What I Wish I'd Written Down: Advice from Returned Missionaries

When I started making journals for missionaries, I assumed the obvious: they'd want to write about baptisms, spiritual experiences, and the big moments. And they do. But when I talked to returned missionaries — really talked to them, years after they'd come home — I discovered that the things they most wish they'd recorded are almost never the things you'd expect.

Here's what they told me.

"I Wish I'd Written Down the Ordinary Days"

— Sister M., served in the Philippines, home 4 years

"Everyone told me to record the spiritual stuff. And I did — every baptism, every powerful lesson. But what I can't remember now is the ordinary stuff. What did I eat for breakfast? What was the walk to our area like? What did the apartment look like? What did we talk about at dinner?

"Those details seemed boring at the time. Now they're the ones I'd give anything to have back. The big moments I remember. It's the regular Tuesdays I've lost."

"I Wish I'd Written About My Companions"

— Elder J., served in Brazil, home 12 years

"I had eight companions. I could tell you their names. But I can't tell you most of what we talked about, what made them laugh, what frustrated them, what their testimony sounded like in the middle of a bad week.

"Your companion is the person you spend every waking hour with for six weeks to six months. They become family. And then you transfer and never see them again — at least not the same way. I wish I'd captured who each of them was while I was living alongside them."

"I Wish I'd Written Down What People Said — Exactly"

— Elder T., served in Japan, home 8 years

"There was a man we taught named Tanaka-san. He was in his seventies. He'd lost his wife the year before. When we taught the plan of salvation, he sat quietly for a long time and then said something that I've been trying to remember for years. Something about how the idea that families are forever was the first thing that had made him want to wake up in the morning since she died.

"I remember the idea of what he said. But I don't remember his words. And his words were everything. If I'd written them down that night — his exact words — I'd have them forever. Instead, I have my summary. It's not the same."

"I Wish I'd Written About the Hard Days Honestly"

— Sister R., served in Argentina, home 6 years

"I edited myself. When I journaled about hard days, I'd always end on a positive note — 'but I know the Lord is guiding me' or 'I trust that it will get better.' And maybe that was true. But it wasn't the whole truth.

"Some days I was miserable. Some days I didn't want to be there. Some days I doubted. And those days are the ones I most need to remember now — not because they were bad, but because I survived them. I got through. The proof of faith isn't that you never struggled. It's that you stayed. I wish I'd let my journal hold the full weight of it."

"I Wish I'd Described the Places"

— Elder K., served in Ghana, home 15 years

"I spent two years in one of the most beautiful, intense places on earth and I barely described it. I wrote about what I did all day but not where I was. The red dirt roads after rain. The way the market smelled. The sound of the chapel on a Sunday morning when everyone was singing and the windows were open and you could hear it from the street.

"I have maybe three entries where I actually describe the place. Three. In two years. I look at them now and they're the most vivid thing in the whole journal."

"I Wish I'd Written More About What I Believed"

— Elder D., served in England, home 22 years

"My mission is when my testimony went from inherited to owned. There were specific moments — specific scriptures, specific prayers, specific lessons — where I went from believing because my parents believed to believing because I'd experienced something real.

"I wish I'd marked those moments clearly. Written: 'Today I know for myself that [this] is true, and here is why.' Because twenty years later, when life gets complicated and faith gets quiet, I would give a lot to open a journal and read my twenty-year-old self telling me exactly what he knew and how he knew it."

The Thread That Runs Through All of It

Every returned missionary I talked to said a version of the same thing: I wish I'd written more, with more detail, and more honesty.

Not one person said they wish they'd written less. Not one person said their journal was too detailed. Not one person regretted a single entry, even the messy ones, the honest ones, the ones that were just a paragraph scrawled before sleep.

If you're in the field right now: write more than you think you need to. Write the names. Write the places. Write the ordinary days. Write what people actually said. Write what you actually felt — even when it's hard, even when it's doubt, even when it doesn't end with a neat spiritual conclusion.

Write it all down. Your future self is counting on it.