MINI MISSIONARY LESSON: 3 REASONS WHY DATING LAURELS USUALLY DOESN’T WORK

With the lowering of the mission age, the Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer is doing its part to help train young men for the rigors and blessings of doing God’s work.  As part of this effort, Elder Kory Anton, who is hoping to clear things up and return to the mission field very soon, offers his insights to help others to prepare. 

You Don't Want to See This!

Getting out in the mission field is a thrilling experience. It is great to see how the members respond to the spirit that you have with you, and let me tell you, it isn’t just the old fogies.  No matter where you serve, all of those young women who would barely even talk to you before your mission will be happy to see you now.  But before you start texting those Laurels, let me give you three good reasons to look before you leap.

One: Laurels can be bad at keeping secrets. This may surprise you, since girls can seem pretty quiet around boys. It is hard to know even what they are thinking.  But take it from some people I know: as soon as you meet one for a midnight movie while your companion is sleeping, she will probably blab all about it to her friends.  And when that happens, others will probably find out. It will be really bad if it gets around, so the easiest thing to do is to tell her in a really spiritual way to only use a code name for you when talking to her friends.  

Two: She may not be as cute as you think. This is a mistake lots of missionaries make. You are in South Africa or Guatemala or the Dakotas and you find a really hot seventeen year-old sitting across from you at dinner. She laughs at all your jokes, she shakes your hand vigorously, and her eyes just light up when you talk about serving the Lord. But keep in mind that the sparkly feelings you get when you are around her could just be because you haven’t been around girls for a while. Try to remember the hot girls who never would have talked to you before: is this one really one of those? After being a missionary for a while, even the light poles have hips, so make sure she really is cute.

Three: She might just be into you for the tag. While you are being a missionary, you don’t want to get burned. And the most common way that missionaries who date Laurels get burned is when they realize that she is only into you because of the tag. As we know from hundreds of years of stories and even scientific experiments, girls love men in uniform. Your suit and your tag are your uniform, and too many girls with stars in their eyes only see that. You should respect yourself and find a girl who wants to date you for you, not just because you have dedicated two years to serving God.

I don’t want to be extreme here, soon-to-be missionary, but when you are considering a deep, loving, and profound relationship (or even something not quite that deep or profound) with a seventeen or eighteen year-old girl in the ward where you are serving, keep these three reasons as a word to the wise.   

The Best of Luck,

Elder Kory Anton