OK I'm on a race against time and melatonin before I doze off but here we go. Apparently hot-take that I didn't think was hot-take thread about missions.

If you served your mission late (substantially later than 18/19 eligibility), unless there was some very exceptional situation that prevented you from serving on time, you messed up and must repent. It is between you and God but don't kid yourself about it.

We're all adults here so don't spam me with exceptional reasons why someone had to serve late. I know they exist, you do, let's move on.

There was a guy in my single's branch I couldn't stand who served a mission very late. I had lots of respect for him though regarding his attitude about his mission. Apparently he had a lot of people tell him "Well maybe it's God's plan for you to serve now."

He would say, "I think God wanted me to be ready and worthy to serve at 19 like I was supposed to, but this is the next best thing I can do," or something along those lines, I'm paraphrasing.

He didn't lie to himself to make himself feel better. He owned his mistake and was honest about it.

Another thing is on people coming home early. It seems like a lot of missionaries are coming home early nowadays, and when everyone knows and loves someone that came home early, there is temptation to brush it under the rug and say it's all okay.

I don't know how you could think that coming home early is okay. Barring exceptional circumstances, it is against God's will for a missionary to have to come home early. He would rather they stay worthy and stay in the field.

If you came home early, you must repent of your sins, and be honest about them. Be honest about the fact that it wasn't what God wanted of you. If you lie to yourself about it, you will hurt yourself in the long run.

If you smoke a cigarette, you would never tell yourself it's fine and God still loves you anyway, you'd have to acknowledge the sin and repent.

It's really NOT a big deal is the funny thing, if you look in the eternal scale. We're all sinning all the time.

We all have to repent all the time. We're commanded to call good good and evil evil. Don't deceive yourself.

Lastly, it is clearly a commandment for worthy young men to serve. Anyone who classifies it any other way is practicing willful ignorance at best. It is sinful not to encourage someone to keep the commandments.

Just as you would encourage, pressure even, to a careful extent, someone to be chaste, clean, worthy, you should encourage them and pressure them appropriately to serve a mission.

/fin

the melatonin is coming I can feel its eventuality.