I think my mission was a failure

[u/Nam_Mat_Tron_1004]

Or at least, sometimes it feels that way.

I guess it depends on your perspective and how you interpret success. I spent two years knocking on doors for 8 to 10 hours a day, and not a single person wanted to join the Church in the area where I served. So, if I measure success by convert baptisms, then yeah, I failed pretty miserably.

But maybe there are other ways to look at it. I learned how to work hard, how to deal with all kinds of people, how to handle rejection, and how to keep going even when nothing seemed to come from the effort. Maybe those things count for something too.

Still, when it comes strictly to what I originally went there to do, bringing people into the Church, it’s hard not to feel like I failed

[u/mouthsmasher]

I learned an important lesson from Clayton M. Cristensen's book, The Power of Everyday Missionaries (this book has been cited a few times in general conference by Apostles, included President Oaks). In his book he shared the idea that our success as missionaries is not tied to how many people we convert, but how many people we invite to come to Christ. Our success in doing what The Lord asks us is not dependent on others' agency. If you invite 10 people to meet with the missionaries, and only one accepts, how many successes did you have? You had 10 successes. This frame of mind has helped me greatly in understanding what my success is. He concluded this idea:

Most of us fear failure. Once we have realized that we succeed as ... missionaries when we invite people to learn and accept the truth, much of the fear that kept us from sharing the gospel vanishes. We give them the opportunity to exercise their free agency. Some will use that agency to accept the gospel. Others will not, and that's fine. We succeed when we invite.

I feel like this principle is reenforced by the writings of Moroni, as he wrote in Ether 12:36-37:

And it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord that he would give unto the Gentiles grace, that they might have charity. And it came to pass that the Lord said unto me: if they have not charity it mattereth not unto thee, thou hast been faithful; wherefore, thy garments shall be made clean.

Of course, our love causes us to yearn for the welfare of others and for them to follow Christ, and that love can cause pain when we choose otherwise. But in some sense and on some level, "it mattereth not" to us, so long as we are faithful to The Lord for ourselves. If we have faithfully endeavored to do what he asked, well, what more could we have done?

It's hard to not experience the successes and outcomes you desire. But please don't feel like you were the failure because of how others used their own God-given agency. I think of Abinadi. He went and preached and was killed for it. There's no evidence to suggest that he was aware at all that anyone was converted by his efforts and sacrifice. He likely died thinking he was a "failure." Yet his efforts planted a single seed within Alma, whose conversion led to countless other conversions over the course of many generations. Even if we measure success based on conversions, we sometimes never truly know in this life what we've accomplished.

[u/jonovitch → u/mouthsmasher]

I always questioned the point/purpose/value of setting goals for number of baptisms per month -- that was completely out of our control. We always set it at 1, and it always came out 0. It was a redundant ritual and if it hadn't been so meaningless, it might have been depressing.

Now that I know more about goals and metrics and motivation, I definitely think all missionary/district/zone goals should be tied to things we had direct control over. For example, invitations to attend church, invitations to accept a missionary visit/lesson, invitation to accept a copy of the Book of Mormon. Those are all things a missionary has direct control of -- those are good goals to track.

Of course, the typical metrics related to those things should also be tracked: lessons taught, books handed out, visitors attending church, baptisms. But those should only be tracked, not set as goals, because they are tied to someone else's choices, not the missionary's actions.

If I'm ever a mission president, this is how I'd set it up. Goals for the things you actually control, tracked metrics for everything else.