What to Do After Receiving Your Mission Call

The call answers where and when. Almost everything that follows is ordinary admin, but some of it has real deadlines attached — passports, visas and travel do not wait — and the order you do it in matters more than the speed.

Here is what to do in roughly the first fortnight, starting with the things that will hold everything else up if you leave them.

Read the whole thing, twice

The excitement is in the first two lines. The instructions are in everything after them, and they are the part people skim on the day and then hunt for a week later.

Read it once for the news, then read it again the next morning with a pen. Somewhere in your call materials and your Missionary Portal you will find your assignment, your reporting date, your missionary training centre, whether a language is involved, travel guidance, and a set of instructions the handbook expects you to respond to promptly.

Then save it. Download the documents, take photographs of anything printed, and put a copy somewhere your parents can also reach it. It is referred to constantly over the next few months, usually by somebody who is not you.

Write down the four facts everyone will ask for

Four pieces of information will be requested of you, and of your family, more times than you can imagine over the next two years:

• Your mission. The full official name, not the shorthand — there are missions with very similar names.
• Where that actually is. A mission name is not a place most people can locate. Note the country and region — the LDS mission directory has a page per mission with its base city, a map, the local time and the general climate, which saves explaining it forty times.
• Your reporting date, and which MTC you report to.
• Roughly when you are expected home. Usually 24 months from your start date for elders and 18 for sisters, though that is a plan rather than a promise.

Write them once, in a place the whole family can reach, rather than in five group chats. The alternative is a household where three people give three different release dates to the same relative.

Respond to the instructions promptly

Some parts of a mission call need acknowledging or acting on, and the expectation is that newly called missionaries respond promptly. Do that in the first few days, before the celebrating turns into a month of everyone assuming somebody else has handled it.

At the same time, tell your bishop the call has arrived and book a conversation with him. Several of the things below — the temple, your sacrament meeting talk, your setting apart, the monthly contribution — run through him or your stake president, and starting all of them in one conversation saves a fortnight.

Passport and visa

If you are serving outside your own country, this is the item with the longest lead time and the least flexibility. Start it on day one.

Read What to Bring before you buy anything

The single most expensive mistake at this stage is shopping from a general packing list before reading your own mission’s instructions.

Your Missionary Portal, or your call packet, has a What to Bring section specific to your mission. It covers climate, what proselyting clothing looks like where you are going, whether particular variations apply, and what your mission provides. It takes precedence over everything else — including any list on this site.

Once you have read it, the full missionary packing list is a useful frame for quantities, quality and the things official lists do not mention. Two purchases are worth making early regardless: shoes, because they need weeks of wearing in, and luggage, because everything else has to fit inside it.

The temple

Newly called missionaries are encouraged to receive the temple endowment as soon as possible after the call, and to attend as often as circumstances allow before leaving. Your bishop and stake president arrange the recommend interviews and help set a date, so raise it in the same conversation where you tell him about the call.

One practical note that saves money: temple clothing is provided to missionaries at the temple at no cost. It does not belong on your packing list.

Learn about where you are going

You have months before you arrive, and knowing something real about the place makes the first weeks noticeably less disorienting. It also gives your family something concrete to hold on to, which matters more than it sounds.

• Find the mission on a map and learn the geography — the cities, the distances, what is near what.
• Look up the climate month by month. This is also what tells you whether the coat question is real.
• Work out the time difference from home, and what that means for when your family can expect to hear from you.
• Read a little of the country’s history and current life — enough to arrive curious rather than blank.
• Learn how to pronounce the place names properly. It is a small courtesy and it starts immediately.

Language preparation, if you have one

If your call includes a language, you will be taught it at the MTC. Nothing you do beforehand replaces that, and trying to teach yourself grammar for three months mostly produces habits that have to be unlearned.

What does help, in order of usefulness:

• Listening. Get your ear used to the sound of it — anything spoken at natural speed, daily, in the background.
• Learning to pray in the language, and to say a few sentences about what you believe.
• The scriptures in that language alongside your usual study, even slowly.
• Basic courtesy: greetings, thank you, sorry, please repeat that.

Do not treat it as an exam to pass before you leave. Arriving with an ear for the sound of the language is worth more than arriving with a vocabulary list.

Sort the money

Two separate things need arranging, and it is easy to do one and think you have done both.

The monthly contribution. Missionaries and their families contribute a set amount each month into the ward missionary fund. Ask your bishop what the current amount is for your country, and set up the payment so it happens every month without anyone needing to remember. Note that contributions beyond the monthly amount are not meant to be paid in advance, so it cannot be settled in one lump.

Everything else. Clothing, shoes, luggage, passport, visa photographs, glasses and personal supplies are all paid for before you go, and together they are usually the larger surprise. Budget them now, while there is still time to spread them out.

While you are at it: keep your existing medical insurance in place if you possibly can, and make sure someone at home is able to deal with your bank, your post and anything that arrives with your name on it.

Tell your family what actually happens now

Your family is about to become the information desk for everyone who knows you. The easiest thing you can do for them is to answer, once and clearly, the questions they will otherwise be asked repeatedly and have to guess at.

• Where the mission is, and what your reporting date and expected return month are.
• How contact works in your mission, and how often that realistically means.
• Your mailing address once you have one, and how long post takes.
• Who is the point of contact for updates, so an email does not get forwarded eleven times and still miss someone.

Once you have gone, the practical side of this is theirs rather than yours — there is a guide for them in how to keep track of a missionary’s mission.

Plan the farewell and the opening

Two social things sit in this window, and both are easier when expectations are set early.

Opening the call is worth doing in a way you will want to watch again. It does not need to be an event; some of the best openings are four people at a kitchen table with a phone propped against a mug. There are more approaches in mission call opening ideas.

The bishopric will invite you to speak in sacrament meeting before you leave. It is a regular sacrament meeting, at its normal length, focused on the sacrament and the Savior — not a send-off, and family members are not normally invited to speak. How to actually build the talk is covered in preparing a missionary farewell talk.

The last month: setting apart and travel

Your stake president sets you apart as close as possible to your start date, after a short interview. Brothers serving away from home need to have received the Melchizedek Priesthood before that happens, so if it has not yet, raise it early. The setting apart itself is not recorded — you are encouraged to write about it afterwards instead.

Travel to the MTC and on to your mission is arranged and paid for by the Church for young teaching missionaries. Two things regularly surprise families, so it is worth saying now: the MTC does not hold a farewell meeting for families, and families are discouraged from meeting missionaries at airports when they leave the MTC for their assignment.

A rough order for the first two weeks

After that, the rest of the runway is covered in the mission preparation checklist, which picks up from here and runs to the morning you leave.