The Competitive Edge: Serving a 2-Year LDS Mission Enhances Athletic and Academic Ability
By Jon Stauffer
In the world of sports, athletes are always seeking ways to have an edge on their competition. Using diverse ways to train to using newly created upper-level technology, the pursuit of excellence has zero boundaries. However, an avenue that is usually always overlooked but can greatly impact an athlete’s development is choosing to serve a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While it may seem counterintuitive to take a long pause from athletic and academic careers, the benefits gained from this once in a lifetime experience are unmatched.
Here is why serving a 2-year LDS mission can make you a better student and a better competitor:
Character Development
The overall mission experience is not purely just about spreading specific religious teachings. It’s a transforming journey that enables large amounts of personal growth and personal development. Athletes who pursue the choice of serving a mission are placed in a culture of large amounts of service, selflessness, and discipline. Missionaries learn the value of determination, teamwork, and flexibility. These are all important qualities that are a key to success in sports.
Nick Daynes
Mission: Guayaquil Ecuador 2018–2020
Nick Daynes, a senior from Utah, graduating this spring with a degree in psychology is very passionate about education. While interviewing Nick, he shared that he wasn’t always passionate about school, here’s how serving a mission helped him become a better student:
“President Nelson talks about it [education] being a religious responsibility. I agree and love learning. I don’t think I had this passion in high school… I was big into baseball, and I did fine in school. However, it [education] wasn’t something that I was passionate about. But coming home from my mission, I saw it [learning] in a different way. I saw education as part of building up the kingdom of God just as I was on my mission, but in a different way. I understood better the importance of what an education can do- not just getting a degree but being knowledgeable about all sorts of varieties of topics and subjects.
“I think the biggest difference is that my perspective on the importance of education has been vastly different in college and that has built me a love for learning, and that has influenced my education at SVU.”
Nick shared how he has had a better GPA than he did in high school, which is ironic because I am the same exact way. My college GPA is .8 points higher than my high school GPA was. While serving an LDS mission many missionaries are asked to serve in leadership roles that take part in being an example to all other missionaries. During the interview I asked Nick how his mission has led to him being a great team captain on the baseball team for 3 years.
“My opinion is that the best form of leadership in any field and area of life is Christlike leadership. I learned that more as a missionary. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be a captain because I hope that I can be an example of one who loves the Lord and tries to keep His (Gods) commandments. I think being a captain puts you in a situation where people will observe you and see how you do things in both baseball and regular endeavors… Going back to the whole theme of being a missionary, I had helped me gain this new approach to life. I want to really give my life to God.
“The question I ask myself is how do I have this same perspective to baseball? And the answer is that by being a captain; somebody that people will always look to- I will always have that chance as long as I’m here to be that example to my teammates. I’ve been able to try my best to be as Christlike of a leader as I’m able to at this point in my life. “
“Whenever I’m being an example in life, I want to be that example through Christlike love.”
Nick then followed up his response by sharing that aside from working hard and giving it his all, he feels that having a Christlike perspective while competing in games gives him the best opportunity to be successful on the field.
Cultural Exposure
Serving a mission requires athletes to live in diverse cultures.
This more than often leads to learning and speaking different languages. Learning a language requires months of practice to even gain a basic understanding of how to communicate using a different way of speaking than we are used to. Cultural immersion heightens the ability to adapt to unknown environments and associate with people from all different ways of life. This cross-cultural experience can give a huge upper advantage in sports. This applies especially in international competitions where accepting and respecting different ways of life and traditions can make a significant difference.
I served an LDS mission in the Republic of the Congo, Africa from 2019–2021.
During my 2-year mission the COVID pandemic took place. This required me to get bounced around the world twice.
I taught the gospel in a total of 8 countries, and in 4 languages.
- Ghana (French, English)
2. Congo (French, English, Lingala)
3. Cameroon (French, English)
4. USA (English, French, Spanish)
5. Canada (French)
6. Amsterdam (English)
7. Ethiopia (English)
8. France (French)
The top 5 places were part of a mission I was assigned to. The last 3 were places I was able to share the gospel with people while I was traveling through. The point is, they are all very different and unique places that required me to adjust to the language and culture. Note that I spoke English to people in 6 of these different countries. Each way that I spoke English to these people changed. In Africa I had to use different accents and ways of explaining things for people to understand what I was saying. This was not easy and took lots of time and patience. Having had these experiences, it made it easy for me to adjust to how people do things including playing baseball here in Virginia, as opposed to the way people do things in Washington state where I had played at a junior college for 2 years prior.
Dealing with Failure
Garrett Stauffer
Mission: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Business Major ‘29
Serving an LDS mission helps people with failure. Baseball is a game based off of failure to the point that if you are able to get a hit 3/10 chances, you are one of the best in the game. That means by failing 7/10 times you are considered to be an amazing player. No other sports require that much failure for you to be the best. Garrett Stauffer answers a few questions about failure related to college sports, academics, and in overall life.
How did your mission help you to deal with failure on the baseball field?
“Pondering over my experiences in the mission field, I can say that a lot of people rejected the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This lead to the feeling of failure from being rejected while trying to share the Gospel…. Whether it was personal failures, reactions of others, or weakness of my own… to say the least I experienced a lot of failure.
“Coming out here to SVU and to translate that experience on the baseball field is the way I can bounce back after I experience those failures. Now that I have failed and seen myself before with my vulnerabilities, I can now learn how to overcome those experiences and failures and become an even stronger individual.
“For example, baseball is a game of failure. If you can’t overcome your failures and learn to deal with them, you will never be successful. That is how I’ve seen my experience with failure on the mission transfer to the college sport I participate in.”
How did your mission help you with failure in the classroom?
“I feel like in the classroom a lot of my failures come due to lack of work because I push off an assignment or I’m just too lazy to do the work. I then think about on my mission when I was too tired and I was getting lazy, that’s when mistakes happen. We missed appointments or we just couldn’t get to everything we had planned because we were too behind. Because I’ve had the experience of the failure of not putting forth enough effort at times on my mission, I now understand that in the classroom it’s the same way…. I have to put forth my best hand, and have to work hard to get all of my assignments in or I will see the aftermath of the consequences. “
How did your mission help you with failure in life?
“My mission helped me understand that failure is an unnecessary evil in life, and that if we put forth our best effort in everything we do, it will be easier to avoid that evil that keeps us from progressing spiritually and physically with whatever it may be.”
Perspective and Priorities
Putting life at home on pause for 2 years gives you a short break from the competitive world of sports and allows athletes to see a different perspective on the rest of the world and reassess their priorities. Most missionaries return with a transformed sense of purpose and a deeper appreciation for the opportunities that they are presented with. This certain perspective can fuel passion for competing in collegiate sports and school and help drive to achieve goals in life.
Specifically in my case I was presented with the opportunity to live in a place that has the overall Global Freedom Score of 17/100 (https://freedomhouse.org/country/republic-congo/freedom-world/2023).
The Republic of the Congo is ruled by a man named Denis Sassou. He has been in power for more than 40 years and a large number of residents would explain to me that his ways of staying in power are to eliminate his opposition. While I was in the country during 2021, the results of the presidential election were completely unanimous. The next closest candidate suddenly died from COVID in the matter of a couple days after being considered the closest runner up to president Sassou. During this time the internet was also completely shut down in the country for about 14 days so it made it hard for people to know anything that was happening politically.
“President Denis Sassou Nguesso has maintained nearly uninterrupted power for over 40 years by severely repressing the opposition. Corruption and decades of political instability have contributed to poor economic performance and high levels of poverty. Abuses by security forces are frequently reported and rarely investigated.” https://freedomhouse.org/country/republic-congo/freedom-world/2023
President Sassou is also known for finding different ways to further get rid of his election opposition by finding several ways to charge them with imprisonment so as to get rid of their future in the elections.
“Sassou Nguesso’s two most prominent opponents in the 2016 presidential election received prison terms after that contest. In 2018, retired general Jean-Marie Michel Mokoko was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment for threatening state security. In 2019, André Okombi Salissa, who had led the opposition Initiative for Democracy in Congo coalition, was sentenced to 20 years of forced labor for the same charge.”
https://freedomhouse.org/country/republic-congo/freedom-world/2023
All of these political problems that cause the country to not be considered “free” are followed by large amounts of civil unrest which overall makes the country not a safe place for everyone. After coming home from completing my mission, I had a substantially large growth of appreciation for the way the United States of America is run. Though I may not agree with certain party groups that have won presidential elections, America is a land of free people and I appreciate the fact that I can go and do normal activities without having to be as careful as I would in the Congo.
This relates to college academics and athletics because not everybody around the world has the opportunity to participate in any college activities at all. Just having the privilege of taking a hard math class or competing against a team that is a lot better than the one that I am on is a huge privilege that some people around the world will never get the chance to ever participate in.
Physical Fitness:
While young men and women are serving their missions, they may be placed in an area that is more physically demanding as compared to other places in the world. Some areas may have vehicles that missionaries are able to use to get around, some may be in a place where they have a bike they use as their main transportation, and other areas missionaries are only able to walk to where they need to go. This was my case as for most of my mission I served in a 3rd world country where I walked miles upon miles every day to get to where I needed to be.
Another aspect that is overlooked by many is the amount of service certain missionaries are allowed to participate in. While I served in my temporary assignment in the Nevada Las Vegas mission, I was able to help people in their yards a few times every month. In the Congo I participated in more service projects than I can count. It became sort of a normal activity, and I loved every minute of it. My favorite service experience was being able to help renovate a home that was badly worn and damaged. I was also able to help rebuild a school that many children attended.
Missionaries who were athletes like me often make time to work out and do what they can to stay in shape. Some missions permit the missionaries to use gyms while on the other hand, some areas in the world don’t have gyms. In one of my areas in the Congo, a member of the church was a welder and I had him weld together a big car axle that used to build upper body strength. I had plenty of leg workouts as most of my days consisted of walking through jungles and up and down steep hills.
Mental Toughness
Mental toughness is something that I believe comes from going through hard experiences that make everything else seemnot as difficult. Everybody knows athletes must have mental toughness to perform at an elite level. During the first part of my mission, we had the Nokia brick phones that could only call and text which meant we were cut off from all social media and any form of communication outside of the country. When March of 2020 happened all of us missionaries had absolutely zero clue of anything going on and I was in a different country (Cameroun) than where my president resided (Congo). There was only 30 of us in the entire country, 10 of us being Americans and the rest were natives. In Africa, on the streets, there are a bunch of small food stands everywhere. Sometimes there will be makeshift buildings with small shops inside. In the area I was in we had a specific shop where we would go for every meal because it was so cheap, and missionaries had used this place to eat for many years. Out of respect for us, the owner always took care of us. Sometimes in these small shops you’ll see a super old tv sitting in the corner or something for decoration. Keep in mind that the floors are dirt, and the walls are a mixture of wood and Sheet metal, so everything is extremely run down with tons of people coming and going so often. So, this TV in the corner was super old and barley working. Surprisingly, it had the CNN station on but it was in either the Italian or German language so I couldn’t understand any of it, but the subtitles were in French. I remember seeing that it was a report on the NBA season canceling due to whatever COVID-19 was and that’s when I knew something wasn’t right. The next day was our P-day and when I got to our cybercafé I had about 12 emails which was abnormal for a regular week. All 12 were from friends and family explaining how the church was potentially sending missionaries home around the world due to a serious sickness. Of course, everybody got wind of what was happening, and we had a mission meeting the next day about us going into quarantine.
The scary part started when they gave the leaders an insane amount of cash and told us to go buy perishable foods that we could live on for 8 weeks while not going outside at all. Rice, beans, things that don’t go bad if you don’t have electricity which we were used to not having a lot of the time. We were to not go outside for any reason unless a church leader wanted to move us to a different location. We were all super confused as to why we couldn’t go outside but we later found out that it was because people from France brought COVID to the country we are in.
As a little backstory information to have this make sense, the intelligence level of the place we were serving is not very high. So when French people that were white accidentally brought COVID to the country by plane, the thought process for a large part of the natives was that all white people were infected and we were going to cause everybody to get sick so groups of people would go looking for white people and throw them in prison which basically gave you a large chance of not every getting out because the government system is very much broken.
Now after a couple days passed, before we knew how bad everything was, we woke up one day and found out that both of the other countries in the mission had already been evacuated and sent home. So now there were 20 of us left behind and stuck in Cameroon because the country was shut down and no airplanes were coming in or going out. The next day we got a call from our interregional authority in the church that our district president (stake president) was going to come get us in a van and take us all to a secure location where we would be quarantined that we eventually found out was a building owned by the United States embassy. We then stayed there for 2 weeks while trying to get a plane to get us home. This was a long 2 weeks that involved taking multiple trips to the airport, once even sleeping in the parking lot because we were told a plane was coming that never showed up. Eventually the US government chartered a cargo plane to come and get us and we got home at the end of March. There were moments during this crazy experience where a few of us had to get away from people to stay out of trouble.
After having these experiences, I almost no longer feel any sort of stress when preparing for a tes, or getting ready for an athletic contest because I don’t have anybody trying to throw me into a 3rd world prison cell and most likely starve me to death. Although this is considered an extreme experience for a missionary, it taught me lots of lessons on patience and trusting the lord. I would not change a single thing that I went through because the good experiences of my mission far outweighed the bad.
Time Management Skills
One of the biggest things people get out of serving a mission is it enhances time management and studying skills. On a daily basis missionaries balance out teaching, studying, service, eating, and sleeping. There are many things that go in between those tasks that cannot all be completed without learning how to manage time. Here is an example of a regular day without any church or missionary meetings from my mission:
5:30am- Wake up
5:45am- Workout
6:45am- Get ready for the day
7:00am- Personal Study
8:00am- Companionship study
8:30am- Language Study
9:00am- Eat breakfast and plan out lessons for the day
9:30am- Plan lessons
10:00am- Leave for first lesson
11:00am- Teach
7:00pm- Return to apartment
7:30pm- Go over who and what we taught for the day, update profiles
8:00pm- Eat big dinner
9:00pm- Get ready for bed, write in journal
9:30pm- Language study
10:00pm- Go to sleep
Throughout all of these things that are planned, a lot takes place behind the scenes. One of my favorite things I was able to do outside of teaching was to study gospel doctrine. I had at least an hour a day to learn more about Christ and expand my knowledge about all things eternal. I also gave myself a lot of time to do language study so I could perfect the French language in order to be able to teach others to the best of my ability about God and his plan for us. These study habits that I developed carried over into college after I returned home. In high school I was a 3.3 GPA student. After my mission and not doing anything academically for over 2 years I started college, and as a junior I currently hold a 3.98 GPA with 1 degree while working on a second degree. College is easier for me than high school was. I know for a fact that I would not be anywhere near the student I am today without developing study habits on my mission.
Aside from studying, being able to effectively manage the time I have every day has helped shape me into a more organized person. Being a college athlete limits the time that I have to do everything that I need to get done and having these skills I learned from serving a mission makes my life a lot easier.
Leadership Experience
Stockton Hall
Honduras San Pedro Sula East Mission
Detroit, Michigan
What attributes translated from your mission onto the baseball field to make you a better leader?
“With Baseball, Baseball is a sport of based off of failure. In the mission field, you fail more than you succeed. Many reject the missionaries because they don’t like the image or because of an issue they have with the background of the church. Experiencing this plays a large role or me athletically because not often are you going to step onto the field and have everybody like you. As far as leadership roles, I once was what’s called a district leader. A district leader watches over a group of other missionaries and their job is to guide them and portray a good example. That translated to how I go about being a captain on the baseball team.”
“Conflict resolutions was a big part of mission during covid times. Missionaries locked in having to learn to deal with each other 24/7 while in quarantine. Again, as a district leader I was in charge of solving many problems that came from this weird time period. I feel like that gave me a good taste of what it’s like to problem solve with new situations because nobody in their lives have had to experience quarantine like we all did in 2020 when things were rough. Lots of the problems stemmed from people arguing with each other because they were spending an insane amount of time in the same room as someone, with nowhere to go. This particular thing helped me learn how to handle arguments and problems within a team setting when we are all pulling the same side of the rope.”
“Another big thing that I realized was that building habits on the mission translated into the classroom. As a missionary we study gospel doctrine every day to sharpen our skills to teach others. For me, using those same studying habits, and methods of studying contributed to making me a better student. Anyone who serves a mission should be able to mimic their study habits from their mission into schooling. I see it as a blessing that I was able to learn this principle.”
“Something that is also different for me is that I don’t necessarily get “better” grades than I had in high school, but I am able to obtain the same good grades without having to put the effort that I had to in the past towards studying because I learned how to do it more effectively.”
Academic effects on Women after mission Service
A BYU study has shown that women who serve missions are likely to change their area of study/degree to earn a higher level of education leading to a higher salary. “Researchers found that women who served missions were 33% more likely to change in to a major with higher earning potential than women who didn’t take gap time, likely because missionary service added increased confidence, skills, and opportunities to cultivate talents. Missionary service also helped women who had struggled academically; among women with the lowest third of ACT scores, those who served missions were 19% more likely to be accepted into competitive or limited enrollment programs.” This study conducted by BYU shows that when people serve a mission, they will benefit from their service long after their mission is completed. One of the biggest improvements a person can make in their 20’s is to have an increase in their confidence, ability to learn, problem solving, and time management. Serving a mission will help build strength in these aspects.
Stahle, Tyler. “BYU Study Examines How Missionary Service Helps Female Students Find Strengths, Make Informed Career Decisions.” News, News, 6 Mar. 2023, news.byu.edu/intellect/byu-study-examines-how-missionary-service-helps-female-students-find-strengths-make-informed-career-decisions#:~:text=Researchers%20found%20that%20women%20who,and%20opportunities%20to%20cultivate%20talents.
Financial responsibility
A major aspect that is often overlooked is the financial responsibility that is learned while serving an LDS mission. A big misconception about LDS missionaries is that they are paid for their service. This concept is completely false as most missionaries pay for their opportunity to serve. All missionaries serve voluntarily and don’t receive a salary for any of their work. “Missionary work is voluntary. Missionaries fund their own missions — except for their transportation to and from their field of labor — and are not paid for their services.”
Missionaries typically finance missions by themselves or by receiving help from family or church members. Missionaries rather receive a small amount about every other week that is just enough to pay for what they need. In my case while serving in the Congo I received roughly 80 dollars every other week. With the currency exchange rate being so high, we learned that we didn’t need more than that if used properly. Living off of what we received was often a pretty difficult task to achieve. I found that my companions and I were basically completely out of money every time we would receive our funds. This taught me a great deal of responsibility because I learned how to spend money only on things I absolutely needed. This is a skill that carried over into my life in college. My first 2 years of college I wasn’t able to work a whole lot because I had so much baseball practice. I found myself being barely able to get by, but I was always able to get by. If I hadn’t learned how to maturely handle what little I had on my mission, I wouldn’t have been able to get by in college. This is one of the many things I learned while serving an LDS mission.
“Latter-Day Saint Missionary Program — Missionaries Serve Two Year Missions.” Newsroom.Churchofjesuschrist.Org, 13 Dec. 2023, newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/topic/missionary-program#:~:text=In%20some%20parts%20of%20the,not%20paid%20for%20their%20services.
In conclusion, serving a 2-year LDS mission offers athletes a myriad of benefits that can significantly enhance their competitiveness in sports. From character development and mental toughness to cultural exposure and leadership experience, the lessons learned and skills acquired during this transformative journey contribute to their overall athletic prowess. While the path may diverge temporarily, the rewards reaped from the mission experience pave the way for long-term success both on and off the field.
