Latter-day​ Saint missionaries return home — to quarantine

By Harley Barnes

Thousands of missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-​d​ay Saints ​are adjusting to a sudden and unexpected shift in lifestyle after being shipped home ​in response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

The church announced last week that missionaries nearing the end of their service would come home to stay​;​ others would return home to ​a two week quarantine before being temporarily reassigned to a new mission.

Gunner Harward returned from ​a mission in Texas ​on March 23. ​T​he most difficult thing​, he said, ​has been shifting from being busy to being in quarantine.

“The only thing I’ve really struggled with is just having things to do, just because when you’re a missionary you have your whole day planned out,” he said.

Harward​ said​ the change has brought ​about ​many decisions ​about school and work, changes he wasn​'​t planning to make so early. 

He is not alone.

Gentry Mower came home from Kentucky after serving for ​10 months. Mower was a student at Utah State University before her mission, and will return in the ​f​all.

“I was planning on starting school in the spring, so it’s a totally different change of plan for me,” she said.

Mower ​said the ​reality that she was headed home didn’t sink in until she was on the airplane.

The transition from missionary​ to "civilian"​ ​life can be a struggle ​under any circumstances. Returned missionary Aubree Hessing is worried that an unexpected early departure might make these struggles worse.

Hessing said missionaries may feel a sense of failure for getting sent home early, even though it was not in their control. 

“I feel like we have that outlook in the church that if you come home early you kind of failed,” she said. “I think I would have felt that way if I got sent home early.”

Hessing is also worried for the people the missionaries were teaching.

“You don’t know the next time they’ll be taught or if they’ll lose interest at that time,” she said.

For the foreseeable future, the church's missionary training centers will be teaching prospective missionaries online before they are sent to their assigned areas. The church is evaluating the risks for missionary work, and has not yet announced when missionaries will be sent back to the field.