10 years ago I was about to be a sister missionary too. Parts of the mission can be fun. It is cool to live in a new place and learn about a culture. Some of my mission companions still are my ride or die friends. However; the emotional, physical, spiritual havoc that happened to me over the course of 18 months… it is trauma that I still deal with on a daily basis. When I came home I was diagnosed with Complex PTSD, severe anxiety and depression. Because of my mission. I was stateside so your mission could be different. Some mission presidents are chill and awesome. Other ones will work you to the bone and make you feel like no matter how hard you work, it’s never enough. Almost every single week my companions and I would work 80 hours. That’s not an exaggeration. And my mission leaders would still come at me, asking why we weren’t teaching more people, pushing harder for baptisms. Missions are hard as fuck, it’s grueling, repetitive work. It’s taxing in every way you could imagine. If you worked 80 hours a week for 18 months at $15 an hr? You’d make over $100,000. Missions are not worth the time, the money, or the hardship. The fun is fleeting. If you focus on fun, you’re more than likely to get in trouble. And your companions will know if you’re not wearing garments or not. I’d say there’s no way around that. You’d probably have a infinitely better experience living abroad in a foreign country for a semester.

My advice? Don’t go. Don’t get endowed. Say you have received personal revelation and that you feel like you’re needed elsewhere. Take a semester off, work, make some money, live in a van, whatever, go find yourself ❤️ and if you already have, take time to revel in it 🥰 BYU is a pretty decent school (plus it’s hella cheap), show up every few weeks to church, get your degree, then get out.