First, I want to make the comment that everybody has the potential to be a hard companion to someone else who has a different personality than you. And someone who is a hard companion for you, might just be the perfect companion for someone else. Just because two people don’t get along, doesn’t mean that one is right and one is wrong, or evil/righteous, sane/crazy, good/bad, etc. It could just simply mean that your personalities don’t mesh, and that’s okay. There are the occasional people who are genuinely hard for almost anybody to get along with, and you may run into those companions. But for the most part, we are just all different, and it doesn’t mean anything negative about either person if two personalities don’t mesh well.
When you have a hard companion, you are on the fast track to increased growth. You will learn compassion, patience, how to thrive in hard situations, self love, anger management, communication skills, and so much more. When you find yourself in those difficult situations, it is good to reflect on the things that are in your control – What is God trying to teach you? What can you learn? How do you wish you would have reacted? How you can change and grow?
You can also write down a list of positive attributes in your companion, to help you see him/her through God's eyes. It is also helpful to remember that, although you could be with this companion for weeks or months, there is an end to this trial, it will not last forever.
That being said, here are a few hard companions and the lessons that were learned by being their companion. All the names have been changed, but the stories are true, and come from a handful of return missionaries.
MEAN MAGGIE:
Mean Maggie did not like me at all. In fact, she hated most things about me. Every week we had a companionship council which is where you get together as a companionship and talk about problems you may be having, and try to resolve them. During most of my companionships, we did this every few weeks. With Mean Maggie, we did it every week. And during this meeting, every week, she would proceed to tear me apart. She told me everything she thought I did wrong, and would often attack my very nature. If I ever had a concern, she would immediately turn it around, back on me, and say “I only did that because you did this”. During our three transfers together (my longest companion, by the way) she called me all kinds of names, and said so many cruel things to me. It wore on me. I was losing confidence in myself as a missionary and as a person. I tried conforming to whatever I thought she wanted, so she would stop attacking me. But nothing worked. She still hated everything about me.
WHAT I LEARNED: For my last two weeks with her, I decided that if she hated me no matter what I did, then I would stop trying to change who I was, and I would be 100% authentic. I can’t even tell you the freedom that gave me. And it drove her nuts. She desperately grasped at some way to regain control. While she tirelessly tried to control every aspect of my day – not letting me look at the map, not letting me look at the area book, driving to people’s houses and not telling me who they were or why we were there – I found joy and peace in whatever happened. While she stormed around, I smiled and engaged with the people around us. I learned that I could be the version of myself that I loved, despite somebody hating everything about me. I learned that it was more important what Heavenly Father thought than what anybody else thought. I learned that I was my own measuring stick – I can consider other people's advice and perspective, but ultimately, I get to decide what the best version of me is. I learned how to “act, instead of being acted upon”. It is not easy, but it is possible.
DISOBEDIENT DONNY
The transfer before I met Donny, I was training a new missionary- we worked hard and accepted the invitation of our mission president to be “exactly obedient”. We saw so many miracles in our area and the hand of the Lord in our lives so clearly. After this transfer I was moved to a new area and new companion- Donny. Donny was the most disobedient missionary I had ever served with. He called his best friend (who was also serving in our mission) every night to chat, slept in until 10 or 11, took 3-4 hour lunches, scrolled facebook watching videos for hours, used the church building computer to scroll Zillow “on a special assignment from President to find new homes for members”, watched youtube music videos during personal study, went to the supermarket any day of the week, spent hours at members houses, and tried to convince me that going to the mall arcade and the Nike store on a Wednesday was “companionship bonding”. Any time I tried to address it, Donny became volatile and defensive and would yell at me in his native language and told me once that if I refused to come with him then he would go alone. It destroyed me because I so tightly associated obedience with being a successful missionary, and quite frankly I felt like I was just wasting my time while Donny took essentially a church-funded vacation. I sent an email to my mission president who was a couple weeks away from finishing his missionary service. To this day, I don’t know if he didn’t see my email or if it had just slipped through the cracks, but we never heard from him about it, and nothing changed.
WHAT I LEARNED: After not hearing from my current mission president, I sent an email to my mission president from my previous mission. The council he gave me changed the course of my mission. He said, “Elder Wright, you’re learning a life skill right now that many wish to have learned in their early twenties. You will spend much of your life in situations not in your control, and difficult situations that are not a result of your actions or decisions, but yet you find yourself within. Choose to make your apartment a temple. Consecrate your study time and make that a temple too. With the extra time you have where your companion is unfocused, learn of the Savior and come to know Him. This too will pass, and once it has, what will you be grateful you spent your time doing, learning, developing, or chosing to do? Who will you have become?” Choose to have an eternal perspective, choose to be personally exactly obedient, choose to control what is in your control, choose to have grace, and above all, Choose to become someone new because you chose to come to know Him.
CLUELESS CLAIR:
I had a sweet companion that was just a little bit slow. She was always up for working hard, and she was so kind to everybody we met. In that way, she was the perfect companion. The difficulty was in her mental capacity. In a companionship, it is hard to carry the whole load, make all the decisions, and not have anybody to talk through problems. When I was tired or weak, I didn’t have somebody to pick up the slack, or help me be strong. She had difficulty following conversations and connecting socially, which made teaching quite difficult. People would get turned off by her odd comments and weird mannerisms. As her companion, I was torn. She really was such a wonderful person, and also – it was really hard to be her mission companion. I felt alone. I never wanted to say anything negative about her – ever – so that left me with nobody to talk to about what I was struggling with.
WHAT I LEARNED: I learned that with every wonderful characteristic, there is an equally difficult one. There were so many things that made her a fantastic companion, and a lot of those things also made her a difficult one. And that is true of anybody. My biggest strengths are coupled with their equal and opposite weaknesses. This awareness has been an incredible tool in helping me see both the strengths and weaknesses in myself and others, and learning to love the whole package.
I also learned that everybody has the ability to touch the lives of somebody. She could not relate to very many people, and often people had a hard time relating to her. But when we found somebody that connected with her, it was beautiful. And, believe me, my abrupt personality was not what those people needed. Her incredible ability to love, touched their lives. Those were the special few who she was there to find.
HEADACHE HENRY
Henry was one of my very favorite companions. He easy to be around, up for anything, and loved the people. What made this companionship difficult was that he had crippling migraines. It wasn’t all the time, but it was often enough that I had some significant downtime. I still wanted to be a productive missionary, but I had to figure out how to do that in the apartment for hours at a time, while he was sleeping off his migraines.
WHAT I LEARNED: Being bored, although it can be a tool for trouble-making, it is a powerful tool for creativity. During one of his migraines, I drew a picture of Christ, which I didn’t know I could do. Another time, I started some really cool scripture study projects that I still refer to 20 years later. I am especially grateful for learning this life lesson now that I have kids. I try to teach them that being bored is okay, sometimes even better than okay, if you use that time to be creative rather than depending on screen time or someone to entertain you.
God doesn't do random and there are no coincidences. He knows where you are and what's going on. There is something for you to learn, but in the moment that can be really difficult to see. That's why we designed this reflection sheet- to help missionaries find perspective, feel peace, and ultimately think celestial.
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