My BYU-Pathway Service Mission

The picture used on my missionary plaque

Last Sunday was the last day of my service mission for BYU-Pathway! I served students in Nigeria, hosting a gathering each week, helping students hopefully be more successful in their educational journey. My missionary service was only a few hours a week so I could do it along with all my other responsibilities. Here is my report:

Challenges

1. Students in Nigeria have many obstacles in their educational journeys with technology problems being near the top. Many of them do not have access to computers. Doing all the classwork on a phone seems very difficult but that was what they had to do. Another challenge is internet connectivity and infrastructure. Getting online for our gatherings was difficult for many students. Some of the students would do their classwork in the middle of the night because that's when the internet worked the best. Rainstorms would disrupt the internet so the rainy season was especially difficult. Electricity is also unpredictable in Nigeria. We definitely take our internet and electricity for granted here in the United States.

2.  BYU-Pathway changed to a new platform in December 2024. Given the huge number of Pathway students, the transition was difficult.

3. Lack of accountability for students and lack of support were sometimes a problem.

4. Sometimes I wasn't able to give my mission all the time it needed or deserved. It was hard to know exactly how much to give.

Benefits

1.  For much of my mission I had a great companion who became my good friend. She lives far away in another state so we only ever communicate online, but we enjoy talking. She was incredibly knowledgeable since she had been doing Pathway for a while and she had time to figure things out. She had fewer home responsibilities than I did so she was able to spend a lot more time on Pathway.

2.  Thanks to my service mission, I became more familiar with the technology of Zoom rooms and using WhatsApp and PowerPoint. WhatsApp is what people use around the world because it's very inexpensive. It was good for me to learn these things.

3.  I had the principles of the BYU-Pathway classes reinforced for me as we went over them in our gatherings. These concepts included setting priorities, having a growth mindset, making SMART goals, and other such things. We also listened to short devotionals each week and those were good. 

4. The biggest and most important benefit of my service mission is that I served my students and served God in the process. My goal was to be a resource for them and to help them feel the love of God in their lives, to be a disciple of Jesus Christ as I served. I am not sure how successful I was in doing those things and I wish I could have been more helpful, but hopefully I made a difference. There are foundations that hand out laptops to eligible Pathway students with help from the missionaries and it was always such a happy moment when one of my students got the long-awaited laptops. I was grateful to play a small role in that. During my mission I was frequently reminded of how much easier my life here in the United States is. My students were also surprisingly grateful for the help I gave them. I think just being kind to them was something they appreciated.

5.  I was able to finally reach my goal of serving a mission! I am hoping to serve a full-time mission someday soon but this part-time mission gave me a small opportunity. Here is the certificate I received when I completed it:

BYU-Pathway has a very ambitious goal of helping people throughout the world obtain a low-cost education, whether they're a member of our church or not. I completely support this goal and my experience of the last two years has helped me see just how difficult but also worthwhile a goal it is. I hope to again be able to support this program sometime in the future.