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The newly released anthology of stories about sister missionaries, Do Not Attempt in Heels, is a book I dearly wish had been available when I was a sister missionary many moons ago. Though I was a third-generation sister missionary (both my mother and her mother served missions), there were still plenty of things I did not know about missionary work, including how hard and how wonderful it could be simultaneously. With the recent upsurge in the number of sister missionaries, this book aims to fill a much needed gap in the literature written for and about sister missionaries.

I knew going into my reading that the book, compiled by Elise Babbel Hahl and Jennifer Rockwood Knight, would be a good one. I had the privilege of working with Elise on another compilation, and I knew she was an insightful and careful editor. But I was still caught off guard by how moved I was by the stories shared.

The stories come from a variety of places: newly returned sisters and sisters who have been home for decades; sisters who served stateside or who struggled to learn new  languages all across the globe; sisters who served traditional missions and spent much of their time tracting, and sisters who served in visitors’ centers or as performance missionaries in Nauvoo.  I appreciated the diversity, particularly a short essay about a woman who ultimately found that the answer to her prayer about serving a mission was not to go and who has found other meaningful venues for missionary service in her life, and an essay about a woman who had to leave her mission early because of illness.

Most of the stories are personal narratives, though a few include other genres: the diary of a greenie, interviews with successful sister missionaries, and even tips on how to stay healthy as a missionary. Sarah Hogan includes short excerpts from other women about their experiences praying to know if mission service was right for them. As missionary service is optional for faithful women, I think young women who are wondering whether or not they should serve might find useful guidance here.

The stories range through a variety of themes: struggling with homesickness, learning a new language, dealing with difficult companions, mastering individual pride, learning to listen to the spirit, studying the scriptures, putting aside personal aspirations to serve–even dealing with unwanted crushes! Mary Jones Scoresby writes eloquently about a lesson I also struggled to learn on my mission–accepting that my hard work could not override the agency of others: “Prior to my mission, I thought about agency in terms of a vending machine. That is, I believed I could drop in coins of obedience and God would pop out blessings into my waiting hand. I realized on my mission . . . [m]y coins of perfect obedience could not buy me the reward of baptisms.” Underscoring all these stories is the sense that missions are hard. As the editors write in the introduction, “Don’t be afraid of struggling on your mission; it’s going to happen.”

But readers who see only how difficult missions are may miss the point of the book. As I read, the stories transported me back to the unique feeling of grace I carried with me through my own mission–a feeling of being set apart and sanctified, a sense of living every day close to the spirit. In the opening chapter, Jessie Hawkes writes movingly of this spiritual immersion: “We were wandering in the wilderness of the Midwest, sure that we would see some pillar of fire just beyond the next condominium, murmuring glory as it evaporated into prairie sky.” She concludes her narrative by describing how her mission ultimately taught her about the atonement, how she learned to see small actions as “the placeholders of grace” in her life.

This book itself might serve as one of those “placeholders of grace” for young women thinking about missions, but I found it was also a moving reminder to me of the power of a sanctified life–and a reminder that I can (and should) do more in my daily life to reclaim the spiritual immersion I felt so often on as a missionary.


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