray, they worry intensely about each child of God and especially the souls of those they are able to teach. They face rejection and sometimes verbal abuse. But they soldier on. They serve, they help others, and they go the extra mile to lift and bless people in all walks of life and in all human conditions.” (“One Million Missionaries, Thirteen Million Members,” Ensign, Oct. 2007, 76–77)
