Thanks, everyone! I'll certainly drop in here and there now that I'm settled in a place to live and with a nice job.
To answer the mission questions, I had a really weird mission. Honestly, the main reason I completed my entire mission was because I was very much needed there; in most missions, the mission president's wife is in charge of missionary health, and as you know, most mission president's wives are not medically trained professionals. And in a third-world country like that, 18- and 19-year-old boys and girls do not often get the medical attention or help they need as a result. I made a difference for the good in someone's life every day I was out there; it was what kept me there until the end.
But it was definitely made easier due to having unlimited personal access to the internet at all times, haha. I started taking advantage of it more and more the longer the mission got. I was pretty NOM for the first half or so of my mission, mostly because I was with some pretty spiritual but overall pretty great companions. I was careful not to testify of anything I didn't particularly believe in, and when I came to something I had personal problems with, I gave the facts as well as I understood it and made sure they understood. But then, after a brief transfer with a sick companion who was kind of a diva, I ended up using the internet more out of boredom, and that NOM stage went away pretty quickly after I started hanging out in the Exmormon subreddit.
Once that started, the way I was doing my mission started to change, too. I took advantage of every little opportunity to casually get my companion to enjoy the area with me. We'd get ice cream or the local favorite foods (it was always my mission every transfer to try every bakery in the city). We'd take a break to explore shops. I brought my camera everywhere and took pictures of whatever cool thing we came across. During one companionship with a companion who is 100% comfortable with long silences, because she hates small talk and she can't control conversations with super talkative people (which was everyone in that country), she and I would talk privately about how she needed to learn to control conversations as a general life skill, and then I'd have fun sending the people we visited off on some of the strangest conversational tangents about the country or something in the country I was curious about and wanted to learn.
When we did go out with the limited time I had to proselyte, our time either had to be scheduled blocks where we would go down our really long list of addresses my companion dug up from the area book to find new investigators or at least clean that sorry set of papers up for the next companionship, or we had to have set appointments with people who wanted to listen for whatever reason. Most of my companions were pretty chill with visiting a lot of less actives or inactives or trying to "strengthen" active families. But of course we'd get occasional investigators, which were a mixture of people bound and determined to join the church for one reason or another and people who really just needed someone to talk to or a place to belong. During those investigator lessons, I was careful with what I said and honest if they had questions; I made sure they knew the requirements and long-term expectations of the church, and I taught a lot, again, with my personal experiences. For example, I never recited the first vision or testified Joseph Smith was a prophet; instead I briefly summarized the story (unless my companion managed to get it in the first vision there) and instead focused more on the moral being that god is listening, and that many times, things will happen in our life when they need to happen, so long as we are actively trying our best.
I don't know if I would have been able to finish my mission if it weren't for the fact it was already inherently structured to be weird. There were a couple times when my anxiety and panic attacks and trouble with communication got to the point I almost went home; and by almost went home, I meant the mission president was aware and more than willing to put in the request and have me home in a couple of days. It was really rough during those times; I've learned now that I am 100% better mentally and emotionally when I live alone with no one more than a cat or two. Otherwise, I get too easily overwhelmed and am prone to anxiety and panic attacks.
During those times, I relied heavily on the internet I had to contact my best non-Mormon friends back home, and they helped talk me out of the deep ends. I also started learning to communicate openly and bluntly with people, including the mission president, when things started to get bad again, so we could change things up; I'm lucky I had such a great mission president, in that respect. And I'm lucky I had the opportunity to develop my communication skills so well.
So...yeah, I did things my way because I'd already set it up so my mission would be different and unexpected. But I guess there are always ideas that can be applied across the board. Just gotta look at the situation.
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. -Albert Einstein
And God said 'Love Your Enemy,' and I obeyed him and loved myself. -Kahlil Gibran
