Should Your Missionary Come Home Early?

This is one of the hardest calls a parent will ever have to make, and there is rarely a clear-cut formula to guide you on how and when to make this decision. I have had to personally wrestle with this question, from both the standpoint of being a therapist for over 25 years, and as a father who found myself in the same position with my own daughter as she was serving her mission.

Generally speaking, if your missionary is homesick, discouraged, or wrestling with a hard companion, a slow area, or a new language, that is usually the typical process of growth, and staying can often build real resilience. If they are unsafe, in crisis, or have a worsening health condition, that is a different situation, and coming home might be the right and loving decision.

Why This Question Is So Hard to Answer

Every instinct you have as a parent wants to fix this fast. You want your child safe, and you want the sinking feeling you are experiencing to subside. However, moving too quickly in either direction might cost you. If you push too hard for them to stay, you risk ignoring a real crisis. If you rush them home too soon, you potentially rescue them from a struggle that was actually producing the growth that they needed.

What I will say is this: if your missionary is struggling, it's important to know that you are not alone in this, and neither are they. Through my own experience in working with many early returned missionaries, most return due to medical and mental health issues. This is backed up by a study done by Utah Valley University's Kristine Doty-Yells (Doty et al., Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy, 2015), which found that health-related reasons, both mental and physical, account for the large majority of early returns, not worthiness or failure. Struggle in the mission field is common, more than you might even be aware of. It is what you do with this struggle that really matters.

Growth-Edge Struggle: When Staying Is the Right Push

Some of the hardest weeks of a mission are also some of the most impactful ones. If what you are hearing sounds like one of the following, it is often worth encouraging your missionary to stay and work through it, with proper support.

These are the moments that, more often than not, become the ones a missionary looks back on with the most pride. In these situations, the struggle does exactly what it was intended to, stretch them into someone a little more capable and a little more resilient than they were previously. Your job in these moments isn't to rescue them from the discomfort, it's to help them stay in it long enough to grow from it, while checking in often enough to notice if it turned into something more. At these times, typically the best response is to listen and validate (remember that validating does not equal agreeing) and avoid the urge to fix the problem. Use encouraging language that focuses on your belief in their ability to solve the problem for themselves. Sell strength, don't buy into their language of weakness in the moment. Stay solution-focused and suggest tools and strategies that might help them navigate the hard circumstances. Remember that your most important role in this scenario is to be a sieve. Don't absorb the emotional energy of the moment, let it pass through you and give it to the Savior, recognizing that if your missionary is in this category, the information will likely change by the next call or within a few weeks time.

Genuine Crisis: When Coming Home Is the Right Call

Then there are situations that are not the normal friction of growth, they are genuine crises. It's possible in these situation that no amount of encouragement to push through will solve the problem and it could actually be detrimental to your missionary.

If you are looking at one of these, this is not a test of resilience, and it is not a measure of your missionary's faith or commitment. Coming home under these circumstances is not failure. It is the same instinct that would tell you to bring your child home from anywhere else in the world if their safety or health were genuinely at risk. The words that stand out here to indicate your missionary might be landing in this category are: chronic, persistent and pervasive. Does the mental or physical health issue continue for a long period of time without reprieve, persists despite a change of area, companion, or circumstances, and/or seem to even affect what would otherwise be considered as "high points" (times of success, more relaxed days like P-Days or Sundays, and otherwise enjoyable moments for most others on a mission)? This can often be evidence that you may be dealing with something larger than a struggle or trial period. Please remember that there is a difference between struggle and chronic suffering.

The Hard Middle: When You Genuinely Can't Tell

Most of the calls I get from parents aren't so clear cut from either list above, but instead lie somewhere in the middle. And these often are the hardest ones to distinguish. If you genuinely cannot tell which situation you're in, that uncertainty itself is important information. I would encourage you to recognize it as an indication that you need to bring in more eyes on the situation, not fewer.

Start with the mission president. They often will have a better picture of how your missionary is doing, in a way you cannot from home, and part of their calling is helping discern exactly this. However, if a health condition, mental or physical, is any part of the picture, a doctor or therapist needs to be involved, not just a church leader or a well-meaning relative. And if you want help thinking through the decision itself, that is exactly the kind of conversation a coaching consultation is built for, not to make the decision for you, but to help you ask the right questions and think it through clearly instead of in a panicked state of mind.

What to Do With This Information

If you are in the middle of this decision right now and are in that tricky middle ground where you don't know what decision to make, here is where I would start. Remember that unless the situation falls very clearly in crisis category, the decision ultimately lies with your adult missionary. Consult with them, offer guidance and support, and have an honest conversation with them about the pros and cons of returning home early. Mostly importantly, let them know that whatever decision they make, you will love them no matter what and their service matters no matter the length of time. If necessary, encourage them to talk with their mission president, recognizing that every mission president is different and their response and willingness to work with the missionary may vary depending on the individual. If mental or physical health is part of the picture, get a professional's eyes on it, and advocate where necessary. Give yourself permission to not have to figure it out alone.

I built Returning Stronger because I lived a version of this exact uncertainty with my own daughter. If you would like help thinking this through, before or after the decision is made, we offer a free 30-minute discovery call to talk through where you are and what support might look like for your family.