I spent nearly half of my mission service training new missionaries. This allowed time for a lot of extra study. I enjoyed this extra study so much that I convinced a couple of my more willing companions to get up early with me even when we weren’t training. Missionaries are fond of bearing comp-a-monies and will often get emotional about what they learned from one another. “Sister So-and-So taught me about charity.” “Sister Thingy taught me about prayer.” You get the drill. When it came to others reflecting on me, it was always, “Sister Lindley taught me how to work.” I was never quite sure how I felt about that. My new comps would invariably tell me after about three weeks how terrified they had been to serve with me due to the taskmaster reputation I had unwittingly earned. They would say, “I’m so surprised that that you are nice, too!” I was never quite sure how I felt about that, either.
My point in sharing this is to illustrate that for all the things I did wrong on my mission, my level of diligence was not something I ever regretted.