Waiting for a Missionary

Find a list of quotes, some helpful motivating stories, and more! This is new so check back soon for updates!

Page includes:

*Quotes about Love
*Quotes about Missing Someone
*Quotes about Letters
*Quotes about Waiting
*Church Authorities whose wives waited for them
*New!- A message from President Dunn

Love is a sweet tyranny, because the lover endureth his torments willingly.
~Proverb

The art of love... is largely the art of persistence.
~Albert Ellis

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.
~Henry David Thoreau

Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
~Robert Heinlein

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.
~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.
~Jean Anouilh

It is astonishing how little one feels alone when one loves.
~John Bulwer

Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.
~William Shakespeare, "Sonnet CXVI"

A man is not where he lives, but where he loves.
~Latin Proverb

Loving is never a waste of time.
~Astrid Alauda

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.
~Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
~W. Somerset Maugham

Love is missing someone whenever you're apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you're close in heart.
~Kay Knudsen

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
~G.K. Chesterton

All days are nights to see till I see thee, And nights bright days when dreams do show thee to me.
~William Shakespeare, "Sonnet XLIII"

If I had a single flower for every time I think about you, I could walk forever in my garden.
~Claudia Ghandi

The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected.
~Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

The joy of meeting pays the pangs of absence; else who could bear it?
~Nicholas Rowe

Missing someone gets easier every day because even though it's one day further from the last time you saw each other, it's one day closer to the next time you will.
~Author Unknown

We only part to meet again.
~John Gay

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against the want of you; of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it.
~Amy Lowell, "The Letter"

Maybe part of loving is learning to let go.
~From the television show The Wonder Years

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
~Carol Sobieski and Thomas Meehan, Annie

But fate ordains that dearest friends must part.
~Edward Young

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
~Kahlil Gibran

The return makes one love the farewell.
~Alfred De Musset

Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.
~Lazurus Long

The one good thing about not seeing you is that I can write you letters.
~Svetlana Alliluyeva

What a wonderful thing is the mail, capable of conveying across continents a warm human hand-clasp.
~Author Unknown

Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls.
~John Donne

A letter always seemed to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend.
~Emily Dickinson

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.
~Anatole Broyard

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.
~Anaïs Nin

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
~William Wordsworth

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
~Francis Bacon

Writing is a struggle against silence.
~Carlos Fuentes

Writing is both mask and unveiling.
~E.B. White

All things come to him who waits - provided he knows what he is waiting for.
~Woodrow T. Wilson

There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting.
~J. G. Holland

Waiting may seem in the way of us getting to where we want to go. But many times, it is through waiting that the sight of a truer destination appears.
-Duke Rohe

Never cut short your waiting with compromise. Simply put, the waiting is not over until the waiting's done.
~Duke Rohe

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering.
~Paulo Coelho

Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow - that is patience.
~Unknown

When you are close to giving up, know that you are close to rising up.
-Ogunyemi Sola

Things can only be so good, and so bad, for so long.
-John W. Foust

Forget about all the reasons why something may not work. You only need to find one good reason why it will.
-Dr. Robert Anthony

Q: Would you elaborate a little upon the role of the girl in a missionary’s life and what kind of relationship should be maintained?

President Dunn: "I think that’s an excellent request, and there’s no question in my mind but that the young ladies or young men writing to their missionaries will have a profound effect for good or for ill, depending on the kind of letters they write. If the girl in her letters to a missionary could emphasize the positive and write the good things that have occurred in her life as a result of the mission, it would be the best kind of letter writing. Often a girl will see more of the spiritual side of life as a result of a boy’s serving on a mission. To share these things and to indicate what it’s done for the family or the community is the thing that really builds. Girls at home can write the wrong kind of letter by telling the missionary how much he’s missed, and writing “Oh, if you were only home.” But if we turn the situation around, girl friends can really help if they’ll write some positive things. My counsel to anyone anytime would be to write good, positive, encouraging letters. Now that doesn’t mean that they can’t tell some bad news. In fact, if a crisis comes, I think a missionary ought to know. He suspects it if he isn’t told; he can read between the lines. And he’ll worry ten times more if he doesn’t know the truth than he will if you tell him the truth and put it in its proper perspective. Tell the things that are going on in the ward and community. Make it more than just busy talk, although that has its place. Excerpt a talk that somebody gave in church or send a poem that lifts or solves a problem. Send him a gem of a thought: “The bishop the other day gave us this thought, and we’ve been thinking about how we could try it on for size.” Elders come and show me their letters when this happens. And the same things hold true for the young lady, for young men frequently are writing to lady missionaries. Boyfriends and girl friends at home should put their feelings on a high spiritual plane. That doesn’t mean they can’t share an honest feeling of love and respect; if it’s there, they ought to say it. But to write romantic letters just for the sake of being romantic actually has a reverse effect. It reduces the effectiveness of the missionary and it’s a cruel thing to do to him, because he’s not in a position to do much about his romantic feelings. Letters can either build or tear down a missionary’s spirit. Please write your missionary the kind that build."