Questions to Ask a Missionary Before They Leave
Everyone records the goodbye. Almost nobody records who they actually were the week before it, which is the half that makes the return meaningful.
Everything about the weeks before a mission is pointed at logistics. Clothes, documents, the farewell, the airport. It is a busy, emotional stretch and there is one thing in it that is genuinely irreplaceable and almost always missed.
In two years somebody is going to want to know who this person was before any of it happened. Not what they hoped for in general terms, but what they were actually thinking that week. There is no way to reconstruct that later, because the person who comes home is not the one who could have told you.
Ten questions for the week before
1. What are you most nervous about, specifically?
Why it works. The specific version is the one worth having. General nerves are forgettable; a named fear read two years later is remarkable, whether it happened or not.
How to ask it. Push past the first answer. The first is the acceptable one, the second is the true one.
What it opens up. The language, the companions, homesickness, or whether they are good enough at this.
2. What do you think you are going to be good at?
Why it works. It records their self-assessment going in, which is very often wrong in an interesting direction and is fascinating to read against what actually happened.
How to ask it. Ask them to be immodest on purpose. Give them permission.
What it opens up. How they see themselves at nineteen, which is a thing nobody writes down.
3. Who are you going to miss most, and what will you miss about them?
Why it works. The second half is what makes it worth keeping. Everybody can name the person; almost nobody names the specific thing.
How to ask it. Ask for one concrete detail, not a quality.
What it opens up. What home actually means to them, in the terms they would use.
4. What do you believe right now?
Why it works. It is the baseline. Two years later the same question is asked again and the pair together is the story of the mission, in a way neither one is alone.
How to ask it. Let it be short and unpolished. Do not coach it toward a testimony format.
What it opens up. Their actual position, in their own words, at this exact moment.
5. What are you hoping changes about you?
Why it works. It captures intent, and intent is the thing that gets rewritten by memory more thoroughly than anything else.
How to ask it. Ask what they would like to be less of, as well as more of.
What it opens up. Self-knowledge at nineteen, which is more acute than adults tend to assume.
6. What has somebody told you about missions that you do not quite believe?
Why it works. It invites honest skepticism at a moment when everyone around them is being encouraging, and honest skepticism ages extremely well.
How to ask it. Promise you will not argue with the answer, and then do not.
What it opens up. The gap between the official version and what they actually expect.
7. What are you taking that is not on the list?
Why it works. Objects again. The unofficial item is always the personal one, and it is the detail that makes the departure real on the page.
How to ask it. Ask why that one. There is always a reason.
What it opens up. What they are attached to, and who gave it to them.
8. What do you want to be true when you get back?
Why it works. It is forward-facing rather than sentimental, so it does not turn the conversation into a goodbye.
How to ask it. Ask them to be specific about one thing rather than general about everything.
What it opens up. A version of themselves to check against later, which is the most valuable thing on this list.
9. What do you want us to write to you about?
Why it works. It is practical and it improves the next two years of letters, which are otherwise mostly weather and family news.
How to ask it. Write down the answer and actually use it.
What it opens up. What they will need from home, which is rarely what the family assumes.
10. Say something to yourself in two years.
Why it works. Not a question, and the best one on the list. A recorded message from the person who left, opened by the person who returned.
How to ask it. Record the audio. Do not transcribe it, do not tidy it, and do not listen to it again until they are home.
What it opens up. The single most valuable thirty seconds you will capture in this whole process.
What to do with the answers
Keep them somewhere that is not a phone. Phones are replaced, notes apps get migrated badly, and audio recordings vanish in exactly this way. Whatever system you use for the mission itself, put the before answers at the front of it, so the finished account opens with who they were going in.