The first months home, from a parent's side.

Coming home is a change for your LDS missionary. The Church calls the move from life as a full-time missionary to life at home a challenging transition, and its guide for the mentors who help returned missionaries asks a mentor first to love, listen to and support them. That's from the Church's My Plan guide  (opens the Church's page in a new tab).

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A challenging transition.

For 18 or 24 months, your missionary lived by the missionary schedule and standards. After the release, that schedule is behind them, and they come home to family and friends whose lives went on while they served.

The Church's guide for mentors says that on their mission, your missionary learned to live principles such as faith in Jesus Christ, hard work, diligence and service, and that a mentor's role is to help them keep living them.

So if the first weeks are hard, that's the challenging transition the Church's guide describes.

Our tips for returning missionaries are written for your missionary, if they would like to read them.

The plan they made.

In their last few weeks in the field, missionaries take an online course called My Plan. In it, they write a one-year vision for their future and set goals for how they'll grow spiritually, serve others, gain an education, find work, and date and prepare for temple marriage.

A copy goes to their mission president, their home stake president and their home bishop. The handbook suggests the stake president review their progress on it in the release interview.

A mentor may also be assigned to help them work toward their goals.

If they'd like to share their plan with you, ask which goals they'd like help with. It's their plan, so let them lead.

Listen first.

Let them tell the mission at their own pace. Some stories come out at dinner the first week, and some come months later.

Ask about people and places by name: their companions, the members they served with, the families they taught.

In the first days, give them room to rest before the plans and the visits.

Church at home.

The Missionary Standards ask returned missionaries to keep praying and studying the gospel daily, to attend and take part in their home or young single adult ward, to serve in the temple if there's one nearby, and to attend institute or religious education classes.

The handbook asks leaders to give recently released missionaries ministering assignments and callings promptly.

School and work.

The Standards also ask them to seek education and work, through the Church and other resources. In the release interview, the handbook suggests the stake president help them set goals and make plans for both.

For recently released missionaries who have no other plans for school, the handbook asks leaders to encourage them to consider BYU–Pathway Worldwide, for professional certificates and university education. It asks for at least intermediate English. Those who don't speak English may consider EnglishConnect.

Deadlines for school and jobs can fall close to the release date, so a look at them in the last months of the mission helps.

Staying in touch with their mission.

The Standards ask returned missionaries to keep in touch with the people they taught and worked with, including their mission leaders, and to celebrate the important events in their lives.

Their weekly emails are full of those names. Keep them, with the photos and posts, before they scatter: read gathering it all: letters, photos and posts.

If they're struggling.

If you're worried about your missionary, or you'd like help yourself, talk with your bishop. The Church's Family Services  (opens the Church's page in a new tab) helps leaders support members, including family members supporting someone, and a referral from a bishop is required.

For anyone helping someone who is struggling, Family Services suggests showing compassion and empathy, and not offering unwanted advice or judgment.

If you're ever afraid for your missionary's safety, call 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US and Canada. It's one of the help lines on the Church's In Crisis? Talk Now.  (opens the Church's page in a new tab) page.