Our mission, as all missions, has been full of joys and full of trials. Living at home makes housework and yard work a constant challenge which means we don't exactly follow mission guidelines each day. We do try to follow the schedule as closely as possible but our mornings must include mundane jobs like pulling weeds and even striping wallpaper. The regular mission schedule includes temple attendance on Wed. afternoon, service projects Thur. morning, and weekly planning Fri. mornings. We have changed that a little. We go to the temple on Sat. mornings so we don't always go on Wed. unless there are missionaries who need a ride. We figure our yard is our service project for our neighborhood and Friday weekly planning is tucked in anywhere we find a moment. The daily and weekly planning are very important but we figure after 45 years together we can get it done much quicker than the younger missionaries. We still like to get out into the field by 1:30 as many days as possible. We sometimes have appointments in the mornings, however, which is hard for the other missionaries to do. We have one that is 10:00 every Friday and I think it was given to us because the younger missionaries didn't want it to interfere with planning time. Of course, Sunday is the longest day, often there is a meeting at 7:30 am with two or three blocks of meetings to follow. We try to go to at least part of all the blocks in a building and just vary the buildings each week. Then the afternoon usually has one or two appointments in it. After that, we spend time with grandchildren.
Much of our work is with less-actives which means it is slow going. Many people were baptized as children and then were never taken to church. That means they are really investigators who know nothing. Some left the church in their teens and so have strange ideas and prejudices. Some are even returned missionaries who got swept up in life and lost their way. They are very difficult because they have a load of guilt on top of apathy. Some people for one reason or another, missed church for a period of time and got out of the habit. They never had a strong testimony to begin with and only went out of a sense of duty. Now it is too easy to do something else. Each day for us is challenging and rewarding. We make friends with all we meet and try to gradually change their mind-set.
We have had one adult baptism because she was listening as we taught her grandfather. We never got far with him but she asked to be baptized. We have a couple of unbaptized children who want to be baptized but the parents are dragging their feet. It's "teach the children, pull along the parents".
In short, we have all the opportunities the "young" missionaries have except we are given those who need more time and TLC. We don't have to think about transfers every six weeks. We don't have to think about breaking in a new companion. We just have to juggle about 60 names and try to give each some of our time. Some have weekly appointments and some we drop in on. Some have prepared lessons and some get lessons on the sly -- they don't realize we are leaving a message.
We don't have meals arranged for us but we don't get as much exercise sitting in the car so we don't need to eat much anyway. In the summer we need a cooler to carry water and maybe sandwiches, juices, etc. We get quite tired of crackers and granola bars. We figure on both lunch and dinner in the field most days. Even though it is not a long, long way is is time consuming and gas consuming to go back home during the day. That eats up a couple of hours we don't like to give up.
Our family and friends had a little trouble at first but you just have to gently remind them you aren't available. It's harder with grandchildren but they also get used to seeing you when you can not when they want. We do schedule in important events with them. One of the funny side lines is that our ward doesn't seem to know what we are doing. We see senior missionaries doing our same job in missionary cases in other wards but our ward considers us just “gone”. I actually have a visiting teacher who mails me notes and invites me to come to church.
We've come to love the people we work with. We tell them that getting them to church is only the first part. We'll stick with them until they go to the temple, no matter how long it takes. We feel very close to many of the families. We have had some dramatic successes and some very slow successes. We have also had great experiences where we didn't know what to say but the words were given. We have learned to rely on the Lord in every little thing. He guides us and lets us know what we should do.
We would recommend this work to anyone would care to try it. Some of the senior missionaries we work with have health problems and this is the only mission they could have served.
All in all, this is a blessed journey and we are grateful to be on it.
Elder and Sister Burkhart
