We would love to assign you a personal mentor who will help you every step of the way. It is so helpful to talk with somebody who has already been there and done that. There are three specific areas where having a mentor can enrich your experience.

Helping You Strategize

A mentor can help you immensely as you prepare for each visit. Our usual procedure is for the two of you to review together what happened during the missionaries’ previous visit. Then you strategize on what to talk about in the upcoming visit. Your mentor can also point you to one or two specific articles to help you make the points you identified as the ones you want to make. This saves you from becoming overwhelmed by having to sort through all those articles yourself.

In addition, a mentor can keep reminding you of the overall strategy – something people often lose sight of in the heat of the moment. Your mentor can also help you formulate specific goals for each visit in keeping with the overall strategy.

Offering You Encouragement

It’s easy to become discouraged since very few missionaries will let you know you got them thinking – even when you have. Most will repeatedly state classic LDS teaching especially on the inherent goodness of mankind and the necessity of contributing to one’s worthiness before God. When this happens, it’s easy to feel like you are pounding your head against a brick wall.

Your mentor can counter such feelings. They will regularly remind you of the power of God’s Word and that it often takes years for it to germinate in a person’s heart. They will reinforce the biblical truth that your responsibility is to plant the seeds; it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convert.  And they will reassure you that they and others will be regularly praying for you.

Holding You Accountable

We all know how helpful it is to be part of a team rather than trying to fly solo. One of the benefits of being on a team is not only receiving encouragement but also being held lovingly accountable. This is the secret behind such diverse groups as Weight Watchers and AA.

Your mentor will lovingly hold you accountable. One of the main things they can help you with is to remind you to continue meeting with the missionaries. It is very easy, in the rush of life, to have every intention of setting up another meeting, but never getting around to it. Just knowing that somebody will ask us about it is often enough to make us do it.

How to Request a Mentor

For these reasons, we encourage you to request having a mentor assigned to you. You can request a mentor at any time. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask us. Together may we speak the truth in love to many Mormon missionaries.